Finding Love

4

Ananya got up late next morning and stressed like crazy. She had to reach office in one hour.

She dashed for the bathroom and got all her work done in half an hour. She could give Edward Cullen a run for his money, she was so fast, she thought, impressed with herself, as she made herself look as presentable as possible. She had no time to do her hair. She would do it sometime later in the day when she got time. IF she got time.

She looked for her phone everywhere. It seemed to be missing.

She went out into the living area and found her twenty one year old brother holding her phone.

"Krishna, just give it here," she said. She had to have breakfast and also drive.

"Who's Genius?" he asked.

Genius? Oh. Avinash.

He seemed really curious. Like he actually wanted to know.

And she didn't want to tell him for no reason. He wanted something. She won't give it to him. That's how things have always been between them. Trouble the other.

"Why do you care?"

"Why is his name saved as Genius?"

"Who said its a he?"

"Of course it is," he said, laughing. "Girls don't use fake names for girls. How stupid do you think am I?"

"Very. Now give my phone back, Krishna!" she repeated.

"What kind of a stupid fake name is that? Genius? You should have saved it as Pooja or Seeta or something."

"You seemed to know an awful lot about this," Ananya said, her eyes narrowing in suspicion. "Anybody we don't know about?"

"Tell me about your guy, "

"There's no guy." She said and managed to grab the phone from  his hands. "Bye brother." She waved, grinning.

________________________

Ananya drove to her office just in time, and rushed into the reception. She swiped the card at the bio metric and submitted it to Sheena, the receptionist. They had a protocol of changing their ID numbers and passwords on a monthly basis to make their security system robust. It would be returned to her with a new ID number.

Ananya was waiting for Sheena to give her new ID card, impatiently. She was already late. This woman was not helping. Apparently, there was some trouble finding her ID card. Awesome.

Mr Anand Rao, Mr Arun Gupta and Mr Rahul Mehra, all who have come a good fifteen minutes after her were given their IDs. Sheena found their IDs in a jiffy. She also flirted with them merrily. They flirted back. Ananya who was witnessing all this ordeal threw her hands up, frustrated.

"Are you finding my ID or not?" she demanded, annoyed. Stupid woman! What was she doing?

"I am trying to, mam, please wait for a while," she said, for a fifth time in the last fifteen minutes, with a sickeningly sweet smile.

If Sheena didn't give the ID in the next five minutes, she was going to yell at her, Ananya decided. She started counting backwards under her breath.

And then, in came, Avinash Nanda. He nodded at Ananya, on spotting her who nodded back.

Ms Sheena turned her complete attention to him, search for Ananya's ID forgotten.

"Good Morning, Mr Nanda," chirped Sheena in an unusually cheery tone.

Ananya was observing the interaction.

Sheena would now say something sweet. Flirtatious. And Avinash would flirt back. She's been seeing since the last fifteen minutes. This happened over and over each time, with each guy.