The Falling Petals...🌺

Day-Thirty....

One morning- it was probably nine o'clock- I was in my office and signed into my messenger. As usual, she left a voice message to make my day. But 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 Korea, 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 speaker-phone 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 twelve, 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 for the numerous messages she had left. The last one read, "When are you coming online Shillang.....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 11:00 in the night and then waiting for me for the last 3 hours. ......She must have been so tired, so sleepy. What did she want to shoe 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? Are you 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 ling....Actually, since morning, I ma 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.....But hey.....I cannot wait for that things you wanted to show me. Tell me what that was."

"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 scarified 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, " I am looking good right? You want to say something?"

"So much! 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 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 pictured- the only one with a close-up of hers- became my desktop's wallpaper.