Finally i Called Her

Finally i Called Her

I dabbled with my cell phone wondering whether to make the call or not. I slowly started dialing the numbers. 9…0…3…3…2…7…0…5…1…3. I started at the numbers that were displaying on the screen. Slowly, I moved my right thumb towards the green button on the phone meant for dial. Then, just like that, I clicked the green button. The screen read ‘calling Anjali.’ Then just as the call was about to go through, I clicked the red button and disconnected the call. I touched my forehead and felt beads of sweat. ‘Damn!’ I thought to myself. ‘Why can’t I just call her? It’s just a girl dude. Just another girl. You have called lots of girls before. It’s not like she’s going to eat you up. But then why in the world was I unable to call her? Why was I so nervous at the thought of talking to her?’

I looked at the alarm clock on my table. It read 11:30. Was it really a good idea to call her at this late hour? ‘Oh damn you Rahul, its only 11:30 for God’s sake. No one sleeps before 2 here. Except for my room mate who was soundly sleeping while I faced a nervous breakdown.’ ‘Call her’ came a voice from inside my head.

‘What if she doesn’t want to talk? What if she gets upset for calling me so late at night? What if she’s sleeping and I disturb her? What if she just point blank refuses to talk to me? What if she tells me to go to hell? What if…what if…what if…’

‘Just go and jump in a well you sissy,’ came the voice inside my head.

‘Yeah, I think that’s the best thing to do right now,’ I thought to myself. ‘Maybe if I just kill myself now I’ll escape the nervous breakdown I am facing right now…all over calling a girl.’ I hit the phone on my forehead.

‘She’s just a girl…just a girl…just a girl…’I kept thinking to myself trying to boost my shattered confidence.

‘Nope,’ came the voice again. ‘She’s not just another girl and you know it. She’s the girl you luuuuuvvvvv.’

‘I despise you,’ I told the voice.

‘Ha~despise me all you want but it’s not going to change the truth is it. You luuuuuuuvvvvvvv her and you know it.’

‘I AM NOT IN LOVE WITH HER,’ I insisted to the voice.

‘And is that why you were dreaming about romancing her in the middle of the football ground?’ the voice mocked me.

Damn! You can’t even hide anything from something that’s coming from literally inside you, can you?

I looked over at Virat who was soundly sleeping on his bed. The idiot’s nicely dreaming while I face the biggest confidence crisis of my life. No way was I going to let him sleep. I went over to his bed and in one moment of madness, kicked him as hard as I could. He woke up with a jerk. “What on earth!” he screamed. ‘Why did you kick me you jackass?” he shouted at me.

“You idiot, I am facing a freaking nervous breakdown over here and you are soundly sleeping,” I told him.

“Oh God! What is it now?” he asked.

“I….I….,” I kept on stuttering. “Yeah, goodnight,” he said and went back to sleeping. I kicked him hard again. “Screw you,” he screamed. “You do that one more time and I swear I’ll throw you out of the window here.”

“Help me you faggot,” I screamed back at him.

“With what?” he asked.

“I…I…I want to make a call,” I finally managed to say.

Virat looked at me as if he couldn’t believe what he had just heard. As if to say, ‘what kind of an idiot are you.’

He picked up his cell phone and came to me. “Look Rahul,” he said in a patronizing voice, “listen verrrryyyy carefully, ok? This here,” he sad indicating towards the dial pad, “is known as the dial pad. And these little buttons over here, they have numbers on them. Now you know numbers right? One…two…three…something you might recall from kinder garten?”

“Damn you,” I told Virat.

“Now now…no swearing,” Virat said again in a horribly patronizing voice. “So you take your finger and press the numbers that you want to call. Like this,” and he started dialing some random numbers on his cell. “Then, you click this green colored button over here. And you put the phone near your ear…like this…”

I kicked him again. “I know how to make a phone call you idiot.”

“Oh Thank God!” he replied. “So now what do you want help with? Want me to teach you how to tie your shoelace?”

“Will you shut up and let me explain?” I asked

“By all means,” he said sitting down on his chair and folding his hands.

‘I need to call….” I hesitated before completing the sentence. “Her,” I finished.

“Her who?” Virat asked.

“Her…her,” I replied hoping he would understand.

“Ooooohhhh….her.” Virat said. Thank God he understood.

“You want to call your mom but can’t because she would scold you for calling her so late, right?”

“No, you idiot,” I said swinging my hand in frustration.

“Her….her,” I said again.

“Ok! You really need to stop talking in code languages. Either you tell me who her is or I go back to sleep,” Virat said getting up.

For a moment I hesitated. Somehow I wasn’t able to speak her name. I tried to but I seem to be struggling, my mouth just wouldn’t open. “A…an…anj….an…Anjali,” I finally managed to say.

“Oooooohhhhhhhh!” Virat responded. “Anjali!” he exclaimed.

