Wednesday, July 9, 2008

The Intruder

‘I am finally waiting! There is nothing special about waiting except the fact that at times it is so irresistibly romantic! True, there is nothing romantic waiting for a client-meeting on those couches dirtied by millions of strange butts and being stared at by a hostile receptionist. But this one takes me on a high. Two whole years! We studied together and she never even suspected that I am smitten by her. No, I don’t think that was subtlety; it was shyness combined with lack of courage!’
And thus he dreamt on. The hero of our story, shy, eager to fall in love and have a heady romance, a dreamer hell bent on directing a Bollywood blockbuster at some point in his life and a good at heart guy. He has this habit of falling in love every now and then and dreaming on. In most of the cases the dream girl is unaware of her being the pivot of his romantic plots and went on with her life, and eventually with another guy who took the trouble of informing her about his crush.
Our hero stumbled across Ms. Mathur, his current crush, for the first time after finishing B-school. Ms. Mathur, our Hero’s batch-mate, was also a fresher in the professional world and longing for familiar faces amongst millions of strangers in Mumbai. When our Hero walked up to her she almost jumped with glee! An immature psychoanalyst would say, she sent out the wrong signals. It’s a different story that at that point of time she would have welcomed even the most obnoxious guy of the batch with a dazzling smile. Getting surrounded by strangers suddenly, does something to the alchemy of psyche. However, to get on with the story I must tell you that by the end of the conversation our Hero managed to ask Ms. Mathur out for a cup of coffee and is waiting for her while she ties the loose ends of her work for the day.
The day dream melts away on a happy note as Ms. Mathur is seen walking towards the Café Coffee Day outlet. But hey, there is another familiar face accompanying her. Our Hero is not perturbed. The other person happens to be Chaturvedi, another batch-mate, about whom we can swear that he is as interested in Ms. Mathur as a cow in having beef-steak for dinner. The trio is thrilled to catch up with each other and gossip starts flowing more freely than booze in MICA. Yet, there is a point where reunion must end and romancing should begin. Our Hero in his own shy ways is sending signals to Chaturvedi. “So, when do you go back to your Hostel?”And the other guy gets interested in talking about the grueling schedule that he has sacrificed himself to, for the sake of brands his agency has sworn to revive. “That must be a lot of work, man! Today you must be glad to leave early and catch up on some sleep”, pushes our Hero. Chaturvedi innocently rambles on about the futility of even thinking about sleeping at the onset of his career, “we have to think strategies, do some intellectual crystallization, chalk out the way forward for converting dogs into cows on the BCG matrix and think top line while reinforcing brand saliency. Nah, I don’t sleep, I utilize my time to think.” It seems that the man-to-man signaling about Leave-me-alone-with-her is failing to reach his target audience. Though our Hero is not giving up but the conversation has drastically turned to BHAGs, Silver Bullets, HLL’s (now Unilever) marketing strategies and all. Sipping politely on her coffee Ms. Mathur tries to chip in to the conversation only to find her being covertly signaled by Chaturvedi!
Our Hero is desperate to rescue the situation but Ms. Mathur is simply not interested in brands and marketing strategies any more after dealing with them throughout the day. It not only reminds her of work but also of the devilish hours she slogged to be one of the toppers of her batch. Our Hero can sense her ennui. Desperation makes him mention Chocolate Brownie with ice-cream, not only on the mention of which a lot of women give up on ‘mid-riff thoughts’ but also the food has always been associated with romance, but no avail. It seems that the high-calorie food reminded her that she will miss her Salad laden meal if she is late to the Hostel mess. Our Hero suggests she grabs some dinner with him but it seems his choice of fatty foods has induced her to re-evaluate the merits of tasteless hence low temptation hence low cal Mess food.
Our Hero is shy and thus good at hiding emotions.
Chaturvedi least suspecting our Hero to be planning to poison his coffee or strangling him bare handed gives him a big grin. “What a dumb woman yaar! I have been hinting her to leave us alone but she won’t budge.” The shock of Ms. Mathur leaving has rendered the Hero numb, he just stares at Chaturvedi hoping to receive further explanation to his inane comment. “Look, why don’t you come over to my room for the night?” Chaturvedi asks expectantly. The numbness is beginning to be replaced by chill and intrigue. “What the hell yaar, that woman was sitting here all the while and there are things I cannot reveal in front of her. That’s why I never liked her! She is so stupid that she could not understand that I needed some time with you alone, can’t she take the hints!” While Chaturvedi rhapsodised on Ms. Mathur’s lack of communication reception skills, our Hero donned the Freudian cap to decipher Chaturvedi’s sudden affinity for him and the analysis was not an appealing one.
“Look I needed to discuss this business plan with you. I am planning a start-up and need your take on the strategies I have prepared. I could not tell this in front of that dumb gossiping woman, for the whole world will get to know about it and it might be plagiarized. The plans with detailed calculations are lying in my room, are you coming along or not?”

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