This is fiction, ok fine most [of it] is fiction.
This is 22nd August, year 2003. It was an important day in Indian sports History, think of it. Well, I had come to Gurgaon for interview in SIEMENS in the morning. I reached SIEMENS office in the morning, wrote some tests, went through a GD and personal interview and got free by 6 PM in the evening. Oh yeah, all of it went well as I was finally selected for the job. Anyway so at 6, I called a friend in Delhi, Kumar Manish (Munshi), who was working in Citi-Financial (known as Associates then), Delhi. He asked to meet him at Saket PVR. So I took a bus to Daula Kua and then to Saket. But instead of Saket I chose to get down to Citi-Financial's office. It took 1.5 painful hours for the whole trip. But only if I knew what am I going to see today then it wasn't all that painful.
I reached Citi-Financial's office at 8 PM. I called Munshi from the recepetion, and then we headed towards saket, PVR. Oh Man, it was a nice place. You can't even imagine how much I appreciated the place after being into 95% boys campus for last 4 years. It was reaaaaally nice place. Since I wasn't in job, I was short on account and since Munshi was earning more than he needed for himself, we decided to for this really expensive place to have some Thi-Food. But, oops the place was full, as guessed by Munshi. All Delhi restaurants are full on a Friday evening. So we had to leave the place and look out for another food-joint. I had to catch my train at 11:50 PM back to Kanpur so there wasn't much time left. We decided to go for this burger joint right across. Then I realized today was the league of India-Pakistan Hockey-cup. Just few words on the match, India was loosing 2-4 to Pakistan in the first half and finally won by 7-5 with three goals in last 10 minutes. Match was really good, so I has to devote few words to it, but don't worry I am not making you read all this to tell you the match scores. We grabbed some burgers and sit on side to enjoy the meal and the match. We took seats with our back on the wall to see the television placed in a nook above, on the side of entrance.
And then she arrived. Oh man, I will have to stop typing to really go through her image in my mind very very carefully. Till today, I can't imagine a full image of her's. She must be 5'7'', yeah only half a inch shorter than me. I really felt short that day. She had straight hairs, neatly tied as womb, cliped by a big and fancy butterfly pin. And there were these two sphagatties of hairs falling on both sides of her face, right till middle of her neck. What a pure skin she had, I imagined that I would have seen the water flowing down only if she would have had some. No her lips weren't red, they were more natural and a lot sensual. I had stopped eating by then. Her eyes were clean, like a crystal. She had fair and smooth complexion. She wore silver earings, almost a inch big, just a like pair two pendulums in both ears. Oh yeah I was engineer at that time, and pendulum is what a call a metal string hanging with weight at the bottom, you can't blame me for that. She was wearing long frock, longing till 4'' inches below her knee. It was parrot green, yellow color dress with flower drawn all over. Dress was short-sleeved, exposing her clean, manicured, long, smooth arms. And right then, Jugraj Singh scored a goal at 24th minute. Everyone shouted at the top of their voices. Munshi got up on his feats. I just sat there and said WOOOW. I guess my "wow" was really long, becuase it had all I air I held while watching this girl. I guess she heard my "wow", and understood that what exactly was it really for. And she turned around looked right into eyes. It must not even be a blink's duration but it was the longest moment I remember since then. I don't know something happened and I went silent for the rest of the evening. She was there for the whole match. Even though her gang wanted to go somewhere else, but she convinced to them to stay there till the match end. I could sense that her ears are on me, but I was silent.
I looked at her for next 50 minutes but never directly. Yes, I could not muster the courage to go and talk to her. Match got over, India won. I located my luggage and walked out of the place with Munshi. I turned for one last time only to see that she was looking at me with the most innocent smile, I had ever seen. Trust me, "that innocent smile" did the most harm to me till date. I wanted to turn back again to see her but for some reason I couldn't. Munshi dropped me to Nizammudin railway station. I was unusually silent for the whole ride. We waited on the station for half an hour as train was late. I wasn't talking, Munshi also understood so even he wasn't talking. Train arrived finally arrive at 1 , I got into the coach.
I finally said "Munshi, she was just too good for me .right?"
Munshi said "what you think?"
I explained "Oh come on man, Let us face it, she deserved a lot better than me."
Munshi inquired "well then, why are we talking about her now?"
I closed my eyes, took a deep breadth, imagined her eyes, and said loudly "I got to go back, I am not going to Kanpur. I need to go to Saket, right now."
We left the train, ran out of the station, we grabbed the bike and rocketed towards saket. It took 20 long minutes to reach Saket at 1 AM. I think Munshi drives really slow. We reached Saket at 1:30. There was a lot of crowd but it was all coming out of PVR late night show. We roamed around the whole place to see no sign of her. Disappointed a lot, I bought two cigrettes, both for myself (Munshi doesn't smoke). We set right below the burger joint on the ground with our back on the closed shutter. I light the cigrette and waited for a full hour, before a policeman came and asked us to leave. And we left for Balco Apartments, Munshi's house. On the next day, I caught another train and left for Kanpur. Till date, whenever I goto Delhi, I make sure that I take my dinner at the same burger joint at Saket.
As Mark Twain puts it "Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do."
All right guys, ITS ALL FICTION.
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BEFORE AFTER
