The Girl From The Mall - The Grand Finale

For all those who missed the earlier parts:

The Girl in the Mall - Part 1
The Girl in the Mall - Part 2

Truth, they say, is sometimes stranger than fiction. Well it’s certainly true in my case. It was almost six months to the day that I last saw the girl in the mall and yet somehow, it was as if I had just seen her. After that incident, I returned back to my college and business went on as usual. The next time I went back to Delhi was to attend my sister's marriage in January. Busy with preparations and stuff, there was hardly any time left for other pursuits (read partying with friends). Now the basic schedule for the wedding was something like this-

Day 1- Cocktail party for friends (means no oldies allowed)
Day 2-The Wedding
Day 3- Reception

So finally Day 1 arrived and that was something that me and my friends had been looking forward to most of all. I mean ya my sister's wedding was important but then so was this mansengihnampakgigi. This took place at a farmhouse on M.G Road so basically we had a free reign from 9 at night to about 4 in the morning. The party started and slowly everyone got into the groove. The drinks and snacks had started and the dance floor too was beginning to come alive. After having supplied my friends with all the necessary stuff, I went around meeting all my sister's friends whom I’ve known since childhood and partying with them.

Suddenly, Abhinav came running to me and pulled (read dragged)me to one of the corners where some guests were sitting. And that was when the world around me stopped. I had seen Her again and no, this was no imagination. She was really there and this time I knew I wasn't letting go of her so easily. But she was sitting with one of my sister's friends (Neetu Didi). I call her Didi cause many of my sister's friends tied me Rakhi when I was small (C'mon guys, you can't protest to all this when you are in Class 2!! I was innocent back thenmalu).

So I went and found my sister and literally dragged her from the dance floor and demanded to know whether she knew the girl sitting with Neetu Didi. And I absolutely hated that smirk on my sister's face when she asked, “Why?". Some bullshit later and she finally told me that that girl is Neetu Didi's younger sibling Shikha. Now I was in a moral dilemma. I mean I treat Neetu Didi as my sister but does her sister also qualify as one. No way, my brain told me. Even Neetu Didi's my sister by sheer ill-luck and not by choice so definitely her sister doesn’t qualify in that category. And my assumptions received further impetus from Abhinav and Saurav who told me that" Real Sister ki friend who's your muh bola sister ki sister is definitely not sister". Seriously man, thats like saying Osama and Bush are brothers or like Mallika Sherawat doing puja!!! It’s as far stretched from reality as possible.

So after convincing myself that I wasn't committing any cardinal sin, I spent the next ten minutes wondering how to go and talk to her. Believe me, it doesn't help one bit if you have friends like mine who give you advice ranging from writing a love letter (I mean C'mon guys, get a life!!Who writes love letters now) to going straight to her and snogging her in front of everyone (apparently according to them, she'll think that I am very direct in my approach and hence THE MAN). So once again, I dragged my sister off the dance floor (with my future bro-in-law giving me murderous looks) and asked her to do something!!

Finally my sister agreed and we pretended to chat to the guests and slowly made our way to where she was sitting. My heartbeat seemed to grow proportionally as we moved closer and closer to them and at one point of time, I even decided to back off. Well, what are sisters for after all!! Oodles of gyaan later and we finally reached their table where I started chatting with Neetu didi while glancing at her every 5 secs. And finally, we were formally introduced!!! I extended my hand to her and said in the most macho tone I could muster at that time (not easy when your heart's accelerating like an F1 car)," Hi, I am Aman!”. And she said, "Hi ".That’s it!! Just Hi, nothing more nothing less!! I mean, she must be having some name right? "That’s the end of my love life", I told myselfbabai.

And then she started laughing and I was like," My name's not that funny also". "No stupid", she said," I am laughing cause you still don't recognize me. I am Shikha, dumbo!. Remember we used to play when my sister used to come to your place back when they were in school. I think we were in lower KG then. U still don't remember kya??".
Now believe me, I have absolutely no recollections of my childhood. Not one bit!! The last thing I remember from my childhood was when i was caned by my principal for bunking to a girl's school in class 9(that’s another story). So there's no way I know whether I even studied in lower KG or not!! But of course I couldn’t tell her that so I put on the best thinking expression I could come up with and said "Oh ya, of course I do..ya u still look the same". "Shut up liar, I know you don't remember me. I do cause I slapped you when you hid my Barbie dollmalu". Ok that was quite embarrassing but at least it broke the ice.

After that we got along like a house on fire. Chatted stuff ranging from anything to everything (nope, I am not telling you guys anything). And yes, we even discussed my antics in the mall six months ago. Well 2 hours later and I remembered I had other friends too. So I introduced her to my friends and she introduced Anushka to my friends (yup, she too had come along with her). And then we danced and danced and danced. Holding her close to me, taking in her fragrance and just being with her was like a dream come true. It was the happiest night of my life. Obviously the drinks too helped but I cannot remember having so much fun ever in my life!!

The next three days passed in a blur and I was on my way back to college before I even knew it. She came to see me off at the station and a lot went unspoken there. They say everything's written in the eyes and that you can read a person like a book by just looking into their eyes. Well, I did just that and so did she. And even though there were a lot of things we didn't understand, most of it we did and we were grateful for that. We were in touch constantly after that and we still are to this day.

Now to answer the question foremost in everyone's mind. Are we or are we not? Well, as of now we're just friends although very close ones. I dunno about the future and frankly speaking I don't care. Cause I believe that if you're meant to meet someone, then the entire universe will conspire to bring you together. And after reading all this, you might just tend to agree with me. And that, my friends, was my story.

Now many people have asked me why I included Anushka's name in all this when she didn't have any part to play. The answer to that is Abhinav! Because Shikha wasn't the only girl in the mall that day and I wasn't the only guy there. This story did have two different endings. And a little bird told me that Abhinav and Anushka had a very umm private sort of dinner two nights ago and the bugger hasn't answered my calls since then (obviously!!). So here's wishing them all the best from everyone who's reading this.sengihnampakgigi

P.S-: I re-wrote this 3 part story 'cause of a phone call that I got from the U.S a few weeks ago which brought back a lot of memories of an old friend :)

2 Responses to "The Girl From The Mall - The Grand Finale"

sharad kumar Says :
October 1, 2009 at 8:06 PM

wow!!!!!!!! it's article is very interesting. That why I like ...
====================================
ajay shakya
visit hallucinating sapience

sharad kumar Says :
October 1, 2009 at 8:07 PM

wow!!!!!!!! it's article is very interesting. That why I like ...
====================================
ajay shakya
visit hallucinating sapience

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