Episode 12

‘Come on, tell me tell me tell me’, Anitha is persistent.

I don’t know; I want to keep this whole thing to myself. I shake my head. ‘Have you had dinner?’, I ask.

‘Noooo. Don’t do this to me. Right now I am in a difficult point in life. Please tell me what went on, pleeeeease. The love of my life is on a break. You don’t break my heart too’.

Not even subtle. ‘Anyone who uses their situation for blackmail isn’t in a difficult situation’.

‘It is a difficult situation. I have a difficult choice to make’, she tells me, looking thoughtful. I don’t ask her what though, subtly showing her how to not ask.

‘So tell me Pri’. She didn’t much care for the lesson.

‘We had dinner, he dropped me home as it was late. End of story.’

‘Do you know how he looked at you, when you were trying to kill me with your look for inviting him? Did you see?’

‘Ohh… how?’

‘Do you know how he looked at you when he gave you that pathetic hug?’

‘Nope, I didn’t see.. tell me.. how did he look at me?’

‘I will. Only if you tell me what happened today.’

‘Arrrgh… Okay. So, he called me and sort of forced me into the whole dinner thing…’, I succumb. I would like to hear if he was looking at me with eyes filled with adoration and longing.

Anitha listens until I finish the quite detailed narration. ‘Hmmmm..’, she intones gravely. ‘Sorry to tell you my friend. You have already reached the point of no return, even though it is your first date.’

‘Huh?’

‘You are smitten Pri. Why the hell did you not marry him again? Refresh my memory please?’. She laughs. The damn woman laughs.

I just look at her.

‘Why the hell did he not attempt all this before you were engaged?’

‘Honestly, I don’t know Anitha’. I don’t. Damn.

‘You look like you just lost a trophy or something. Chill Priya. It can still happen you know…’

I don’t know. Can it? Do I want it to? Maybe. Maybe not. Who the hell knows?

‘He is really into you Pri. I saw the way he looked at you. He would have come in if you had invited him. He did not want to go. He did not want to leave you.’

Really? But, isn’t it too fast?

 ‘He looked back twice once he left and he caught you sighing and leaning on the door as if you needed support and fanning yourself. He smiled looking at that’

‘Whaaaat.. How come he catches me always? That is so embarrassing. He must think I am some sort of desperate spinster or something.’ This is just not right. I don’t catch the man doing anything embarrassing. Everything he does is soooo impressive. Gosh, I am a tiny teeny bit besotted, am I not?

‘Maybe. But he also knows you are flighty. You know what.. I think he is being all bossy because of your history. Orrrrrrrr, bossy is your type.’

What? Naaa… Bossy isn’t my type. Come on.

‘No way! Bossy isn’t even a category or type under… well types?’. She laughs.

‘It sure is. You might not like bossy, you definitely like cute and bossy though..’

Pfft. Karthik. Cute. Right. I burst out laughing. Kittens are cute. Karthik?

‘He is not cute, Anitha. What he is is, he is something…He is someone..’.

‘Look at you, attempting poetry. This proves why you haven’t had any luck before. I mean no one? No boyfriend? No almost boyfriend? Not even a serious crush?’

I shake my head. She laughs. Again, why is my lack of romantic history funny?

‘He is going to be difficult for you to manage, I just know it. Don’t worry, I will help you!’

‘What? Why should I manage him?’. Anitha laughs again. Hard.

‘You will know soon enough’.

I nod. Didn’t people meet, like each other and just… just be? What is this managing business?

‘Sooo.. I have a question for you.’. I nod for her to ask the question.

‘Do you mind if I stayed with you for a few days? I need to clear my head and I am not able to do it in my place’.

I do not understand what she meant or what she had to do. But, she is a friend, so I don’t ask her why.

‘Sure Anitha. As long as you want to. No problem.’

Most unexpectedly, she gives me a hug. ‘Thanks Pri.’

‘Never mind Anitha.’ I don’t mind. But a corner of my brain kept telling me that I am not seeing Naren much already. If Anitha actually stayed here and something else happens?

*******

Living with someone who is not your parents is actually fun. Anitha and I got along well. She likes to cook, so I let her cook. I like cleaning up, so I do that.

She is a morning person, I am not at all. But it works out because she leaves much earlier than I do for work and given the single bath situation, it is ideal. We both like science fiction, rom coms and we watch a couple of same sitcoms. It has only been a day, but I know this is going to be fun.

I am at work. It has been hectic. I have attended a one day workshop for understanding the domain and getting a better idea. Sukanya is making me work too. We have daily catch up meetings. My work gets reviewed by some experts and I mostly end up feeling a fool because of the changes they propose every single time. The last review meeting was a disaster. Every single aspect of design was discounted. Sukanya had pulled me into a separate meeting and asked if I can do it or she should find someone else. I had to rein my temper in. I am new at this, there is such a thing called as the learning curve.

She suggested I attend a short training, a crash course on the business domain. Our client is a huge chain of membership based library. The chain is a large one and they have libraries spread all over Europe and some countries in Asia too. They are using this popular library software from an established vendor who has increased the license cost to a great degree because of a lack of competition in the market. So, these guys want to develop their own product and they also are looking into the feasibility of an online service too, where similar to online shopping, people can order books online and they would be delivered to their doorstep at a slight extra cost. Who knew libraries made this much money?

