Prologue:
“A very lovely welcome
to you on our prime dating call services.
Are you trying to find love? Your search for respite ends here. Share
everything on your mind, at the comfort of your mobile phone, sitting right
there. Our services are available 24/7. Call charges at Rs 7 per minute.”
To continue in
English, Press 1
*beep*
If you are looking for
a female soul mate, Press 1
*beep*
If you are an unmarried
Male, press 1
*beep*
If you are aged
between 25 and 30, press 1
*beep*
If your height is
above 5 feet, press 1
*beep*
If you have a fair
complexion, press 1. If you have a dark complexion, press 2
*beep*
“Thank you for your
inputs. Please hold the line. We will now connect you with the love of your life.
She will be online with you shortly.”
A sweet girl’s voice replied: "Hello Sid. My name is Tania"
“Hello there”
“Heyyy Hiii… How are you doing today?”
“I’m good. Thanks.. Ummmm. Ummmmmm - How old are you?"
I blurted out.
“Never ask a man his salary and a woman her age."
*congenial giggles from both ends*
“I'm sorry. I didn’t mean to...Ummmm..."
“It is okay Sid. Let us just say, I will be sixty five
in 2050."
I quickly did the math.
Impressive! Hey listen.. your.. your voice is very sweet”
“Huh? I take that as a compliment”
“So errr… errr.. are you single”? *congenial giggles from
both ends*
“I…
****Honk Honk Honk.
Honk****
Arghhh! The cry of goose from a truck behind my Audi Q7
brought me back to my senses. My driver gave me that “not my fault” looks. Damn!
I said a quick goodbye to her and unwillingly pressed the RED button on the MMI High 3G rear seat entertainment
display. When the 7 inch TFT displayed the call duration of 31.44 minutes, I
was surprised that we spoke for more than half an hour on the very first call. It
felt like it was just 5 minutes ago that I had handed over my phone to my
driver and had asked him to connect Bluetooth and route it only to the rear
cabin infotainment system. I was all shaky and nervous for the first time. I
spoke in a brattish way that the girl on phone would have thought of me as a
contraband thug. But I loved it. The conversation was refreshing. My mood was
bear aloft. The evening seemed truly pleasant after a long time. I cherished
how technology has become omnipresent with the modern society. The
proliferation of the internet, the cell phones and their subsequent integration
into everyday commerce and more importantly, our personal lives amazed me.
My presence in the 21st century, the last decade
in particular, an era that has perfected the art of annihilation in every walk
of life, is weirdly impressive. Perhaps the experiences of my life so far as an
entrepreneur, my connections and involvements with start-ups and their success
stories, have given me a tremendous amount of real-world success and fame. Today
I am one of the most buoyant venture capitalists of south Asia. Majority of my
ventures have made it big with a unique product or service with a very strong
competitive advantage. Few of them have made it to the S&P 500 list and a
few others are merged and acquired by Fortune 500 companies. I am the founder
of one of the top venture capital firms of India. I take pride in saying that I
have built Accel ventures from nothing to a multi-million empire of start-up
incubators. To put things short, today I have an important role in creating new
businesses that is capable of fueling the progress of our country and the
world.
You may imagine Entrepreneurs to be highly intellectual and resilient
people who pounce on problems, determined to find solution. But it is only
partially true. In reality, you have to give up a lot of things to get there. My
B-school taught me only one thing; that you cannot expect full time results
with part time effort. In fact, none of the b-schools enlighten you with old
school philosophies like “Work to Live. Don’t live to work”. Consequently, in
the quest of my professional success, I joined hands with more and more business
partners, but could not find time for my own life partner. I concentrated on
husbanding more resources into my ventures, but neglected being husband of a
beautiful wife. My relationship was Hit-and-run by my professional self-esteem
and ego. Obviously, the consequences were huge!
Coming back to my professional life, after the huge success
of Tinder in India, the current venture that I had taken up was funding of an online
dating call service, in association with mobile service providers like Airfone
and Vodatel, the first of its kind attempted in India. And as a VC for this
project, I myself was trying to validate the business operations only to see
how this can be invalidated by the users. So I registered myself with an alias only
with the intention of exploring business.
After completing all my evening calls and meetings, I went
down to my cabin, took out a new bottle of Green Killer IPA, a Belgian Beer, which
a dear friend and CEO of a renowned software company had given me. I took a sip
and checked my mobile phone for any messages. To my surprise, there were 3
missed calls on my personal number. Very few close friends and business
partners had my personal number. I dialed back. And a vaguely familiar sweet
voice answered
“Hello Sid”.
It didn’t take me long to realize that it was the same lady
from the dating services I had spoken to, earlier today. I cursed myself for
dialing from my personal number. Damn these dual sim phones!
“Good time to talk?”
“Umm. Yeah. Of course! I was.. umm. Just watching TV. What
are you up to?
“I was reading"
“Pretty good! Reading what?"
“I have 'Shalimar – The Clown' in my hand"
“Heyyy, *excited* By any chance, are you a Rushdie aficionado?”
“Yes! But what do you mean “by any chance”?
“Actually, isn’t it very rare that you come across a Rushdie
fanatic?”
*I told myself that last
time I heard someone saying I am a Rushdie follower was my wife*
“You know what. Me too! Totally” I am a huge fan of his
narration. In fact, I’ve read all of his books, some even more than once! Now I
am reading Padma Lakshmi’s autobiography “Love, Loss and what we ate” just to
understand why he is such an ass in real life.
“Ha ha ha ha! If Padma Lakshmi is to be believed, he is
indeed a maniacal ass”
"You’ve read that too? Impressive!"
