Shelton, Connecticut
Day One
I remember well. It was Saturday evening, around 7.30 p.m., when I checked into my hotel. At the
reception, while making the payment with a few travelers' cheques, I made sure my room had an
Internet connection.
The bellboy helped me up to my room on the first floor. I handed over a dollar bill to him, then
entered my room, leaving my baggage at the door itself, and rushed to open my laptop bag and go
online at once. I logged into Yahoo! messenger. Yes, that was the very first thing I did.
It was early morning in India and I knew she would be waiting for me.
And she really was.
We'd decided earlier that this was the time we would be on chat. Though, because I'd expected a
shorter journey, I was somewhat late. And after the eight hour journey from Delhi to Heathrow, the
three hours in transit, the eight hours from Heathrow to New York and the two hours, by cab, from
New York to Shelton, I was severely jet-lagged.
But those twenty four hours of not being able to talk to her overrode everything else.
She was delighted to see me online. And so was I. But her delight was greater which is why she
wrote so many messages in a fraction of second:
Heyyy …. Shona … you dere.
How r u … wen did u reach.
How was your journey?
Where are you now? You dere?
BUZZ
And I didn't reply, just asked her, 'Did u miss me?'
'Soooooo much dear. And You …?'
'Hmmm … I will let you know but first switch on your speakers and accept the voice chat request.'
I told her everything about my journey—the flights, the transit, the passengers and how I missed her
amid everything. She told me how she spent her entire day without talking to me. Even her family
realized how much she was missing me. Hearing each other's voice after an entire day was so …
touching. This had never happened in the past six months. We kept talking for a long time and it was
only when the electricity went off in Faridabad and her UPS, too, gave up that we finally bade
goodbye.
Which was when I realized that I should take off my shoes (which I was wearing since the day
before), should bring my luggage (which was still in the gallery) into my room and that, in the haste to
talk to her, I had left my wallet at the reception.
Day Three
It was a Monday (OGIM—Oh God, it's Monday!). My first day at my client's office.In the office, I first met with all my colleagues from Infosys who'd arrived onsite before me—some
old faces and some new. In foreign lands, we Indians always tend to look for fellow Indians first. And
I am, proudly, one such Indian.
In the next few hours, my project manager introduced me to our client and vice versa. More than
their faces, I was trying to remember the way to the cafeteria, to the conference rooms and, of course,
to the restrooms.
Very soon, I was occupied with my work. My weekdays passed in the office, working along with my
client, meeting with different stakeholders, offshore calls and enjoying different lunches in the
cafeteria. In the evenings, I used to go back to my hotel and study for the CAT. Often, I used to cook
my dinner too. (To be honest, there was nothing to cook. I just heated the frozen eatables.)
But, no matter what I did, she was always on my mind.
I missed her in my US days and she missed me in her Indian nights. She missed me in her Indian
days and I missed her in my US nights. Life wasn't too easy. We couldn't call each other whenever we
wished. Twice a day, we were on chat: my mornings, after I woke up and before she went to bed; my
nights, before I slept and after she woke up.
Day Seven
We were on chat, just like any other day, and she asked me to do something special for her.
'Shona, I want you to write me an email every day, before you sleep.
They will be with me and I will read them over and over, whenever I miss you.'
But, breaking her sweet expectation I replied, 'Hmm … I will try. But I don't know if I can do it
after such hectic days. Office, CAT, chats, dinner … there is so much, you know.'
I said that not because I didn't want to write the emails, but because I wanted to give her a beautiful
surprise.
I wrote a diary for her.
Somehow, I believed that handwritten words carry much more meaning and much more feeling in
them. They have a special something that can't be conveyed in sterile, electronic mails. I didn't tell
her about it, but at the end of every day, I started writing my feelings for her in a diary. Each and
every page described how I missed her, what all I wanted to do had she been with me, wrote small
verses for her. And her half-sketched picture which I drew while thinking of her, but left incomplete
when I realized I was a poor artist.
Day Twelve
It was a Friday (TGIF—Thank God, it's Friday!). In the West, this day of the week is a goofy day.
Officially it is a working day but, unofficially, it's anything but a working day. Though, because we
were our client's vendor, our weekends started only from Friday evenings.
Enjoying these evenings, we used to hang out in bunches at the discotheques, pubs, eating joints and
bowling alleys. Or we would drive down to the nearest city hosting a desi movie show. And
Munnabhai was running in the US theaters too, making me recall that troubled and tender night.
