High School Romance Revisited

Chapter 14 - The Painting

I silently prayed before entering my studio. On Mondays all my photographers and office staff remain present and busy. We sorted out the week's work and all other pending deliveries, talk about new project dates and assigned teams. And as I didn't appear for the last one week they are going to give me an earful. Moreover I was twenty-five minutes late!

I tiptoed inside and saw everyone was busy with their work. Taking the chance I sneaked into my cabin. I had just kept my bag when Lofa banged open my cabin door. "Where were you Deepa?" she screamed.

"Hi Lofa. I-I was not well that's why I skipped office," I grinned.

"Really? Then why didn't you leave a message?"

"Um, because – " I thought of which excuse that can help me out but my assistant photographer Akhil came in to save the day. 

"Lofa relax, now that Deepa is here you go and take a break," Akhil said taking a seat opposite my table. "This girl had assumed that you must have got kidnapped!" he laughed as Lofa rolled her eyes.

"Oh how sweet Lofa, you love me so much?" I tried to save my ass.

"Don't act too sweet Deepa, you gave me a fright. I didn't hear from you since you came back from Santiniketan. The last time I checked you were at your friend's house. And then you just disappeared for a week!"

"I didn't disappear, I was just..." I trailed off a little and then added, "I was just trying to find an inspiration." I said the last sentence in a dramatic way.

Akhil burst out laughing and Lofa sat down holding her forehead. I too chuckled! I should definitely consider dramatics my regular way of describing things, afterall I was already going through a lot of it recently.

"Deepa! Deepa!" my over emotional editor Robin a.k.a Rob came running into the cabin with a sad face. He was in the verge of crying so Akhil asked him to sit down first.

"There's a very sad news for you Deepa," he said staring at me. Great! More drama.

"Rob spare me the introduction and come to the point," I said taking out the meeting schedule from my drawer.

"The Japanese photographer-painter Haruki Takamura is dead!" he revealed the news with shock written all over his face.

"Oh god Rob, ofcourse he is dead. He was a 19th century photographer!" Lofa screamed. "And why the hell are you here informing that to Deepa? She already knows, he is one of her favourite photographers."

"Oh!" Rob realised he again overreacted without getting the full information.

I laughed and asked Rob, "I thought you were busy editing the Mishra wedding, then what role Haruki Takamura was playing in that?"

He quickly composed himself and took out a piece of paper from his pocket. When he started unfolding we noticed it was basically a newspaper page which he gave a thousand folds to fit into his pockets.

"Rob is that today's newspaper?" Akhil asked. Rob quickly lowered his head, which meant Akhil was right. Rob did have a tendency on removing the entire page of a newspaper if any news interested him. For this the other staff often got irritated and kept the current newspapers out of his reach.

"How did you get it? I had hidden the paper in the pantry," Lofa asked narrowing her eyes. Rob simply ignored all the questions and showed the page to me.

"Read this, the Cherry Blossom painting has been found," he pointed at the bottom of the page.

"What?" Akhil, Lofa and I shrieked together. We got up from our seats and leaned to check the news. Rob placed the newspaper in the centre. There was a very small column with the Cherry Blossom painting by Haruki Takamura and an article.