Spoorthi

A Story by Rajeev

Varun started walking around the office campus as he often did when he did not have anything better to do. He had had a long day at the office and was waiting for his friends to finish their's. His spirits were up a bit as his friends had decided to have a late night get together that day. The day being Friday and the sudden realization that they had drifted apart even though they were working for the same company had hit them..

Nothing like alcohol to tighten the bonds or break them completely.

Truth be told, Varun felt a crisis in his life. He never gave voice to it, to anyone, but the mild inner voice kept clamoring in his head most of the time unless he was completely occupied. The purposelessness of life seem to be reiterating itself in everything he did these days. He was working in a well to do company, with no visible financial crisis and a loving family. He had his share of failed relationships but none too tragic. These were nothing compared to the daily brutalities generally manifest in the world. He knew this, yet it did not give him any solace.

How often everybody plays a victim or feels worthy most of their lives, it is as if everybody feels that they deserve everything...even mutually exclusive things

Lost in these thoughts, he ran into a girl walking in the opposite direction.

“Sorry sorry, I did not see you, are you hurt?” Varun said.

The girl got up slowly with a dazed expression on her face. The eyes took a while to register the apologies of Varun.

“It’s ok”, she said bending down again to pick up the various items that were dropped. Varun immediately started helping her. While doing so, he observed that she had extremely beautiful eyes but they seemed in some way melancholic.

After picking up the items, which contained a few papers, she began checking if everything was present. preliminary search not yielding the desired result, she began searching through the papers again more frantically.

“Is anything wrong?” Varun asked.

Without answering him, she continued searching even more frantically.

After continuing for some time and evidently not finding what she was looking for, she said

“I have lost an important paper”

There was a very short period of silence and in that time Varun noticed that the girls face was getting more helpless with the passing second so he started looking for the paper in the surroundings.

As he was doing that, at every place he looked, the girls face kept flashing into his mind’s eye. The sad face when he had first noticed her and the agitated face now.

Suddenly, as if pursuing a dear challenge, he wanted to be the person to change that melancholic face, it was clichéd and cheesy but he wanted to do it

“I don’t see it anywhere, what is it? If you don’t mind me asking”, Varun said

“It is a tech details document that I had summarized, I did not save the file as it was supposed to be against the client confidentiality policy”, she said

Varun wondered why printing it was not against the confidentiality policy but just said

“Can I help you in any way to get it back?”

“I don’t think so, I may have to redo it again. I am not sure if I have the time though”, She said

“Could you do it on Monday?, I don’t want to sound insolent.. was just curious”, Varun said

“I am leaving to my base location pune tomorrow and the raw material is here”, She answered

And after a slight pause added

“I will have to get back”,

Varun watched her go and after a couple of minutes understood that he had been staring at her back. He felt abashed at himself as he took pride in his subtlety and hated blatant “starers”.

Sighing, he turned back to continue his aimless roaming but not before observing the building the interesting girl got into.

The walk resumed but his mind was now completely distracted. After few minutes of walking, he came round to the building the girl went into and unconsciously started waiting

Come on man, this is not the first time you have seen a girl, have some control. True, the eyes were gorgeous and face sad. What is it that I saw in that girl that is so unbalanced my already frustrated mind? Maybe that is it. It has been long since I had a relationship. But again, I did not get this flustered about any girl in the last few months. Maybe I am seeing the reflection on my crisis in her? Or maybe I just have a thing for sad girls. Oh , that is alarming..

With these thoughts swirling in his mind, he kept staring at the fountain which was in front of the building. Suddenly he felt a tap on his shoulder and found the same girl standing in front of him.

“Hi, what are you doing here?”, she asked and Varun detected a faint suspicion in her eyes.

“I was just roaming around, waiting for my friends”, Varun answered, faster than he had intended to.

“Did you find the lost paper?”, Varun added.

Her eyes eased a bit.

“No, that is lost. I was preparing the document again and luckily got through most of it as the raw material was ready.”

“Great”, Varun said.

“Too soon for that”, She said with the same smile

Not that smile again, my god, I am smitten or .. worse. What the hell, this is not some chick flick. Come on, this is bullshit, I am not the naïve idiot I once was, am I?

