Episode 27

'Ok, so what is the plan again?', Anitha asks me. I had just explained to her what had happened. First my mom comes home to give me a wake up call, but she got a wake up call when Karthik turned up. Then he left, she lectured and she left and Karthik came back again because I sounded upset and took me out for dinner and ice cream and did not bring up the whole incident even after I ranted to him initially for a solid thirty minutes. But he did drop a bomb though. We were back home after the ice cream, we came and found Anitha was back and asleep. I made myself comfortable on my couch and he came sat next to me, held me, his hands moved on my back in circles which was so relaxing after all the stress. I went supple and relaxed and finally he said,

'You know, I told you about winning an award?'

'Oh yeah. I am so sorry, I totally forgot. I am a total drama queen. Congrats! And what award?', I said, leaning into him.

'Yeah, it is called Innovator award, they give this to one person every year and this year I got it. It is not a huge deal but they make a big deal out of it.'

'You won an award which is called the Innovator award? That is cool!', I hugged him to show my support. Seriously? Only one award in his whole company and he bagged it? My boyfriend is a genius. I am so proud.

'I am sooo proud of you Karthik. Wow! Amazing!', I hugged him tighter. He gave me a shy look and I was surprised. Honest to God, I had never seen a shy look on this particular man ever. Apparently, he was shy about receiving awards. Awww.. Modesty can be sexy at times.

'So, there is a whole ceremony that is held and I am allowed to bring family and friends. I want you to come you know..'

I squealed. Yup, I pulled a girly move and squealed. 'Yesss. I will be there. I wouldn’t miss it. I so want to come and see you get the Innovator award. By the way, what are you receiving this award for?'

'A couple of months back, there was a big problem in the module we were working on and it looked like we are not going to be ready for a much marketed feature. I kinda helped with it and we were able to finish it off with only a slight delay.. Soo..'

'Niiiiiiice. You are so cool, I forget you are a nerd!', I told him. He just chuckled. He got up and got ready to leave. He even bent down and kissed me and I felt very awarded for whatever reason. He reached the door and then just looked back at me and said,

'My parents will be there too. It will be exciting'.

Ummm.. Sorry? By the time I let myself face the reality of that statement, he had left already. That jerk! What a complete jackass! Giving me a shock and high tailing off??

'The plan? I don’t have a plan, I am making this up as I go..', I find myself telling Anitha.

'Maybe you should have a plan. Going in a disguise isn’t a good plan. It is a stupid plan. I thought you were joking, but you look serious and that scares me', Anitha adds. Well, I know disguising myself to the award thing is stupid, in my defense, I am desperate. I have thought of a lot of options wherein I can see him receive what seems to be an important career achievement but I do not want to do that with his parents present. One option is to ask him to somehow convince his parents not to come. The other option is me going in disguise. Disguise is actually the most reasonable option.

'I know you are scared. But this is getting really old. You will have to meet them at some point or the other. So just suck it up. It is a big day for him! You can't ask him not to invite his parents?'

Did she just ask me to suck it up? I am not a sucking-it-up kinda girl. I am more of a live-in-denial kinda girl. I mean honestly, does she know me?

'You are right. I can't ask him not to invite his parents for this. I am going to find a wonderful excuse that will prevent me from attending it without hurting his feelings', I say. I have lot of thinking to do. I can see a recorded play back of the award ceremony and appreciate him in some other way that still proves I am a good girlfriend.

'Seriously? You are crazy!', oh yes, that'd change my mind.

'Give me a break. I am not in the right place right now.', I tell her, in a matter-of-fact tone.

'That is why you shouldn’t do any thinking right now', she says in the same tone.

I sigh. A huge sigh. It comes out shaking. Before I know, Anitha is near me, her hand on my shoulder.

'I know this seems like a big issue. But you honestly dodged a bullet. Anything could have happened when Karthik came here while your mom was here. But, your mom accepted it. Karthik, was so sweet, he came to you even after you try to pass him off as a friend right in front of him. I mean, if that had happened to me, I would be having a fight like no other and ended things or given some sort of ultimatum. You got more support and all that. Anyways your mother knows. The cat is out. What is the problem in letting his parents know? If you decide to come, he will probably tell them in advance and prepare them too'

'I will meet his parents , they will get to know too. This means we get engaged again and get married soon. It is all happening and I seem to have no say in it', I say, voicing my real thoughts. Anitha gives a reaction as if they are really stupid thoughts. Well, I knew. I so needed that to be validated.

'Really? You want to hear my thoughts on this?', Anitha all but threatens.

'Nope. I want your thoughts on something else.'. I know she is right. But I am going to need some time to get comfortable with the idea. The award ceremony is after more than a month, plenty of time.

She gives me narrowed eyes, but I ignore her and carry on.