I smiled. “Alright,” Virat said getting up, “I am going back to sleep. Goodnight!” And saying that he went back to his bed.

“What? You moron, aren’t you going to help me?” I asked.

“Nope,” he replied laying down on his bed.

“Why?” I asked in bewilderment.

“Because,” he said, shifting under a blanket, “you can’t be helped.”

“And why not?” I asked.

“Well,” he said getting up and sitting on the bed, “maybe because you have become so pathetic that you can’t even call a girl now.”

“Yeah, I guess I have,” I said as I realized that Virat was right.

I was bit sullen now. Things were never this complicated with me. I had never thought that a day like this would ever come in my life. So should I be happy or disappointed? I didn’t know. A part of me wished it could get all the answers that this girl seemed to have brought into my life with.

I sat down on Virat’s bed, next to him. “It’s just that this girl affects me like no one ever has before. I don’t know why. I have no explanation for that. I am just curios to talk to her, to know her better because she just seems so different from all the girls that I know.”

Virat was smiling at me. He said, “Look, I don’t know what you are going through right now. Because I knew one day a girl will enter your life which will bring about a Rahul that no one has ever seen before. Now I don’t know if this is that girl. But you are the one who has to find out. If you want to know if this really is that girl, then you’ll have to undergo every emotion that a guy goes through when a girl enters his life and changes it forever. Confusion, wilderness, ecstasy, disappointment-it all comes with the package. And unless you are ready to undergo all that, you’ll never find out. So I’ll recommend think you think about what you want to do and only then take the next step. Things are never that simple-not if the girl in question is someone who might just be the girl you want to spend the rest of your life with.”

“You think Anjali is that girl?” I asked.

“I don’t know Rahul. She could be. But I am not the one who has to think about that. You have to. Even if she doesn’t turn out to be the girl you spend the rest of your life with, you’ll at least come to know what exactly are you expecting from her. Friendship, love, a relationship-you have to find that out.”

“Thanks,” I muttered. 

“Hey-listen. Falling in love is the easiest thing to do,” he told me, “but finding out that you are falling in love is one of the hardest things to accept.”

“Was it hard for you to accept when you fell in love with Sheetal?” I asked.

He didn’t speak for a while. And then a small smile crept up on his lips as he started talking. “It was,” he said, “one of the hardest things I ever had to do. Sheetal was so different from me. Popular, beautiful, hot-she was everything that I wasn’t. So when I slowly realized I was falling for a girl who seemed to everything that I wasn’t-a thousand questions crept up on mind. But in the end I realized that despite everything, I had fallen in love with her. I just couldn’t help it.”

I nodded. Then, all of a sudden, out of nowhere, as if I had suddenly been inspired, I jumped up from the bed and said, “Ok-that’s it. I am going to call her. Right now.”

“Good for you,” Virat told me. “Now screw it all up so that I can laugh about it tomorrow,” he added.

“Shut up!” I told him.

I started dialing the numbers again. Then, still in that rush of blood, I pressed the call button. The screen flashed ‘calling Anjali’ and 5 seconds later the call went through. I gave a thumbs up to Virat indicating that her cell was ringing. One ring…two ring…three ring….she picked up. 

Hello,” came her voice from the other end of the network.

“Ha…ha…ha….” And then I lost it. In the most dramatic fashion possible. I hesitated to reply initially and then once that hesitation set in, I couldn’t reply at all. It was like I was hesitant initially and then I started thinking about why I was hesitating, so I hesitated some more and then I just couldn’t stop thinking about why I was hesitating and as a result I was unable to say anything at all.

“Hello,” came Anjali’s voice again.

I brought the phone down and looked at Virat. I tried to say something but then I couldn’t say anything to him either. Dammit! I was having a panic attack. I couldn’t breathe, my chest was hurting and I felt like I was suffering from constipation. I indicated to Virat that I was unable to breathe. While all this while at the other end, the ‘hellos’ continued. Virat brought me a chair to sit on. I sat down and tried to relax. But my struggle to breathe some air continued. It was as if trying to talk to her, somehow made my breathing difficult. As if all the life was being sucked out of me. “Water?” Virat asked.

“Ye…ya...ye…yes,” I finally managed to say.

Virat grabbed a bottle from his table. I still was not able to breathe. I somehow managed to reach to a polythin on my table and started breathing into it, trying to calm down. All this while the ‘hellos’ continued from the other end of the line. 

What was wrong with her? Why wasn’t she disconnecting the call? Why wouldn’t she let me live? Oh My God-she didn’t want me to live. She wanted to kill me. She knew her hellos were making it difficult for me to breathe so she kept on repeating so that I would die. She wanted me to die. She was evil-evil I tell you.

My breathing got a bit better. The panic attack seemed to subside. I took the bottle from Virat’s hand and gulped down a few sips. Slowly, I came back to life.

