Weird, isn't it?

Part five

That morning was the quickest that Latika had ever gotten ready for work. 

Glossing over all the details made her feel like there were so many blind spots in the her information about the haveli, she could just not let go of anticlimactic her experience had been. After thinking about the mysterious email and the haveli's patchy stories for the entire night, she had tiredly fallen asleep at around six in the morning.

When the alarm clock blared at seven, she sleepily slammed it on the counter to silence it. An hour and a half after that, the ring of her cell phone woke her up and she got out of bed with a start. Trying to get her eyes own, Latika answered the call, pressing the phone to her ear, "Hello Latika, I heard from the maintenance that the your computer broke down yesterday?" came the voice of her boss Yami.

"Good morning Yami... yes, it did", she replied suppressing a yawn. "Oh well, I have already asked them to repair it first thing today. I called because I wanted to make sure that you didn't lose any unsaved work especially with the deadline coming up on the Manachina article". 

That managed to fully wake Latika up. She hadn't even started any work on the Manachina article with her mind so pre-occupied. She uncomfortably said, "Uhh no haha, I had everything saved, didn't lose any files", to which Yami replied, "Oh good, I will see you at work in half an hour then", and hung up.

The panic of getting to work on time distracted her from thinking about the email for the time-being.

................................................................................................................................................................

After getting to work, Latika just mindlessly paced around the maintenance guy who was trying to get her computer to work again, while asking every fifteen minutes if it was repaired. 

After what seemed like an hour, the guy finally stood up and the sweet startup sound of the Windows 2000 could be heard. "You are all set... do you any other concerns with the computer?" asked Dave, the technician. Latika hastily sat down at the computer, trying to open the email and said, "No, no. Thanks, I am good!" 

She logged in and opened the email. Nothing could prepare her for what she was about to see.

The email was not from Akash, but it was from Ravi, who said that he was a friend of Akash and was sending this email with the pictures that Akash was supposed to send her. Ravi explained how Akash had to urgently go out of town one day after her departure to attend the funeral of a very close uncle, and had asked him to finish this work as he owned the only cyber cafe near Kherva.

He also mentioned something about how seeing Akash in this totally different form was so bizarre for him. It confused Latika a little bit but she didn't dwell much on it. Maybe seeing Akash go through so many hoops just to help her out must have seemed slightly weird to Ravi as she and Akash hardly knew each other. But to Latika, this form of Akash was not surprising, he had always been super caring and helpful towards her, obviously he would go through all these lengths just to keep his promise.

................................................................................................................................................................

And without any further ado, she opened the first attachment. The picture took some time to load, but when it did, she could not believe her eyes.

Dave who was still standing behind her to check if the computer was working fine burst into laughter, "Wow Latika! I didn't know you were into paintings of yourself dressed up as old-time folk!"