2.When we met !!

It was breezy morning & air was carrying the hint of last night rain. The mighty Sun was rising slowly against rosy clouds casting its glow over dew-laden leaves & grasses. The alarm shrieked 5:30 a.m & Alia jumped from her bed. She bathed & dressed up looking all shiny & hopeful. She came out of her hostel & heard menacing howling behind her. All she saw was three-four dogs threatening her as if she was small stray cat landed in their territory. Somehow she managed to run away, withdrew money from ATM & there she saw him standing near College entrance gate, waiting for her.

He was very fair-looking, well-built with contagious smile spread over his face. She felt a bit drawn to him & a sense of euphoria enveloped her. He was wearing a white T-shirt but then she noticed, hundreds of tiny brown bugs glued on it.

 Oh Dear!! you are not able to pull-off your first impression & Alia started laughing.

They went to near-by garden of Taramati fortress. There was wide array of flowers & buds blooming ,unfolding it's petals to welcome the sunlight & air was thick with pleasant fragrance. The entwined twigs were whispering as they walked towards sitting area high on rocks.

They started chatting on various random topics. Dhruv told her that he gave one thousand to help some poor man, he met while traveling back to home & not sure whether he was fooled by that person or not. He came across very ambitious yet kind heart-ed & genuine person. His fair skin glowing that sometimes, Alia felt a bit complex about her skin color.She could not stop laughing that entire morning. Later she came to know that he wanted her to laugh & enjoy, so he deliberately acted funny. Seriously, as per Alia, Dhruv was best in terms of sense of humor.

While returning on bike, when Alia sat behind him, she thought that he felt very comfortable & warm being with her. So he held her hand & wrapped around his waist. She cried silently with emotions heavy in her chest that for her it is too early to be this close. He dropped her back to her hostel & rode away for his office. She joined her classmates for breakfast in hostel mess with mischievous thought of next date playing in her mind.

1. Lost

In the mid northern part of India, we have an under developed state, which due to poor administration & governance regressed & slumped into poverty & ignorance. There were no schools around to get education & no jobs around to be employed. Poverty was rampant & only health department thrived on expense of expanding grief stricken poor population.

In this scenario, one girl was born in Brahmin affluent family. Her family wanted her to complete the education & hence she has been sent to boarding school at very tender age. The hostel was very far away & she visited her family twice in year. She was never attached to her family & somehow felt that she was never given her share of care & love.

She spent her life in girl-centric Hindi medium hostel, where wearing traditional clothes were compulsory. No mobile phones were allowed which further limited her communication with her family. Girls were expelled from college for having boyfriends. They had access of one movie in a month at common place & limited internet connectivity which was mostly used to befriend with random guys.

Alia was good in her studies & since she paid huge price for her education, she wanted to achieve something in her life. She got admission in Institute of management & she wanted to make the most out of it. But joining new college was huge cultural shock. All of sudden her life has changed as if she was thrown from sunny dessert to very cold mountains & brittle harsh winds are blowing on her face freezing her spine. She was not able to be friendly with any guys. She was hardly fluent in English speaking. So far, she always shared her room with 5-6 girls, now she was allotted her own room. Of all the challenges, living in single seated room was biggest challenge for her. She felt uprooted, scared & very lonely. To make the matter worse, she scored average grades. She felt humiliated & cocooned herself in a shell & tried to save little bit self-esteem she had. she ostracized herself from the few friends she had.

In summer 2009, when a guy named Atul asked her out during her internship, she was so desperate to be attached with someone, she did not think twice. This affair went on for 4-5 month & left her very bitter at the end. Atul was very self-obsessed, unhygienic, tightfisted person & always looked down at her. It was she who spent money on him, traveled on local buses to be with him, but he never gave a damn about her.

Atul-“I come to girl’s hostel not to meet you only but to gaze upon other girls”

In January 2010, when most of her college mate got placed & left college, she was struggling for placements & trying to recover from her breakup, she saw Dhruv, walking in campus, smiling to her. He always smiled at her & she thought, let’s speaks to this guy & sent him friend request on Orkut, then a popular social networking site.

Few days later, a reply came-“I have no interest in being your friend.”  Alia thought, who knows, whether he will like me or my nature. She accepted his proposal only to distract herself from the reality & to bring back fun quotient in her life.