Timeless treasure

11

May 2018

I'm home after finishing off the last exam of my fourth semester. Can't believe two years already flew by. The scorching heat today and the paper being extra tough, gave me a hard-hitting headache. As soon as I locked the door inside, I crashed on my bed leaving everything as it is. As I woke up to the noises my stomach was making as I haven't eaten anything since afternoon. I walked up straight to the fridge, found nothing except bread and butter, shut it, and took a turn to the kitchen. Realizing I don't know what all the ingredients in the identical boxes are present there, leave alone knowing how to cook, I walked back, picked bread and butter, and sat on my bed. "Ugh! My data pack expired yesterday, mom's not home even, what do I do!?" I started passing time watering the plants and clicking sunset from the balcony. 

It's almost 7'o clock when Ishani called. "WHAT!? The project already? Oh! Is it the mini-project, ah! okay!" "You don't have much time left, your classmates must've picked teams by now, also, why don't you reply to the text on Whatsapp?" "Ah! I told you that the pack's expired" "WAit, I'll get it done, the 84 days plan, right?" "It's okay, I'll ask mom when she comes home." "Come on, don't be silly, don't you want Mr.Manwhoseeyesspeak to be on your team?" "Hehe! Why do you always come up with these crazy names?" "Can't help, that's me, enough of me, now, check your phone, the job's done, best of luck!" "Thanks, Ishani!" "I'll hit you like a punching bag if ever thank me again! Now, shut up and go", she cut the call.

I see the notifications bombarding as I check into Whatsapp. There's an excel sheet that is being filled and being re-uploaded every few minutes. Realizing there are just a few slots left, I looked at the second pool to find his name. And the only slot left in the third pool is mine. The last I've seen him up close is that activity day and I haven't tried to talk to him either. There's so much inexplicable I was going through. I just thought life would be better when I steal glances when he's not looking. After uploading my slot in the column, I mustered up the courage to ask my classmate from the fourth pool to ask Shri if he's interested to work in our team. A half an hour later, the classmate texted me "He's in!"

"WOW!!" I just couldn't believe the gush of emotions I'm going through. And suddenly, all the love song background scores kept playing inside my head, Disneyland dreams and screenplay of the next few months are being played as I daydream throughout the summer break. Thanks to Ishani, she's the one who listened to the same story again and again. Ain't we all the same. Losing track of time when we keep talking about the ones we love? And isn't waiting the toughest thing to do? 

July 2018

After the 2-month summer break felt like two decades, I'm back to college. As I walk to our campus from a distance, I recognized Shri on the 3rd-floor corridor, by the way he stands, he leans his body, not all of it, but his lower body to the wall, his hands both rested against the wall stand, leaning a bit forward while he talks to someone passing by the corridor. I kept walking and looking at him now and then. As I'm almost entering the campus, he looked at me on the pathway all of a sudden. A rush. Almost similar to all the butterflies exploding at once out of the butterfly park. We hardly looked at each other for one and half-second, and I looked away. Because, you know, two seconds and more I stare, I don't think I'll be able to stop myself from loving him more. 

One hour into the class, we were told to move into the examination hall. Every one of us looked surprised. "Is it December already? Disn;t we finish our exams like a month ago?" everybody kept murmuring. We were assigned a system and there appeared three words in bold "TECHNICAL TRAINING EXAMINATION". "Ah! This must be for the upcoming campus placements, but it's like a year away. Wat's the hurry!?" I kept pondering. "You will be reshuffled into different classes based on this examination. Students who clear this examination will get better training for the campus recruitments", the invigilator announced loudly. One look at him and I knew I'm going to miss him for the rest of my college days. I never tried hard for an exam before, but, honestly,  I never studied hard and it doesn't help if I write the exam without prior preparation.

 Fast forward six days, a list with a bunch of names from my class was displayed on the notice board. The fourth name with 8 letters shone brightly. I couldn't believe that all the mini-projects were canceled as they won't be available for the next few months. They will be forming their own groups in the selected team. All of them even went for an industrial visit with their mini project for an exhibit to which the IT minister's the chief guest. I just felt bad for missing an opportunity to work with me, to talk to him, or just be with him.

Back to my ever boring classes but, since we formed a team for the project, we added everyone from the team to our contacts. 

There was his mail id displayed "shriyansh.5703@gmail.com" 5703. 57 03. 57 and 03!!!!!!! What in the heavens is this! That's both of our roll numbers side by side. What's happening?" I pinched myself and believed it to be true. Highly coincidental if it doesn't mean anything to him. Anyway, I'm happy that I've been getting his status updates since then. I've read somewhere that you can tell about the person's interests when you know them for a year. I knew a lot, this year. Even though I see him occasionally on the opposite block on my way home, I check my phone every hour to see if he'd posted anything. He likes broccoli and papaya for breakfast, goes to the gym exactly at 7 a.m, returns home at 8'30, he loves exploring food cuisines, listens to the 2010's hidden gems, has a red car with the registration number(Oh! I won't tell it here), watches and rewatches Kick-Buttowski, madly in love with PS5(this, I approve of), posts tons of deep blue starry night pictures, dines alone, mostly stays awake watching thrillers at 2 a.m. I would love to hear him talk about all of this and I'll be all ears. (When I confess and if it happens, just in case, dreaming isn't too bad, okay?)

The other day, I've seen a picture of a four-year-old girl in a cyan-colored dress, with cute bangs falling on the forehead. She must be his cousin, their facial features almost alike. They even smile the same way.  I saw him smiling, the purest smile of him I've ever seen. Minutes into zooming in and out of his face, I found myself grinning with teeth wide open. Every time I think about him, I see him, there'd be a mini-war happening between my mind and the heart. Believe it or not, my mind' be reciting monologues and the heart would sing all the love songs it knew.

I just want to know if he likes me at all. Does he feel the same way I do? Is he afraid to open up just like me? Does he like someone? And as zillion questions popped into my mind, I doze off.