Short story: Two way road

“You know I lost my virginity much later than people would usually think.” 

Padmaja told me as we sat around the waiting room waiting for Dr. Kashyap. She seemed lost in thought staring at the aquarium as she said it. 

I knew what she meant. First time I met her she was a virgin and it surprised me as well. I mean looking at her and her lifestyle you can’t tell she stayed away from sex for that long. Her friends often laughed at her, “Who are you saving it for you silly girl? Your knight in shining armour?” 

And some of her feminist friends categorically told her if she was saving her virginity for some man she is going to marry she is totally being a victim of patriarchy. They said, ‘virginity’ by definition is gender discrimination and she should never fall for it. Padmaja now agrees to this thought. Virginity and the hype around it is indeed a method of disrespectful objectification of women. 

But back then in her late teens and early 20s she didn’t care so much about either virginity or feminism. She just wanted her first time to be a nice time. She didn’t want it to be an open and shut case. Drop your pants and bang bang. She wanted the romance; she wanted to spend time with the man before she had sex with him, she wanted to take a moonlight walk holding hands to build up the excitement and all that. But things could never happen that way because she was never into a committed relationship.

Short story: ‘Sainyam’

They were 8 people in the team, 4 girls and 4 boys. The project needed them to travel in pairs to various parts of rural India collecting data, conducting interviews etc. It was a very interesting job one of the best Padmaja ever had. 

In Padmaja’s eyes Uday was the least attractive of the 4 boys in the team. She cannot stand lean bodied men and Uday was lean and fragile. Politically he was inclined towards Hindutva and came across as a patriarchal person. He would talk about Indian culture and tradition all the time and would frown at modernization and westernization. He spoke in pure Hindi more often than required. 

There were enough reasons to repel Padmaja though she didn’t exactly hate him. She just knew she couldn’t be friends with him too easily. 

In between their travel the team used to meet in the project office, share with each other their field experience, submit reports and plan their next tour. Shuffling of the pairs was essential for many reasons. Each person was selected with different skill set and the combinations were meticulously designed as per skills. 

From Author’s life: Sweet nothings

There is this guy, not guy, this man at my work who I somewhat fancy. It’s unbelievable how sometimes our system catches these waves and a transmission begins. I haven’t seen him up until few days back, perhaps he is from the other half, moved to our building after the merger.

Not a great looker but a strange sense of goodness surrounds him. We haven’t spoken so far, I don’t even know his name, yet I know his voice and I know his smell. The first time I noticed him was when we happened to take the elevator together. As the elevator’s door opened on our floor he waited for me to step out first, he followed me out of the elevator but reached the office door before and held it open for me. I smiled and said ‘thank you’ and we walked away on different sides of the corridor.

Years of work experience, been in and out of elevators with hundreds of co-workers but never did I see such gestures from another man. Speakes volumes about him. Since that day we smile and nod at each other in the cafetaria or the lift lobby or the library. The coincidence of taking the elevator together again didn’t occur, yet.

I do a bit more than just smiling and nodding and something inside me tells me he knows that and he follows suite. I look up every time he passes by my desk, every time he speaks loudly on phone I look up and check him out, he does that too. In the morning when I reach my desk I look out for him and if our eyes meet we smile.

Do I have a crush on him? I don’t think so. Crush means a lot more, I am happy doing this much. I don’t wanna know him, be friends with him or anything. In all probability he is a happily married man with kids and all but that is not even my concern, I just like thinking that he is a nice guy and if we were friends he would have been nice to me. It could be an illusion and I wanna keep it that way. It’s just that there is something nice in it, its a nice nothing.