“I need to access few blogs to get some information and those are blocked by the company. I tried to use my phone but it is just too slow”, She added

“My phone has 3G, I can help”, Varun said, again a little too fast for his liking.

“Are you sure? It can take some time”, She asked.

“I have nothing else to do now”, Varun answered

The girl assented and they walked into the building. After reaching a cubicle, the girl gestured Varun to pull a chair and join her. Varun offered her his phone realizing a tad too late that the wallpaper on the phone was a sultry Deepika Padukone. The girl took it and started typing seemingly not noticing this. Varun sighed a relief and at the same moment he fancied a hint of smile on her face.

The damage is done. Wait… what damage you fool, you don’t even know her and she is moving to a different location tomorrow.

While she was working Varun noticed that she was searching for the blogs on his phone and typing the same in the system.

"This is a chance?"

“Why don’t you mail those contents to your mail ID?, it will be easier to copy and paste the stuff right”, He said.

“Not required, I just need to see a few things in these blogs, not much”, She said

No mail ID for you. Either she doesn’t want to give you her ID or she is plain stupid.

At this time Varuns phone rang and she passed it to him. It was his friend trying to locate him, they were starting for the get together.

“You guys start, I will catch up”, Varun answered over the phone and hung up.

“Oh, Am I delaying something? I can manage this somehow”, she said

Varun assured her that it was nothing urgent and he could wait. Satisfied, she went back to work.

The lights of the floor then went out. The girl sighed but went on working. The only light was the dim evening light from the twilight outside and the light cast by the monitor on the girls face. Varun, who had steeled himself against staring after the first incident, felt that steel melting into wax.

Her olive skin seemed to glow against the computer screen. She had large brown eyes with just the hint of sadness that Varun previously detected. If they were not sad, he imagined they would be sparkling. It was alluring beyond belief. The curly locks of her jet black hair hung loose over shoulders. Her nose was small and perfect and when Varun moved his eyes to the lips, he was entranced. They were pursed now as she worked but he could not help but imagine himself kissing those small and symmetrical perfections.

How much time had passed he did not know but suddenly he fell out of the trance and thanked his stars that she did not notice him staring again.

As if on the cue she suddenly announced that she had finished the work and got up.

“Thank you once again for helping me on this”, she said.

“You are welcome”, Varun answered and they walked to the printer area to collect the page which she put out to print.

They walked out of the building while Varun kept thinking of various ways of asking her if he could drop her somewhere. At the same moment when he opened his mouth to do that she said.

“I have forgotten something inside, I will have to run back. I guess you have to get going, It was good meeting you..”

“Varun”, Varun said, shaking her hand.

“It was good meeting you Varun”, she said and walked back into the building.

Varun watched her petite figure go into the building with the slight sway of the hips that can drive a guy crazy. The perfectly fitting Jeans and yellow top did not help his case.

It was then that he realized that she did not tell him her name.

Disappointed he made his way to his car. There is still a party to look forward to, Life does go on with cruel drive without caring for any event good or bad.

Thank god for booze, I should now kill a few of my thinking brain cells.

**************************************

It was Monday and Varun had got through the day pretty mechanically as with any other Monday. He forced himself not to think about that girl and in a week he would succeed. In the evening, while returning home, he passed by the building the girl had worked in and instinctively walked inside. He located her cubicle and started looking around though he was not sure what he was looking for. After looking for sometime, he sat down in her chair and closed his eyes.

This is stupid, what am I doing here and why am I doing it

As he rose up to leave, he eyes fell on a short piece of paper sticking out from under the keyboard. Varun pulled it from under the keyboard and looked at it. It contained some tech diagrams and notes. He turned it over and found the following written in neat precise writing

“I found the paper when I first returned to the building after colliding with you. Thank you for all the silent compliments as I worked through the second set of the paper you are holding in your hand. Keep in touch.

Spoorthi.”

“Spoorthi, beautiful name and it did lift my spirits that day”, Varun thought silently. Pocketing the paper he left the building. She had asked him to keep in touch and he had a pretty good idea how but he was a sucker for anticipation, mystery and romance.

Varun got home, showed, ate and then turning off the light, fell on his bed. He then picked up his cell phone and scrolled through the contacts and as he expected under “S” was a previously non existing number in his phone.