The story so far- Part 2

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...