I met Sarthak back in college. We had a mutual friend and actually started conversing over one of her facebook wall posts. I am not generally the kind who openly talks to people from the virtual world, but both of us seemed to connect really well…online, at least! We used to crack the same jokes and soon started coming online just to talk to each other. So after some chatting, when he casually asked me to meet, I said yes. I mean, I had already done my research and found out from our mutual friend that he wasn’t a creep, so I felt there was no harm in going out on a date.
That Saturday morning, I woke up with giant butterflies in my stomach and a big smile on my face. We decided to meet in Connaught Place, which was 20 minutes from my place. As soon as I left, I messaged him that I’ll reach in half hour. I was waiting for his reply, but only after I reached CP, I took out my phone to realise that I hadn’t hit ‘send’! Annoyed at my own stupidity, I decided to call him up instead.
‘Hey, I’m so sorry, I forgot to message you when I left but I am already here, so just let me know when you reach?’ I could hear him fumbling on the other side, ‘Oh! I was waiting for your message, I am just leaving then, will be there in half an hour?’ I hated not having to blame this situation on someone else but all I could do was sigh.
I decided to get myself a cup of coffee and browse through some books before he got here. But the bookshop that I usually loved going to was shut, so I ended up sitting on a stone bench and staring blankly at the people passing by. Until finally (after 45 minutes, not 30) he called me, announcing that he had reached and asking me where I was. ‘I’m somewhere near D-block,’ I told him. ‘Oh, great! Why don’t you start walking towards Block A and I will start walking towards where you are,’ he asked. While walking towards him, my heartbeat began to race again, I was finally going to see him. He looked cute in pictures but what would he be like in real life? What would I say? Should I hug him? We were friendly enough for a hug… Or were we not? I was still wondering these things when I realised I was walking in the wrong direction! By now, I was seriously annoyed with how the day had been so far. Quickly, I started to retrace my steps when he called.
‘Hey!’ he said ‘Where have you reached?’ ‘I’m now in Block C’ I told him, walking super fast. ‘Oh, really? Wait, I’m in Block D!’ he exclaimed. What was happening?! It clearly wasn’t a great idea to meet up here. I guess he could sense my frustration from my voice and asked me to stay wherever I was and he’d come find me. Finally, after another 10 minutes, we met. But by that time I was feeling so annoyed that I could not even be happy about seeing him.
However, once my annoyance slightly calmed down, I felt guilty for not talking to him properly. I looked at him and caught him looking back at me with a sheepish grin. I don’t know whether it was the weird grin or the fact that he was having an equally shitty time that made me laugh. That laugh was apparently the only thing we needed to break the ice. Everything post that started to sail smooth. Even when we didn’t find a place to the restaurant that we were supposed to originally eat at, and even the fact that we ended up getting ourselves a burger from Mcdonalds in the end, didn’t dampen our spirits. We laughed about how this first date was so bad and wondered if there was anything worse that could’ve happened!
Eventually, we moved on to more important topics like what we liked and our ideas about life, work, family, career and more. But hadn’t it been for all the chaos that happened, we probably wouldn’t be sitting together on a bench, happy and content… Three years later.
*Names changed to protect privacy
Images: Shutterstock
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