A Love Story of Sorts - Part 1

The phone rang. she waited. The thoughts in her head rushed with different opening lines. It was not that she deliberately had to rehearse. It was her imagination; a sub-conscious habit and a yearning for so much out of life. She never stopped the thoughts ever. They were her world, her imperfect perfect world, weaving life into each path, a different dialogue, a different sense awakened, different every single time, as if it was being alive even when there was nothing else to do or even in the middle of something. She had long accepted death for a reality and it simply made her more alive than ever. It did not make sense perhaps, but it did, to her.

“Can I call you in five minutes?”

Crash. She heard the sound of her thoughts take a loud break, followed by a split second of utter silence. The split second was longer than the bathroom wait when someone is dying to pee. You know, holding your breath, as if that will help…

She waited. He called. This was the thing about him. If he said he would call, he did. It was a rare time, and she couldn’t think of any, when he did not call if he said he would.

“How are you Madam?” he asked. She couldn’t think of many people who asked how she was and wait then for her to tell them the truth. It was one of the things she liked about them. They were brutally truthful (or at least she was), as if it was a precious space to be in, because she could be herself, without pretence.  She thought he was, as well. He withheld his true feelings and when he did, he would tell her, “There are certain things I cannot talk about, and you know what it is.” This kind of thing from him would make her happy and at the same time, there would be a heavy stone dragging her down with it because, he wouldn’t tell her and she would want him to and she perhaps knew, just perhaps. To carry that knowledge is pretty damning.

“Struggling.”

“But then, who isn’t?” she added, feeling light because the beautiful good-feel that comes with not lying, especially about what she truly felt, was liberating.

They talked.

They had met at a conference. Conferences in a small town, even an upcoming one was not a place you ran into very smart people. The smart ones headed for those in the cities, where, gaining visibility and by means of networking over shared tea and breaks and team activities, one would look for avenues of future growth. She had this inner switch that clicked on when someone who was a little not-like-the-crowd walked in. Who doesn’t notice a well-dressed man who carries himself upright and walks with confidence and with shining formal shoes? If he had been anything less than that, she wouldn’t have paid attention.

No, she wasn’t smitten or anything close to it. She was happy to be able to pay attention to someone who stood out. He was walking up and she felt him approach more than see him. Not until he stood right beside the empty chair to her right. Even without looking up, she eyed the shoes, a slight smile on her face.

“Excuse me, is this seat taken? May I sit here please?”

She looked up and smiled.

“Hi,” she said, quite happy at the sight of him, an inner relief to have a charmer ask to seat next to her. “Not yet.”

“Thank you ma’am.” He sat down and she realised she had held her breath. Whoa! A polite man! She thought they were all extinct. You see, the last man who was like that was…err, she could remember only one, as her heart tightened for a long moment, and that was it. Rare, a rare species indeed!

Suddenly, the leadership workshop wasn’t so bad after all. No, he was not the centre of the Workshop. She enjoyed the workshop just the way she did. The added bonus was that there was a smart one around as well.

Post that workshop; she was invited to conduct a few. Tables do turn.

The cards they had exchanged surfaced at her work desk the following Monday. She stared at the name. There were a bunch of visiting cards and his she visited with half a smile. She set about sending in an email to all the contacts she had made and people she had interacted with. One was a thank you email to the facilitators, an elderly couple who had flown in for the workshop.

An email went to him as well. This is how it began...

Read Part 2 here https://www.imaginedinink.com/post/a-love-story-of-sorts-part-2

© Sandhya Suri

(to be continued)