Enchanted Pursual (Complete)

Chapter 26

"Hello, I am Ms. Chetra Parikh I will be assisting you for this year's annual Art exhibition." The chubby framed girl with cat framed glasses that rested on her nose which she adjusted time and again, introduced herself. Dressed in a pair of perfect formals, her hair tied in that sleek pony tail that made me wonder how did she got so much time to do that.

And not being long back in her place, I wondered did it still felt horrific to spell out a wrong name, or may be the different ways we could have introduced ourselves yet ended up doing something else.

I smiled at the poor girl who though looked confident, but I could tell the storm that was brewing in her mind. It was then I realized, what might have my boss thought about me. May be worse than what I did right now.

"Chetra, nice to meet you, please take a seat. I will brief you about the project, right now and then take you to your cubicle where you could work."

I said, and as soon as I did, I wonder was I wrong at starting off with the work topic right after meeting for the first time. I could have said so many things. I could have asked so many things.

And the way Chetra asked, "The project?" did I realized my first day as a boss sucked. It sucked as hell.

It was hours later when I had received yet another set of lists to have a go at, when the door of my cabin was knocked as chitra peeped in her body hid behind the door and just the head leaning in.

"Chetra good you are here, come sit." With a small smile on her face she walked inside and sat in front of me.

"So all good?", I asked and bent a bit to open the drawer at the right side of my table, where I mostly kept the things that I would require from time to time.

Pulling out a 20 Rs. Five star I held it out to chetra, as her eyes went wide in shock and slowly her head began to shake in negative.

"I am sorry, in the morning I couldn't welcome you well, I was a bit preoccupied and all...anyways, keep this as a welcome gift, I don't really have anything to give you as off now."

I observed as chetra smiled softly and took the chocolate from me and kept it in front of her on the table.

For a few seconds there was this awkward silence, and then taking it as my clue, I cleared my throat and asked, "So have you always wanted to be here, work at the galleries?"

"I was more of a person who thought my paintings would get up there on the walls, working here is something like making connections."

"So you paint, what do you specialize in?" the curator in me surfaced as the new boss began to fade away. How comical it was, we are all the same, there is always something that we are deep inside all the while you are playing some other role, while you are a boss, you are as well the new intern, while you are a kid, you are you – a teenager trying to be a self dependent person, and then may be an adult who wishes to be a kid and rest away his worries into his elders arms.

For hours we kept on talking about things that chetra had wanted to do, yet fail due to the lack of direction and knowledge. How things are weird, they always do exist in this world; it's just that people need to have knowledge about it.

About an hour or so before we were to sign off for the day, with Chetra and I still engrossed in the lists of paintings that we have received that day, I got a call from the reception.

"Mitali, your paintings have been stocked in the store room, please go and have a look at them so that we could make a note of it." The receptionist asked.

"Yeah, sure I will get back to it right away, thank you."

Setting the receiver back to its place, I smiled at chetra and asked her. "chetra, look these are the list of the paintings that we will be exhibiting, but I want to give the people from who we are asking the paintings and also the people who are coming for the show some mementoes, this will keep on going for three days, so it's your responsibility to come up with something, it could be anything that stands into our budget."