Weekends, onsite, were always fun. But there was something different this time—I had to face this
question from people with whom I enjoyed my weekends during my past trips.
'But you used to booze, right? So what happened now?'I wanted to tell them the truth but didn't. The reason being, in my earlier life (I mean, before I fell
in love) I used to give them gyaan, telling them guys should not change themselves for girls. How
could I tell them that I'd left my occasional liquor for a girl? So I had to give them fake reasons.
And I'll tell you what. It's hard to give fake reasons, for two reasons. First, there's tremendous
pressure from friends, especially when they are totally drunk and start swearing on each other's name
to make you drink. And second, my own willingness to booze.
But I didn't.
And I was happy that I kept my promise to her.
Day Thirty
One morning—it was probably 9 o'clock—I was in my office and signed into my messenger. As
usual, she had left a voice message to make my day. By now, I had a plenty of them in my voice
message list. They were all so sweet that I never felt like deleting any of them. But then, when the
message box got full, I had to take up the difficult task of choosing which one to delete. There was one
which I could never delete, though, for it was the cutest of all. In it, she was childishly angry at me
because I didn't come online one day and was yelling at me despite having a cold.
I was taking an offshore call, talking to my project team back in India, when I saw that she had
come online.
'I have to show you something,' she messaged.
To which I replied, with one hand putting the speakerphone on mute, 'I am running busy … You'll
have to wait for a while.'
The next minute, my client manager grabbed me for a different meeting in another conference
room. That day I kept rushing from one meeting to another. Some days are like that and this was that
kind of day. At noon, I entered the cafeteria along with my clients for lunch and it was then that I
remembered—she was waiting for me.
Damn!
I rushed back to my room and to my laptop where I checked the numerous messages she had left.
The last one read, 'Kab aaoge Shona … I have to show you something.'
I checked its timestamp. She wrote that an hour back. I felt bad for making her wait for me, for so
many hours. Working in the afternoon shift, getting back at 11 in the night and then waiting for me for
the last three hours … She must have been so tired, so sleepy. What did she want to show me? Had she
gone? Was she asleep? Her status on the messenger appeared dormant.
I quickly fished my calling card from my wallet and dialed her number. After a few rings it got
disconnected. I was trying once more when, suddenly, her message flashed on my laptop's screen,
'Was it you? R u online?'
I quickly got on the keyboard. 'Yes dear,' I wrote.
'Where were you …?'
'M so so so … sorry dear. I am bad. I made you wait for so long … Actually, since morning, I am
running so busy here, I completely forgot that you were online waiting for me. At least I should have
told you that I might not be able to turn up … :-('
'This happens sometimes. I can understand.' She didn't shout at me.
'Still u know … Bu they … I cannot wait for that thing you wanted to show me. Tell me what thatwas.'
'Can you show that to me now?' I asked her again.
And she replied, 'Yes … here comes the first one. Check your email.'
I refreshed my mailbox and a fresh mail from her arrived in it with a subject line that read: 1. And
then came another: 2. And then, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9.
Nine b-e-e-e-a-u-t-i-f-u-l photographs of her.
Amazed and spellbound by her beauty, I kept staring at those pictures. Without any doubt, those
were her best pictures. They had a magical effect on me. In that moment, I struggled with two things:
first, my unwillingness to take my eyes off any one picture and, second, the eagerness to see the others
at the same time.
What a sweet surprise she had given me. My heart was on cloud nine knowing that this beauty was
mine, and when beauty overrides your brain, you don't know what to say, you go numb with pleasure.
Then, realizing that her innocent heart had sacrificed a night's sleep waiting for me, I finally typed,
'Hey Angel … because that's what you look like in those pictures. Thank you so much dear, for such a
sweet surprise.'
Simultaneously, her message flashed on my screen, 'Achchi lag rahi hu na main? You want to say
something?'
'Bahut! :-* I won't be able to find better words than what I am feeling. Or maybe I will …'
And before I could complete my line, I heard the door of my room opening followed by footsteps. I
turned back. It was my manager who was on the phone with someone and was calling me for another
quick meeting. I begged his pardon for two minutes, in which I managed to say goodbye to her.
'I am still in a beautiful shock,' was my last message.
I didn't eat lunch that afternoon. The feast for my eyes satisfied my hunger.
That day onwards, one of her pictures—the only one with a close-up of hers—became my desktop's
wallpaper.
Day Forty-Five
I boarded my plane back to India.