The first time I came to know he existed was when he topped the engineering coaching class where we used to study together. I thought to myself… It’s people like him who are the reason my parents are killing me with all their expectations!
I never talked to him. He was one of those super brainy people you wanna avoid when you are at a real low point in your life. We finally wrapped up our exams and moved to different cities. Luckily, we both did get admission into IIT, but different ones. We were friends on Facebook, so on my birthday and the first year of our college he sent me a message wishing me happy birthday. I replied saying thanks. And that’s about it. We didn’t really talk about anything else.
The next year, he wished me again. But this time around, I didn’t reply. But call it his persistence, luck, or our destiny, he wished me the third time around, and I thought I couldn’t say just thank you, especially ‘coz I hadn’t replied to his message last year.
I decided to reply and playfully told him that he talks to me ‘annually’ and it was quite a tradition! I hope he wouldn’t feel bad because it was really bold of me as I hadn’t replied to his earlier message, neither had I ever wished him. As expected, he replied, ‘And your tradition was to reply to me once in two years’. I sent him a ‘haha’, and that sort of broke the ice. The conversation didn’t stop just there. We spoke about everything under the sun. My relationship, my singledom, the academic pressure, all our internship issues, the really tough competition and some of his personal problems as well.
We had upgraded from talking on Facebook, to talking on WhatsApp. He’d become a regular on my chat list and we used to talk, quite a bit! I was out of my two year relationship and was really confused about relationships as a whole. But I knew I liked him. I also knew that I could never casually date someone. I was too serious about things like ‘relationships’ to take them casually.
So for about a month, I tried giving him hints. He told that any sort of meaningful relationship wasn’t his cuppa tea. That was it. I knew I was going to get hurt and I knew this wasn’t going to lead anywhere. Still, one month later I confessed my feelings to him. He was in shock for the first day. Then he asked me, in the typical IITian manner; ‘What all is going to change in our current relationship dynamics after we start being in a relationship’? I remember laughing at his question. Nothing changed at first; we just talked far more than we used to.
A month later, he told me that if anyone had told him 30 days ago that he would be this crazy for a girl, he would have replied ‘Bro, who’s your dealer?’ but now, he couldn’t imagine not being with me. During that one month of long conversations, late night messaging and all that mush… We came closer than ever before.
That’s when I realised how perfect we were for each other. A week later, he sent me a text, randomly, out of the blue, saying ‘You are love’. Now, we were two silly people smiling at each other’s texts. We knew that we might have to continue this long distance thing for a year or two before we found jobs in the same city. But we also knew that no matter what, we will always stay together and that made me feel so much stronger about our relationship.
We finally spoke after three years but I think it was the right time and the best thing to happen to me.
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