'I am going to start like a group thing. You know that site where we can organize meets and group activities and publish it and people can join and all that?'

'Yeah?'

'I am going to start a group aiming towards people who are going through what I am going through… You know…'

'Mid life crisis?', she asks her eye brows bobbing up and down in an effort to make light of the moment given her previous outburst. I let her do it. I don’t want to have a fight where she is right. So, that is easy.

'Early adult life crisis to be exact'.

'Okay. Why do you want to have this group thing?'

'Can discuss with all these people and do something.. Might get ideas.. Might be useful.. who knows?'

'Okay. I am not sure if anything will come of it. But try it. You haven’t done anything and you haven’t done any self-discovery or self-invention or even useful realizations. So might be something..', she used a lot of air-quotes there. If I am to decipher it, she probably didn’t take me or any of this seriously. Well, I am overcome with support today.

'Yeah. Exactly what I thought, but without the air-quotes', I tell her.

She gives me a half-hug and smiles self-deprecatingly. 'Honey, it is not as if I am having the ball of my life'.

She moves back. 'I am going out with Naren for dinner. Will be back 10ish?', she informs me.

I nod. I have a group to start, online.

I login to the site. They had a lot of rules and regulations and I also visited other groups to get a feel of it. There were a lot of fun groups actually. I joined one named 'Anything Fun' and one more named 'Escape'. They seemed to be having amazing time if one were to believe the pictures. I also joined the 'Chennai Book Club', but it was a restricted group, I had to answer a questionnaire and the admin would decide to add me or not.

I don’t read, but Karthik does. I am able to fill in other questions but I do not know any books that are impressive enough. So I text him to list his favorite books. He asks if I wanted a top five. I reply saying 'Sure'. He sends me a list and I just copy paste it and submit. Okay time to focus again.

After researching for more than an hour on whats and hows, I create my group. Then I get stumped on the first field where I am to enter the group name. I try to think of something catchy but conveying the spirit of the group(or lack there-of). I spend half an hour googling good names and get nothing at all. So I tentatively enter the name as BLANK.

Then I had to choose what is the area that the group targets. This seemed even more difficult. I mean, what does one say for Early adult life crisis or IT life crisis? Hmmm. IT life crisis I type.

I enter the IT life crisis and very interesting options pop up. There are tags that said Mid life crisis and Adult careers 50+ and such. But majority were Swingers party, mid life men, Kinky fetishes, BDSM. Well, I am not sure how these are related to life crisis. But apparently the search algorithm thinks so. There is one option called Alternative Careers, but that kind of seemed restrictive. We might not be looking for just careers, we might be looking for hobbies or part times and such. I might not have a mission, I have vision though, apparently. So I create my own tag and decide to name it Early Adult Life Crisis, because, IT life crisis is too restrictive as well.

After almost being done with the group thing, I still cannot even come up with a name. I keep it as BLANK, unoriginal, but it also reflects my current mindset, and probably the  crisis in question too? Anyways, I can always change the name. Yup, that is me. Jump in without a plan or even much of thought. So yes, I have a group named BLANK. I am promised all people who have selected related areas of interest will be notified and invited. I am also asked to make the group attractive looking to impress people. Okay, so what do I do? I already who the first few members of the group are going to be. I search for memes and ecards that convey the spirit of the group. I find a couple of funny ones and add them. I spend some time browsing for more ecards. Man, they are addictive. Okay. Focus. Focus again.

I send the link to the tall trio, Anitha and Karthik and ask them to join the group ASAP. Karthik replies saying, he isn’t going through any crisis, and also that I should reconsider the name. He then adds another text to say he will call me soon. Not a very supportive boyfriend.

Anitha sends me a thumbs up emoji. I hope this illustrious response means she will join and support me. Naren doesn’t respond, hope Anitha's clout turns him around. Vivek sends me a one word response with an 'OK'. I am sure he isn’t having any life crisis either. Aditya sends me a laughing emoji where his eyes aren’t just watering but attempting to start a river. I will have to cut that friendship I guess. I send the link to all the Whatsapp groups. I hope I don’t get blocked from them.

I keep monitoring the group for members. Anitha joined. There wasn’t any other member. After sometime I see Naren. Cool. I get sleepy just looking at the total members number. But I stay up and find one more member after sometime. Yayyy. It isn’t even one of my friends' group. So, I text the tall trio, Anitha and Karthik informing of this extraordinary achievement.

I again get a thumbs up from Anitha, 'OK' from Vivek and the same extreme laughing emoji from Aditya. No response from my dear boyfriend though. I go visit the member's profile. The member is female and her name is Hema, but she hasn’t put any other details about her. Hmm. This might be a dud member. I don’t let that affect me though. It is till Yayyyy.

I fall asleep dreaming of what all the BLANK group would do and how we will experience transformation. I don’t even have dinner.