“What do you do for a living?”
“I am… ummm.. a businessman”
“That is cool!”
“And you?”
“I am a school teacher”
“Ah! The noble professional”
“Not really a passionate teacher. I do it to keep myself
occupied. It is so hard to sit back and do nothing”
“True. Everything passes, but nothing entirely goes away.
Isn’t it?”
*Long silence*
*In unison* “Soooo”
*In unison* “Hahahhaahah”
*In unison* “You
go first”
“Pretty woman first…”
When I woke up at 8 in the morning, I realized that I had
slept on the couch itself. My neck was aching as if it was tightly tied to a
yoke for an entire day. I checked my mobile only to realize that I was talking
to her until 2:30AM in the midnight. After quickly fortifying myself with a
bowl of Cornflakes with milk and a hot shower, I got dressed and left for work.
All the way through the drive, I could not stop thinking about my conversation
with her. En route to office, I gave my phone to my driver and just nodded. He
gave an indicative agreement that he knows what to do. I dialed her number
again:
“Hello. Good Morning teacher”
“Hey Sid. Very good morning to you”
“Is the teacher busy?”
“Absolutely not! Today is a holiday”
“Oh wow! What on earth for”?
“Valmeeki Jayanti”
*frowning* Bloody
hell. “I wish I was in your school too”
“Businessmen are usually bad teachers”
“You think so?”
“Yeah! Why do you ask?”
“I remember once my professor telling me that I would be the
worst businessman ever…”
“Ha ha ha ha. So you proved him wrong?”
We spoke until I reached office. I said bye to her and she
wished me a good day. Within days, these phone calls became a routine. I was
constantly telling myself that I want to make it absolutely clear we are
nothing more than acquaintance. But at once, there was a huge undercurrent of
feelings arising inside me for her. I was trying to figure out what it really
was! The more we spoke; more often I
wanted to talk to her. She was different. With every subject we discussed, I
felt there was an instant connection in the way we spoke. There was something
about her that impressed me. I felt it was since long time I was asking myself
“what are you searching for” and that all seeking had stopped and I was
suddenly become aware of the fact that I have found the right answer.
In between our professional errands, our virtual encounters on
WhatsApp and phone calls continued. Day by day we dropped all our defenses and
got very close. We spoke for hours together on topics like euthanasia, medieval
economy, sex, Gynocentrism etc. At times, she would give me suggestions and sometimes
I was concerned about her wrongdoings. On certain topics, we debated so much
until we got bored of the topic. There was a sense of caring and compassion in
our talks; I could feel it. It was like we both enjoyed with pleasure, the slow,
hand in hand revelation of both of our lives, to each other.
As days passed by, the bonding grew even stronger. By now, we
both were well aware of our personal stances. One fine day, we decided to end
this virtual intimacy and get real. We both were skeptical that our virtual identities
were not bona fide and we had discussed this long over. We both promised to
each other that when we meet, we’ll reveal our true identities. I invited her to
meet up at an informal venue on a pleasant evening and she agreed. I had
started talking to her only to explore the business behind the on-call dating
services. But this had gone absolutely beyond that. And here I was, exposing my
deepest feelings to a woman who I have just started speaking to, a few weeks
ago. I had read somewhere that only with love, one’s inner conscious will be
eager to accept the peril that lies in front of him. This was my worst fear. I
was hit by both apprehension and excitement, a pleasantly baffling experience,
which I could not express to anyone.
I was happy that my personal life was getting a second
chance and I considered myself very fortunate. On that day, I wore my favorite
charcoal gray suit. It is a date. I am
not going to discuss business. And the summers were really unbearable of
late, thanks to El-Nino. I was sweating even inside my room with air condition
running. I changed to a casual wear. It looked simple and courteous. I took out
Annick
Goutal’s Eau d’Hadrien perfume and dabbed it several times onto my chest
and the base of my throat. Then I confirmed that it was not dousing and felt everything
was perfect. I picked a random watch from my watch cabinet and wore the Casio
Pro Trek PRG600 watch, which was gifted by a friend. I stood in front of mirror,
changed orientation and I convinced myself that I looked elegant. I decided to drive myself and had already asked
the driver to take half a day off.
I couldn’t decide if I wanted to pick a nice gift to her on
the way. But in real, I never believed in gifts. I always saw them as a sort of
social construct. So I decided against it. I was the first to arrive at the
venue. I sat on the table that I had reserved for us. I could not wait to see
her and talk to her. A strangely complex apprehension occupied me. A few
minutes later I called her. The
subscriber you are trying to reach is currently not reachable – I waited
for 30 more minutes. She did not turn up.
When she did not turn up even after an hour, I got restless
and tried calling her at repeated intervals. But I got the same message. A couple of hours passed but she did not turn
up. I was deeply disappointed. It was hard to accept that she did not show up. I
picked up the newspaper that was nearby and started glancing through it.
According to some astroswamy’s column, it was an ill-fated day for me today. I
turned to the next page. The quote of the day said that when someone
disappoints you, there is nothing that can be done but to accept it. *Fuck* It certainly
was not helping. I kept it aside. Inside, I was deeply in despair.
With an unwilling mindset, I got up and decided to leave. As
I entered the restaurant’s corridor to enter the parking lot, my phone rang.
Without even seeing who the caller was, I answered the call and uttered “Tania,
where are you. I’ve been waiting for you since 2 hours… I was…” and a callous
voice from the other end cut me through;
“Hello! Sub Inspector Surya Narayan speaking”. Before he
could finish saying that, he appeared on the other end of the corridor, facing
me, with his phone still clung to his ears.
“You are under arrest”
To be continued….
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