Days went not too smoothly for me as an anxiety was killing
me from inside. An urge to know her, to talk to her was growing fast. Though i
don’t consider myself to be a good actor but I managed quite hard to look as
least bothered as possible about Preeti, in front of Nisha and Rahul. But after
a few days I received a message in Orkut, from Preeti :
Do u know me?
Well that was quite a rude reply I thought, but that’s a
fundamental right for good looking Indian girls. And you don’t have any other
option but to fulfil her demands. Initially I thought of not replying and
started surfing the net. But in the next few minutes I found myself replying to
her message:
I am Joy. We r in da same class.
I wrote and thought she must have seen me some day or the
other over the last week and still she is seeking attention, typical girl! I
sighed and decided not to make any friendship with such a snob. But then again
as expected from a starving engineer, i found myself sending scraps to her,
after came the Update in my Orkut profile, which I was dying to see. It said
“Joy Mitra and Preeti Sha are now friends.”
Though according to Orkut we were friends but practically we
were far from it. But if you are a government official and like to know legal
facts then that’s the day we officially became friends. In the next few days we
chatted a bit and sent few scraps. But I wondered if she really knew me. I was
almost sure she hadn’t checked out my pics in my albums in Orkut. Her
‘attitude’ was becoming irritating for me and I wanted to test her a bit
(actually I wanted to flirt with her a bit).
I scrapped her one day “I am quite sure u dnt know me”
She replied after one day “Why do u thnk so??”
I immediately replied “Ohh u knw me?? Den lets play a game.
U hav to find me in da clas!”
“Ok!”
The idea was that she would try and find me to win this game
and thus will talk to me herself. And thus I will get the chance to talk to her
without making ‘a lot’ of efforts and all my friends (specialy that psycho Rahul)
will get the perception that Preeti is the one who wanted to make friendship
with me. Master plan!! I felt proud of myself for planning such a multi aiming
game plan!
But nothing happened. What I failed to convey Preeti was
that after ‘finding’ me in the class she needed to talk to me right there and
not send a scrap in Orkut saying “I saw you 2day.. u wer sitting in da middle
row in black t-shirt!” There by failing my master plan!
In the next few days in college, though I never had the
courage to go and speak to her I often managed to give a formal smile to her
and she reciprocated back. I felt happy somehow. But that was not good enough
for me. I wanted to talk to her, to know her, to like her, to Love her. But I
had learnt from my JEE that you don’t get anything you want easily, it takes
hard work! And so was the case similar here.
It was the day of our fresher’s welcome, all the girls were
supposed to wear saree. And she looked stunning in her black saree. By this
time half of my class knew that I had a crush on Preeti, all thanks to Rahul
and Nisha, though i hadn’t confessed anything as yet but little sparks are
enough in an engineering college to give birth to a flood of fire, be it case
of love, fight or campussing!
When I saw her that day, my eyes were glued on her for a few
seconds, but then a huge roar from my ‘hooligan’ friends. I wondered why do
these ‘animals’ have such a bad timing. I tried to look away from her but she
gave me a smile, and that made my day.
Rahul came up with all his expert comments and Nisha joined
in via her sms-es, as she was lazy enough to miss the freshers.
“I think she has a crush on you! I mean something is in her
mind!” Rahul said.
“Stop talking shit!” I fired back.
“Come on the whole class knows about your ‘IL’ for her! If
she wouldn’t have liked this then she would have never smiled 2 you, you dumb
head! And these girls like guys like you who come with guarantee and all!”
“Give me a break! And shut up!” I said, though I liked his
logic of “smiling back”. But this was too early to come to a decision.
“And what is this ‘IL’ by the way??” I asked, curious.
“Immortal love!” He replied with a huge grin.
“Ok now stop Mr. Hero!” Sneha said, bursting out in
laughter. “ I can’t take it anymore! My hero was afraid to talk to a girl??”
She said, and started laughing again.
I didn’t become angry, I just loved the way she laughed. I
looked deep into her eyes, took a deep breath and resumed the story of my first
encounter with Preeti.
To be continued...
