A Love Story

[SoftSword]

It was a lovely December morning in the hottest city in the world. All right, so that was a little unfair. Chennai is not the hottest city in the world. But it certainly is the city with the most uncomfortable weather among the cities that I have lived in. And I've been around. But I digress.

I was in the company bus on my way to work, as usual trying to catch up with my sleep. On this particular day, a girl got on the bus, came to my seat and sat down. "Good Morning," she said. I looked back at her through half closed eyes, replied "Good Night," and then proceeded to return to my half hour nap before the bus
reached the office. Unfortunately, I was woken up by a punch in the arm.

"Wake up, bozo!" She was looking at me with a big smile on her face. "I'm not sitting next to you to listen to you snore."

Half-heartedly, I opened my eyes and turned to her. "What's up?" I asked.

Preeti Mehra was tall, good-looking and slightly tomboyish.

She was also my best buddy. "Come on," she said. "Don't look so disappointed.
You'd rather sleep than talk to me?"

"I talk to you everyday, Preeti."

"You also sleep everyday."

"It's not enough."

"So you've had enough of talking to me, eh?"

You can't argue with a statement like that, so I had to give up. I grinned and said, "OK, sweetheart.

What's on your mind?"

"I wanted to tell you what happened yesterday. Can you guess?"

"Anurag called you last night."

"How did you know?" She was stunned.

"Oh, he asked me for your number yesterday."

"And you gave it to him?"

"What else could I do? And stop complaining. You've been drooling over him for weeks now.

He must have thought he had a chance."

Preeti was the kind of girl who would openly ogle at every other guy she saw. And yet, she would not respond to any advances of a romantic nature.

She'd happily join a group of boys to go to a cricket match, but if asked out to a movie, dinner, or even coffee, she'd never say yes.

She defined 'Hard-To-Get'.

"You like putting me in these situations, don't you?" she said.

"No. That's not true. I love putting you in these situations!"

That invited another punch in the arm.

I had known Preeti for a year. We'd tell each other about our joys and our sorrows, our victories and our defeats. I'd tell her about all my crushes and she'd scold me for being silly. She'd drag me to classical music concerts and I'd add them to the list of things she 'owed me' for. And though I never let it show, I must say that
she punched pretty hard.

to be continued...