I met him first at Gole Market, Delhi on a cozy afternoon in September 2013. I was dressed in green, came out of the Sunday church service, gave him a call, only to find that he is highly confused of where to reach and was sounding a little lost. I had to wait for twenty minutes and change my day’s plan only to collect a CD from him. Little did I know that a casual line slipped off my tongue “Would you like to have some coffee or something” will in next few hours and later over some years change the course of my life.
So yeah! I took the CD and casually asked him for coffee. He, with his signature frowning expressions silently agreed and we quickly took an auto to Connaught Place. In three minutes of silence after we sat in the auto rickshaw, I was cursing myself of being all chirpy and proposing the idea of coffee to this gentleman. He seemed nice but extremely reluctant. To me, he appeared a victim of my over-excitement and was abiding to the courtesy though least interested in the coffee. I was convinced that I have forced him for this. All I wanted was to fast forward the upcoming one hour and be done with it.
“So that is where my church is” I pointed towards the Delhi Bible Fellowship building. With an expression of curiosity and amazement he looked at me.
“You are Sharma, right? Then, how come church?”
“Well, it is a long story.”
“Are you God fearing?”
“Umm, not sure, Maybe I am.”
I guess that was the break point, and then even before I could explain, to my surprise this guy didn’t shut his mouth for next five hours straight. And from there on he never stopped signing a song (with screwed up lyrics though) or a famous Bollywood dialogue, every time we see each other off!!
But that I save for later.
He bombarded me with questions in that less than ten minutes auto ride. I was getting irritated with every other question he asked me for which I had no answer. He was intimidating but not rude.
We get off the auto crossed the road. I honestly had no clue why am I with this guy and for how long do I have to bear with this uncomfortable, embarrassing and quite weird meeting with a total stranger.
My eyes fell on Café Coffee Day outlet in the inner circle, and I quickly suggested – “let’s go there”. He silently followed. We awkwardly looked for a place to sit. And…to my surprise we were pretty comfortable with each other in next twenty minutes. I was hungry so I took him to Parikrama for lunch.
We just didn’t stop talking...Our common friends, Harry Potter, relationships, cricket, money, future plans, music, and religion. We didn’t really leave anything untouched. We even discussed few options of catholic names for me, if I choose to convert to Christianity. We spoke of how much he loves cricket and how little I know about it. Our crazy fan following for Saurav Ganguly. If husband and wife should split the bills even. Are pilot wives insecure!! A whole gamut of things.
Just a quick meeting to hand over a CD was converted into a five hour long warm and friendly chit chat.
His friends were continuously ringing him and were anxious for obvious reasons that he disappeared for hours and is ignoring their calls, while he is with a total stranger.
Quite strange!!
But the strangest thing was yet to happen!!
We came out of the restaurant and his friends were right there to pick him up. They offered me a ride to the metro station and I AGREED. Pheww!! I agreed to get in the car with a man, whom I had met just a couple of hours ago.
It was only later in time I realised the worth of the instant spark we developed that evening.