Salutes and Half-Waves II

Day 3
I was now looking for some or the other opportune moment to cross the shop. Luckily for me, the next day a school friend of mine named Suman was to visit me. We had never met after passing out from school, when I took up engineering and went to study in another state and she took up Basic Sciences, before dropping from the course and appearing in the entrance exams for engineering. We had lost touch, but after she had got herself admitted in B. Pharm course, she managed to get my number from a common friend and since then we would be in touch occasionally. Somehow, her enthusiasm while talking to me had always been a cause of concern for me. What more, she would then give her phone to her mother and father too, to talk to me. I had found this strange. Though I had met her parents in a few occasions, I never shared a kind of bond that they would be eager to talk to me so much over the phone. May be it was because I had always been the topper of my class throughout my school life. However, none of the parents of my other male friends ever seemed to be eager to talk to me over the phone when I would call them up. Why them then? But I had always ignored it all. She would always ask me to come to her house whenever I would come to Kolkata during vacations, but the lazy me would hardly get his ass up to anywhere, least of all for a girl.
Now things were different. I had finished my course and was here for a few months and she was all so eager to meet me. So I finally invited her over to my place. She was to come today, at around 10 am. And if her voice over the mobile was any indication, I knew she wouldn’t be late by even a second, come what may. She didn’t know the path to my house and so I was to go and bring her from the bus stop. And I was more than happy to do so, because it meant crossing that glass shop. I prayed to god as I stepped out for my man to be there. Monsoon had already arrived in Kolkata and it was extremely cloudy. I prayed that it starts raining suddenly and I take shelter in his shop. Throughout that 5 minute stretch between my house and the shop, I had prayers on my lips. As I approached it, my heart started thumping loudly. But alas! He wasn’t there.
As I reached the bus stop, another sight surprised me. Suman had her mother by her side. She never gave me the slightest of hint that her mother would be accompanying her. How should I decipher that? But then the thought crossed my mind that Bengali’s are too protective of their child, especially girls and often accompanied them to most places. After the customary Namaste and Hi, we started walking towards my home. I crossed the shop again. Even as I chatted with Suman, I looked inside the shop, there was no sign of him. I deliberately asked her to stop there so that her mother could catch up with us. But the brief stop failed to yield the result I had intended it to. I moved on with a heavy heart.
My mother was equally surprised to see Suman with her mother. She was cleaning up the wheat that my father had brought all the way from Punjab. She had to leave her current vocation and join us inside. After all, it would have been an extremely rude and unwelcoming behaviour if my mother wouldn’t chat with her counterpart. The chit-chat went on for nearly two hours. The topics ranged from how well a student I was in school to why and how my parents had come to Kolkata, with Suman’s mother occasionally advising to buy some property in Kolkata and settle down. However, when she sensed that my mother wouldn’t have a piece of that, she was all nostalgic about the days she had spent in Chandigarh when her husband was posted there. Finally, at 12:30 pm they decided it was time to leave and I received an invitation yet again to visit their home, both of them having extracted enough information about my likes and dislikes in food. And so, I received a lunch invitation to be precise.
The previous day it was around noon that I had seen him at the shop. This raised the prospects of stealing a glance at him today again, if I was to get lucky. Thankfully, a friend of mine who had recently joined a software giant in Salt Lake had called me up and asked me to get his cell recharged, since he couldn’t get the time to do so himself. So now, I had two excuses to go that side again. One, I had to see Suman and her mother off, and two I had to get my friends cellphone recharged. As had become the custom with me by now, I stepped out of my house with prayers on my lips. As I crossed the shop, I saw him there again. I was overjoyed. He didn’t see me and neither did I try to gain his attraction by standing there, since I was with Suman. In addition, now that I knew he was there at the shop, I would get another chance when I return to catch his eye. So, I saw my friend off, got the cell recharged and was back to where my heart seemed to have been left. I could hear my heart beating out loud inside my chest. Nervousness was taking over me. Should I stop by and talk to him? What should I say? How should I start conversing him? These thoughts were constantly unsettling me.
The shop arrived. He looked at me and stood up to give his customary salute, and I repeated my end of the gesture. I couldn’t muster enough courage to stop by and even ask his name on some flimsy context. All I could do was come back home and have self-pittance over my own inability.

Day 4

I could hardly concentrate on anything now. I had to let my feelings out in some way, to some one. I couldn’t keep the excitement within me and decided to share the new tryst in my life with my friend Aagan. I had befriended Aagan over the net and we had developed a nice friendship. The whole day I SMS-chatted with him, telling him about my feelings, and like a Love Guru, he kept advising me. I didn’t get lucky in the afternoon and in the evening, as I did meet him. He was on a bicycle, clothed in his finest accessories, and in the midst of the crowded street. But that didn’t stop him from performing his salutation. I was on a bicylce myself, my mother seated at the back and so, couldn’t stop him and talk to him. I had lost a golden opportunity to talk to him all alone.
All night long, only one song kept repeating itself inside my mind, “Ghar se nikalte hi, kuch dur chalet hi, raste pe hai uska ghar…” My situation was no better than the Hindi film hero who would roam around the house of the one he was eyeing and about whom he knew nothing, except for the time when she would come to the balcony to dry up the clothes and look at him and smile…only in my case, it was a man instead of a woman.