Foresight

Chapter XXXX

"Mom and Dad, I want to speak something really important with you guys" Rajesh opens up the dinner topic.

"Yeah Rajesh. We are listening.' his father replies, while his mother nods along.

"I am dating a girl." Rajesh breaks the news and quickly stuffs his mouth with food to take some time for himself before he has to answer the questions which will be bombarded him the next moment. Sure enough, his mom drops her morsel and looks at him with a scared face. As for his father, he was as calm as he would be always.

"What does she do?" his father posed the first question.

"She is a programmer. Just like me" Rajesh replies.

"Is she your client?" Mr. Khuranna shoots the next question.

"Sort of"

"Is it Pallavi?" Mr. Khuranna makes the guess.

"As a matter of fact yes Dad. Its Pallavi" Rajesh replies, making a straight confident face, though with an audible gulp. From the corner of his eye he looks at his mother's face, which carried a surprised look until now, develops a relieved look and smile just by listening Pallavi's name.

"Well son, You are a big boy now and you know what is best for you" Mr. Khuranna replies, patting Rajesh's back and smiling at him, giving his approval.

"You have my permission too my dear son" Mrs. Khuranna replies, her smile growing bigger.

"Well its not just that. There is one more thing that I want to make clear." Rajesh adds on.

"What is that?" Mr. Khuranna asks, turning towards Rajesh.

"Actually, she is four years elder that me. And she is a widower. She was married before, but lost her husband in a tragic accident." Rajesh revels the full story. With this sentence, the smile on Mrs. Khuranna vanishes slowly and she develops a poker face, while shooting a look towards Mr. Khuranna.

"Well Rajesh, this is big decision whatsoever, irrelevant of she being elder to you and being a widow. Add that, it does deserve a little more time to think. Me and your mother will discuss this over and come with our point of view at the earliest. But no matter what, you will always have our full support son." Mr. Khuranna replies, patting his son's back.

"Thanks dad. That means a lot to me." Rajesh replies, as he retires to his room.

As soon as Rajesh hits his room, he pings Pallavi a message regarding the recent update.

'I let the cat out of the bag' he types and lays down on his bed, looking at his ceiling. Within minutes, his cell phones pings back. He turn over and opens the message.

'How did they react. What did they say' reads her message

'They reacted calmly. They were happy when I first said your name. Then I said about your past because I wanted to be transparent. To that my dad said he needs to think a little bit. But they are ready to support me in whatsoever way we want' he types and sends to sends her.

'That is reassuring. Hope they support us' she replies back with a smiley.

'Me too babes. Love you baby. Long day today. And tomorrow Tarun has called me and Neeraj for a early morning meeting. So have to take rest. Good night honey' he types and calls it a day, rolling over.

Next day, a sleepy Neeraj and Rajesh occupy the table, while an energetic Tarun tinkers in the main system, presumably working on his latest pitch they are planning to give to SIDCO.

"You could have called...yawn... us at the normal time if all you were going to do is tinker with your presentation" Neeraj comments, while laying his head down.

"Done guys. Here check it out" Tarun screams up, jolting Rajesh and Neeraj awake.

"What is X-Musix?" Rajesh asks looking at the wacky title Tarun has prepped up.

"It's an application that will recognize your taste in music based on your current playlist and suggest you new songs on that."Tarun explains.

"Didn't somebody already develop an application like this years ago?" Neeraj asks questionably.

"Yeah. But this one is different from it. This application has an add on feature. Lot of people hear songs which they like, but are not able to catch on the lyrics. So they are unable to find the name of the song. This application will do that work for you. All you have to do is play a five second audio of that song and within minutes, this application will give you the ten best matches. All you have to do then is to click on download." Tarun finishes his pitch.

"It does sound promising. Think we will be able to get the funding from SIDCO?" Rajesh asks, while moving over to the main system, looking over the specs, Tarun has put up.

"With Mr. Akash, we don't have to worry about anything?" Tarun replies cockily.

"What about the present projects we have on our plate? With our recent expansion, we don't have any financial power to recruit anymore interns, at least for six months" Neeraj points out the speed bump.

"We won't have to hire anyone new. You two continue working on the present projects we already have with SIDCO while I will work on this. Just the workload on two will increase and we will have to take an extension for the current projects and any further projects we will take with SIDCO until we have this new venture kicked off" Tarun convinces Neeraj, who is already frowning on the idea.

"Tarun its little fast man. We need to get a footing first, then we can look into expanding furthermore" Rajesh comforts Tarun a little bit, letting him down easily.

"Guys I understand all that. But look at or growth. A year and half ago we were in a small office, just us three racking our brains out, trying to barely get through. We tried the game venture and look where it has brought us. A good sized office with twelve interns and standing contract with SIDCO. What if we hit bigger than this and the next year we actually have a whole floor in the main commercial part of the city?" Tarun paints the big picture for his colleagues.

"Tarun, calm down for a second. We are not downright rejecting your idea. Let's give it a two month silent research. We will research how the music market is going on. By that time we will get to know what new updates we will have to instill into it. Two months later, we take it to Mr. Akash and pitch the idea. Sounds ok?" Neeraj gives the better alternative.

"Ok dude. We do silent research for two months. By that time I will also get some really good ideas to put into this and we will be in be better place." Tarun adds on.

"That's the spirit. Come on let's get to work. We still have a lot to work to do." With that all the three head to their desks and immerse themselves into the world of coding.

"Let's call it a day guys. It's already 10.30 and my mother is nagging me with constant calls" Rajesh speaks up as he shuts down his system and packs his bag.

"Yeah dude. I already wound up 10 minutes ago." Neeraj adds on as he jumps from his desk, with his bag. Couple minutes later all three lock the office and head downstairs to the parking. As Rajesh egts on his bike, he gets a message from Pallavi

'I am late. Delayed by two weeks'.........