The day proceeded to be quite uneventful after our short encounter. I had to finish a few of my creative writing assignments which I had been stalling for many months, so I finished them. The balcony overlooked the mountains which had long sturdy Cedar trees all around. The air smelled of fresh rain with a hint of wood fire, probably from the houses down below in the village where I last stopped for water.
The wind was light and had a slight chill, the night was going to be quite cold, it seemed. I could hear some light banter from her room. I tried to zone myself out from the noises of her room, but somehow they cut through the silence of the mountains and pierced my ears. I decided to take a walk, the ground was still wet and I just my sparingly used sneakers which were about to get mudied.
I went downstairs where I was greeted the guest room owner's wife, she was sweet bright young lady who wrote travel blogs about Corbett. I had a small insignificant chat with her and she informed me that they were making meat for dinner and some local lentils. I went out of the guest house and towards my car, it had taken a beating from the rain and was still soaking wet. I opened it to look for my flashlight, it was getting dark really quick. I went down the hill to the small tea shop at the bottom of the lodge.
The tea shop owner was almost dead out of boredom. I greeted him and asked for a cup of tea, which took him about 30 minutes as he still hadn't milked his goat. I sat there smoking and thinking of quitting as soon as I returned to Delhi.
I suddenly heard the same banter that made way into my room. Why was she here? Why now?
Why is she so nice to me? Wasn't our last encounter bad enough? Or was it just me? The overthinking, finicky old me.
"Here you are!", she exclaimed. "I was bored to death in my room, so thought of taking a stroll", I retorted.
"You are in the middle of nowhere, all alone what else do you expect? You're not Ruskin Bond, kid!", she said. "I am not a kid either!", I exclaimed.
"Hmm... yes you have grown up, Big officer now!", she said mockingly. "Well so what do you guys do? I haven't even properly met your friend." I replied.
Her friend took the que and from being the trusty sidekick that she was, she suddenly became the eloquent main lead, much to the disappointment of this clicques main lead.
"We both work in advanced analytics, I handle big data while she does social media. Would you know anything about it?", the sidekick said.
"I used to work in a data analytics firm, have you heard of MarvelData?", I said. "We just started working there, that's why we have a month off. We join late next month. Such a small world." she said smilingly.
"Small world indeed, but I didn't catch your name." I said. "My name is Amaya and she is Kavita, oh wait you already know her, don't you Sanjeev? How do you guys know each other?", Amaya said.
"We both studied for CAT together long back and kind of knew each other from that class", I replied.
Kavita's eyes never lied, I could make out that she was quite irked by now, and would've poured hot tea on her attention hoarding friend. I loved the entire conversation, the years of self discovery had helped me immensely.
"So Amaya! Are you from Delhi?, we guys should meet once we are back for lunch or something, I too have till late next month to join my training", I said.
"We won't have much time in Delhi, we need to house hunt in Gurgaon, I am moving out of my parents house, so I need a new place. So..." Kavita finally broke her long silence to divert our attention to her.
This was getting a bit exciting and to put it bluntly fun for me.