9

                                                 9.

‘1 message received. Smarak’- my mobile screen flashed.

‘5. park’- it read.

                

                 It was a Sunday and we had 1 of our usual ‘khatti sessions’ at Vanivihar park. It was already 4.30 and I had to get ready as soon as possible as I had to travel 15-20 minutes on my 70cc scooty. The increasing traffic intensity of bhubaneswar made it difficult for me reach there in time and as usual, I was late,though 15 minutes only,this time. Everyone- sourav, smarak, anand , pratyush, amlan, dev- my school-time friends, had arrived,except me. I parked my scooty and rushed towards our ‘khatti spot’.

  


                

                 The ongoing discussion stopped at my arrival. Some of them gave me a smile and a few others gave an inscrutable look- which was difficult to decipher. I returned the smile and was waiting for the verbal communication to commence.

‘we need 2 flyovers- one at Acharya Vihar and another one at Vani Vihar, don’t we?’- finally I spoke, breaking the uneasy silence of 10 seconds.

‘Damn good idea’- amlan replied to that with a grin on his face.

‘well, I have 1 more good idea’- smarak waited for our reactions and and then started, ‘you need to upgrade yourself from a 70cc scooty to a bike,atleast 100cc’

Everyone, including me, burst out laughing and all of us were back to normal conversation, as usual.

The discussion varied from our college curriculum to the college girls, from movies to politics, every now and then changing its direction.

My mobile rang,in the middle of our discussion, unterrupting all of us. I took the cell out of my black jeans, as everyone lese looked at me with pin-drop silence.

The cell stopped ringing. Oops, it was a missed call!!!            

I took excuse from all of them and called back. It was pipasa. My conversation with pipasa went on for more than 20 minutes and others were busy in talking among themselves without giving a damn to my absence for such a long time.

‘call waiting. Dev.’- I read on my mobile screen and then I looked back only to find that everyone was looking at me and sourav,with his new 5mp camera mobile, was busy in taking my photos to upload in orkut.

Finally, I disconnected the call and came back to the group and found myself helplessly facing to the questions of others and making unsuccessful attempte to calm down them. At last, I had to tell them everything, everything about me and pipasa. All of them demanded to see her ohoto and I assured them to do that in the next meeting.

All of us were from different colleges, except Dev and me, who were from the same college,APEX. So they wanted a more precise description of pipasa from dev. Dev, pipasa and me- all were from the same branch-EEE

8

                                          8

I had a different approach towards life than most of the others. I was realistic and ligical. I never accepted anything for granted and enjoyed arguments to reach to a meaningful conclusion. I had a little belief on GOD. But PIPASA was a firm believer of the superpower. PIPASA and I were very different in a hell lot of issues. Still, I felt passionately about her. She gave me the first feelings of love, she made my life colourful. I thought of expressing my love towards her,I decided to propose her, finally.

                  The think tank- rahul,anshuman,lalu and saina- put their thoughts into the decission making process. But I was not attentive to their discussion. I was in my own world.

                  Why should I propose her? What will I get after proposing her which I’m nt getting noe? Will her answer be ‘yes’, if I propose her? What if she says ‘no’? my mind was completely confused with so many questions.

It was 6.15 in the evening and I decided to ask her this question directly. I took my cell and dialled her 

number.

‘hmm…tell’-she received the call

‘hey… what are you doing….i hav to ask u something……’

‘ask something?what??’- her voice echoed in my ears

‘well,the problem is, I don’t knowhow to ask….i’m not getting the right words to put forward….to be more precise, I’m even confused whether it is the right time or rather the right thing to ask you or not’- I completed 

in one breathe

‘swayamsu, what are you talking about???’

I thought she was either excited or intimidated. But,in fact, she was neither! She took it as one of my several 

jokes that I used to crack on her.

‘swayamsu…better u disconnect the phone and first decide whether u want to ask or not’

‘I sure as hell do. In fact, I want to ask 2 questions’

‘twoooo!!!! So what is the first one????’

‘the first question is whether I should ask u the second question or not??’

‘no…don’t ask the second question….please……..let’s talk something else’

Trying to study her psychology, finally I decided to drop the idea of asking her.

May be she knew that I was going to talk about our relationship, may be she pretended that she didn’t know anything, may be she deliberately wanted us not to discuss about that matter, may be she wanted to keep me SECONFUD!!!!