(This post in dedicated to an old friend of mine who will hopefully ask a girl he has fancied for the past five years, out for lunch some day soon. I sincerely hope his experience is nothing like that of the protagonist in this story!!!)
Shit! I should have made a reservation. They gave me a table right next to the toilet. We were going to be disturbed by an incessant stream of people through-out the meal. But there is little I could do to help it now. I kept catching glances at my watch. She was late by a good two minutes thirty five seconds. I hoped she’d show up. When she walked in through the door I felt a sense of relief that cant be described.
I made sure I was looking into her eyes as she walked towards the table. If she catches me looking at any other part of the anatomy, I might just get labeled as cheap; as cheap as those VCDs Varun Bhaiya gets from Pallika Bazaar. There is no way I could afford to screw this up. I had been waiting and preparing for for this moment for five years. Having being teased, mocked and embarrassed silly by friends, I had finally mustered up the courage to ask her out. When she said yes, it was a greater achievement than having scrapped through IIT- JEE. But my engineering theories or my General Knowledge (BQC champion-1997-98) wouldnt come handy here. I had prepared a list of topics (on a smartly concealed chit!) we could make converastion on. The contacts made my eyes itchy but with my thick spectacles would have just kill the romance (not that I was expecting any!). I have little experience with girls. Being in the all boys Don Bosco was a killer and IIT is not exactly a haven for great looking babes (No Pun intended!).
As she approached the table, I clumsly tried to get up to pull a chair for her. But that Kameenaa waiter beat me to it, leaving me in awfully odd position. I made a mental note, to seek compensation from the tip he was supposed to get. As I knew nothing better, we shook hands and started out with awkward Hellos (this hadn’t begin the way I imagined it would, but I was determined to salvage it!) She looked so much at ease , it just unerved me further. It was as if someone had suffed an old sock in my mouth and I could taste the bitter taste of sweat in my mouth. But thanks to the chit, I started walking down memory lane. Our old school teachers, common friends,etc…She recounted how she had always percieved me as the joker, always trying to make people laugh (little did she know, it was meant just for her!) I felt she was having fun….Her little chuckles of laughter were the sweetest sound in the world. I felt that the GUCCI perfume (Naani had got me one of those small samples from America) was working its magic. This wasn’t our Desi Axe Effect, it was the Italian magic at work!
But then good things are never meant to last. So lost was I in her (conversation of course!) a fork-full of pasta missed my mouth, struck my chin and splat! It landed on my Brand New Levis. Luckily she missed the spectacle as she was busy with her own plate. From being on the seventh heaven I felt like I had landed right in the pot of the neighboring toilet. I wished somebody would just ‘flush’ me out of this situation. While listening to her I nervously snuck my left hand under the table and started cleaning the mess up with a napkin! By the time I was done, I had lost track of what she was saying and like the Dumbest Dodo, tried to hide my angst with a wry smile. She went on and on while I gazed at those lips. They looked so tender with just the right amount of gloss. Nothing like those pouty vulgar red of Kaamna Aunty. I just stared at them moving, deaf to the sound that emanated between them. And then they stopped abruptly.
I had stared for a moment too long. Girls are good at these things; they can differentiate between a glance, a look, a stare, in ways we monkey-brained guys cant. “Kabir are you feeling all right?” I mustered all my strenghth to get my paralysed facial muscles to feign a smile, although I could feel them contorting into a painfully constipated expression. She put her palm over my hand to shake me out of my daze. But her touch just worsened the ordeal; it was as if I had touched a simmering piece of coal. I pulled my hand out with a jerk leaving her shocked. And in that awkward pause, I heard a pot flushing in its glory. I squinted my eyes hoping to have been transported to another planet, another galaxy, another universe. Alas, even that was not meant to be. Through my eye lashes I caught a blurry image of her shaking her head in dissapointment…
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