What we have to do is give them a glimpse of the solution that we could come up with. They did not have a technical guy in their team until recently. This new person has very clear ideas on what is right and wrong and nothing else. He cannot come up with a solution and architect it. But he keeps wanting better.

I had to get better. I just am not finding any training that can be arranged within a week. I still am at it though.

‘Hello Priya.’

‘Hi Shan. How are things?’

He nods and of course smirk-smiles. ‘Well, you know how things are.’

He is part of some of the catch up meetings, so he knows the pain too. He puts a print out in front of me. It shows a mail he has sent to a friend requesting him for some knowledge on the whole library domain. The friend agrees to help him out. So Shan has forwarded this to a couple of the big heads and they asked to verify this friend’s credentials and finally they give a go for an immediate session. He has printed this out for the admin team in our company so that we get resources required for this session.

‘Oh Shan. You are a life saver. When is it?’

‘Now. We should go now. Sukanya and a couple of guys from the sales team will join too.’.

The session starts without any nonsense. Shan’s friend Venkat aka Venki is quite knowledgeable. We have a lot of questions and he helps with them all. He has quite some experience on this field and he has been part of a software development team for a similar kind of solution. He even offers to help us with the actual solutioning. We all finally get excited having found something in the right direction.

At the end of the session Venki comes to Shan and Shan introduces me. Venki is definitely quite older than Shan but he is impressive, his knowledge and experience is pretty impressive.

‘You were the one who had the least questions. Either you are a good listener or you know everything.’

I laugh. ‘Good listener. I am a clean slate on this, so I was only listening.’

‘Don’t hesitate to ask anything at all. Don’t let the likes of Shan bully you into delivering something that you are not happy with.’, he says good naturedly and walks of.

I look at Shan. ‘Everyone knows you are a bully’. I smile.

‘He was one of the guest lecturers at my business school.’. I get the message, Venki can call him a bully, not me. I thought we had a truce.

‘Come on Shan. You can’t blame me for just pointing out the obvious.’

Before he says anything, Sukanya interrupts us.

‘Oh good, both of you are here. We have just got a message from the sales team. We need to make a pitch in a week. Priya, we need some solution modeling and Shan, they want a resource plan we have to start with budgeting as well’.

She gets a call. ‘I have to take this. I need to explain the idiots from sales team why we can’t do all this in a week without an actual expert and hope to have a decent pitch’. She just walks off, angry.

‘We are going to be working a lot. Let’s catch up in an hour. We need to come up with a plan. This is just brilliant. We are going to have a very long week’, Shan says. He looks like he doesn’t like this at all.

‘We have to have a plan in place by today Priya. Let us meet in five minutes.’, he says and walks off.

Sukanya comes back to inform us we have ten days but Shan feels that is still going to be brutal on us. I mentally prepare myself.

I get a call, my phone wasn’t in silence so I just answer it, not wanting every eye in the room on me. It is Karthik.

‘Hi Priya.’, he says, his voice warm.

‘Hi Karthik. Watsup’

‘Where are you Priya?’

‘At work. I…’

‘You seem to be working late today too. Should I come and pick you up? I will be there in half hour’.

What? A person should be asked for a date, not commanded into one. A person should be asked if they are busy and if they will be available in half hour. Given my current state of mind, I get irritated instantly. But I tamp it down.

‘Sorry Karthik! I am pretty busy. I don’t think I can do this today’.

‘Ohhh.. Okay. Give me a call when you can’, his voice sounds neutral, void. Was he trying to hide his disappointment? I move further away from the gang. Well, I have waited quite a number of times for people to finish conversations with someone that could not, would not wait.

‘Karthik! I want to see you too. But today is really not good, I have loads of work’, my voice sounds very placating, almost a need, a plead. Who? Me?

‘Ok ok. I understand’. He pauses; at least his voice isn’t void this time. ‘Okay Priya. Give me a call when you are free.’

‘Sure Karthik. I will do. I gotta go now…’, I see Sukanya pacing.  Karthik sighs.

‘Priya? Call me even if you are not free okay?’,he says and hangs up. I try not to smile like a besotted idiot in front of everyone. I walk back to the gang.

Sukanya walks away, pointing at the room ahead. I start to the room. Shan steps in with me.

‘Was that Karthik you spoke to? My friend Karthik? You guys talk now?’.

Uh oh. This thought never entered my mind. ‘Ummm.. Yeah Shan. It is.’.

Shan shakes his head. ‘I always thought he was the most sensible…’. Okay, so talking to me is senseless? I try my I-can-kill-you-then-dance-on-your-blood-and-laugh look on Shan. He just shrugs, his face looking surprised probably shocked.

We meet, we plan. It ends with me having a lot of work for the next ten days. I start from office. I think about calling Karthik. But seeing it is almost ten in the night, I don’t. I call a cab and leave. I am so tired, I almost sleep in the cab. I reach home. I think of my bed and the cozy sheets. Man, am I sleepy. I open the door, walk in, to hear voices and loud laughs.

It is Anitha sitting on what seems like stacked pillows on the floor. I need more furniture. I see Karthik on the couch. Ohhhhh.

Link to previous episodes : Episode 1  Episode 2  Episode 3  Episode 4  Episode 5  Episode 6  Episode 7  Episode 8 Episode 9 Episode 10 Episode 11