“Alright?” Virat asked.

“I will live,” I managed to say.

“Hello…hello…” the phone continued.

Virate nodded towards the phone. ‘Ummm…you want to talk or should I call an ambulance now?”

“Shut up!” I told him again.

I looked at the phone wondering what exactly to do. What surprised me was that she hadn’t disconnected the call yet. Well-maybe she wanted to talk to me after all. I picked up the phone and them with all the courage I could muster up, I cleared my throat and said, “Hello.”

“Hello,” came back the reply. 

“Hey! Anjali-it’s Rahul,” I said quickly before nervousness took over me again.

“Rahul,” she answered. “I thought it was you.”

What next. She thought it was me, what do I reply to that?

“Hey Anjali! It’s Rahul,” I said and immediately slapped my forehead. Virat broke out laughing.

“Ummm…you already kind of mentioned that Rahul,” Anjali said. She must be thinking I am the weirdest guy on the planet.

“Ummm….yeah,” I answered trying quickly to think what to say next. “Yeah, I called you but then kind of got busy.”

‘Busy?’ What did I just say? ‘I called you and then kind of got busy.’ Smart move, Rahul.

“Oh!” came the reply. “Busy with what?”

‘Panic attack,’ I thought of saying. But for once I didn’t do something stupid. I again quickly thought of an excuse.

‘Ummm…I called you and then realied,” I said trying to think what I had realized. Got it! “I realized that I hadn’t finished one of my assignment questions.”

I immediately slapped my forehead again. Here I was thinking that I couldn’t embarrass myself any further. And Virat was finding it all very hysterical. He almost couldn’t control his laugher. Why didn’t he just die laughing!

“Assignment?” Anjali asked.

“Yeah,” I replied not knowing how further to avoid any embarrassment. 

“So you called me and then while the phone was ringing you realized that you had an assignment question to do so you forgot about the call and went to do the assignment?” Anjali asked.

What was she? Some private detective or something?

“Ummm…yeah,” I replied. “It was a very important assignment you know.” Virat laughed even harder.

“Must be,” Anjali replied. “But I thought I heard some very heavy breathing. I got a bit scared for a moment as if something had happened to you.”

Damn! She could hear me breathe. Now what! Think, think, think, Rahul. Idea!

“Oh yeah-that was actually my room mate Virat,” I told her. Virat now had a quizzical look on his face. “He had got an asthma attack. He’s an asthma patient.”

Virat threw a bottle at me. I ducked.

“Oh!” Anjali replied. “Is he alright?”

“Yeah-he’s fine now. It was just a mild attack,” I told her.

Virat had a murderous expression on his face. I mischievously grinned at him. He threw another bottle. I again ducked ant the bottle crashed against the wall.

“So why did you call me?” Anjali asked. 

‘I don’t know,’ I thought to myself. ‘Because I am crazy, because I can’t stop thinking of you, because when I talk to you I feel like the happiest man on the world, because I think I maybe falling in love with you.’ So many answers but none which I could tell her.

“Oh that!” I replied. “I called you because,” and again I stopped to think what possible excuse I could give her. Nothing came to my mind. Why won’t I just blow up this moment and die? “Because I was wondering whether you would be interested in coming to KMC Greens right now.”

Virat again went into bouts of hysteria. While I wished I would explode right now and end any further embarrassment.

“KMC Greens?” she asked. “Now?” she continued. “Rahul, it’s midnight.”

‘And I should jump from the terrace and die,’ I completed her sentence.

“I know,” I said wondering if it would be better if I just disconnected the call and never spoke to her again. That way at least I won’t feel like committing suicide. Yet, I continued. “It’s a nice weather outside. A cool breeze is blowing and I was thinking if you would like to go for a walk.” 

Smart Rahul. Now you have blown all your chances of ever speaking to her again.

“Sure,” came back the reply.

“Wh-wha-what?” I said not believing my ears.

“I said I would like to go for a walk. Anyways I am getting bored in the hostel. There’s nothing to do. Might as well go for a walk.”

‘Fantastic,’ I thought to myself. ‘A date at midnight under the stars. Who would have thought!’

“Sure, then I’ll pick you up in 20 minutes,” I told her.

“Yeah-20 minutes will be fine. See you then,” she said.

“Cya,” I replied and disconnected the call.

I turned to look at Virat with a huge smile on my face. “20 minutes?” Virat asked. “What 20 minutes?”

“Oh nothing. I have just got a date,” I said throwing my phone at him.

“At this hour?” he asked.

“Yup!” I said opening my cupboard and looking for a pair of jeans and t-shirt.

“Man-she must be just as crazy as you,” Virat remarked.

I laid the jeans and t-shirt on my bed. Then, walking up to him, I straightened his collar and in the uber cool style told him, “Or maybe it’s just the magic of Rahul Agarwal.”