Love at First Sight - Part 2

The Bollywood Queen

Read Part 1 here

On the way home, her phone couldn't stop beeping. She was chatting with Saurav, telling him about the guy she had almost met that evening. “Let’s talk at 1?” she messaged him, hoping for a positive response.

“I can come over now if you want. I don’t think you can wait,” was Saurav’s text, followed by a winking smiley. “No, not now. Mom will get to know that something is fishy. Let’s talk on the phone?” she asked. “Ok, call me when you want,” was the reply.

Once home, she could hardly talk to anyone. She was so occupied in her own thoughts that when her mom asked her how the day was, she could only murmur. She wished ma-pa goodnight and went into her room.

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It was fifteen minutes past 1 already and her patience was running out. She had called Saurav a couple of times but the call went unanswered. What if he had gone off to sleep? Another ten minutes passed and then her phone rang.

“Where the fuck have you been? I have been calling you and you can’t even bother to check your phone?” she asked Saurav angrily, before he could even say a hello. “Sorry yaar, dad wanted to talk. Acha, I am hungry, tell me what to eat?” Saurav asked matter-of-factly. “You haven’t called into Sanjeev Kapoor helpline. You have called to help your best friend find her love,” she retorted.

After some leg pulling, Saurav finally asked her, “so what’s the problem?” She started to talk, “I am in love with a guy.” She was blushing but thank God, Saurav couldn’t see her. “But that’s not the problem," she continued, "the problem is I don’t know his name.”

“Tu pagal hai kya? Naam bhi nahi pata and you say you are in love?” Saurav was not amused. They had been friends for almost 7 years and there was nothing that happened in their lives without telling each other.

“I know his college..,” she started in her defence when Saurav cut her, “and you want us to go to his college to find him?” he sounded sarcastic. She knew knowing the name of the college was not enough but she had done her math in the past one hour.

“I have an idea. I will tell you only if you promise to hear me out,” she told Saurav. “As if I have a choice,” Saurav uttered. “You remember the movie, Saathiya?” she asked Saurav. There was silence. This meant, probably, that he understood the premise she was setting but he didn’t know how to react.

Image source - Google Images

Then, he spoke, “are you mad? That was a movie. Real life me aisa nahi hota!” Saurav couldn’t believe she was suggesting finding a guy like that. He called her Bollywood Queen but he had never imagined she would take the tittle so seriously.

“You promised you’ll hear me out,” she said, adding, “I know that was a movie. But a little bit of inspiration from Bollywood won’t hurt.” The excitement was clear in her voice. She explained, “Ok. What do we know about him? His college and the fact that he is in the dance society. Now, see, all colleges have communities on Orkut. His college has one too with 1531 members.” She was sounding confident. Saurav sighed. She wasn’t going to give up just yet.

Image source - Google Images

She continued, “Now, I checked that out of those 1531 members, 698 are girls. That leaves us with 833 guys. I could manage to check about 329 profiles and didn’t find him. Now that leaves us with 504 guys. About 248 are pass-outs. That means 256 guys to look at.” She was brimming with enthusiasm.

“Aryabhatta would be so proud of you,” Saurav said. He realized she was serious about finding this guy. “But what if he is not on Orkut?” he asked, concerned. “We’ll get to that,” she said. Frankly, she hadn’t thought about that.

“Anyway, we are left with 256 guys, out of whom 198 are in the music society. That means 58 guys. Yaar, ab tu apni best friend ke liye 58 ladkon me se ek ladka nahi dhoond sakta?” The question had surprised Saurav. He could imagine her standing like Vivek Oberoi from Saathiya and telling him all this.

Image source - Google Images

Neither of them spoke for sometime. Saurav could hear her clicking the mouse frantically. He was hoping his best friend finds this guy. Suddenly, she spoke, almost in tears, “I can’t find him, Saurav.”

“So what? We can go to his college in the morning and find him,” Saurav responded, trying to cheer her up. “Are you mad? What am I going to tell him, why are we there? I can’t tell him I love him,” she snapped back almost immediately. “Umm, we’ll just get his name or number or something?” Saurav suggested, unsure of what they really could do now.

When she didn’t respond, he asked, “what are you thinking?” “Nothing, leave it. We’ll see what to do in the morning. I am tired,” she said. They spoke for a few minutes and as they hung up, her mouse clicked on the ‘Add Friend’ option.

She didn’t know for how long she had been staring at the monitor screen. She logged into Orkut again and she had one notification – ‘Friend request accepted.’ She had just thought about checking out the profile when she got a message. As she saw who the message was from, her heart started to beat faster.

She knew she shouldn’t have sent the request. What she didn’t know was that she was about to start the biggest adventure of her life.

To be continued…