The last message

He had first seen Rituparna in the Aeromodelling club. She was the only girl among freshies who had joined the club. Thanks to their googlegroup, he managed to get hold of her email id and they started chatting on the internet. And after the internet got disconnected, they would talk for hours through the night on the phone. Ritu was outspoken not even least bit conservative; she had lived in the US till eleven years of age. She still had a American touch to her english accent, which he used to find cute. He used to admire the fact the she was still well versed in hindi.

After a fortnight or so, they decided to go out for dinner. It was 7.30 p.m. and he was waiting for her outside her hostel. He remembered every minute detail about that evening. She was wearing a black halter neck dress and was looking stunning. He could not take her eyes off her while she was walking out of her hostel towards him.

‘Hey. Let’s go?’, she had asked.

‘ Oh ya, ya’, he had stammered.

She had bursted out laughing at this, and his heart melted in an instant.

They went to Simply Sumptuous and got along really well. She giggled at each of his jokes, and he used to love that. And when she started talking about her favourite cartoon series, she went on and on. He didn’t mind that at all because he got an oppurtunity to get lost in her beautiful eyes during that time. They returned to their college around 10.30 pm and parted to their respective hostels. He had barely reached the door of his room when his phone beeped. ‘1 message received’- it said.

He opened the messaged anxiously and it read – ‘I had a wonderful time. Thanks x’. He beamed.

She got a friend request from an unfamiliar id – rahul.superkool - one day. He told her he had seen her at the Aeromodelling club. Guys in this college are desperate, she had thought, but atleast unlike the other guys who were too scared to muster courage to talk to her, this guy had atleast tried to contact her. Even the girls in her hostel used to stay aloof from her. She didn’t know why, and didn’t even try to make an effort to be friends with them. She found this very bizarre because she had always had a huge friend circle, and some of her best friends were guys.

She started chatting with him and soon they became good friends. Then one day, when he suggested that they went out for dinner, she ageed instantly.

She saw him standing outside her hostel waiting for him. He was dressed garishly. Who wears a bright silver shirt to a dinner? - she wondered. He was even quixotic enough to give her a red rose tucked in his back-pocket.

Apart from the few jokes and the small talk that he attempted, she felt the conversation was pretty one-sided. She had little interest in knowing about his favourite footballer or his most adventurous trek ever. However, his good sense of humour made up for his poor dressing sense and under-confidence. She thought of him to be a nice guy but surely he wasn’t boyfriend- material. Upon returning to her room, she messaged him courteously saying that she had a good time. Not even ten seconds later, her phone beeped.

The message read – ‘I had d best time of my lyf :D u’re amazing n v pretty. Hey I think I’ve feelings towards u’. She was stunned.

Today Rahul, who is a few days away from passing out of college, laughed out loudly when he remembered those days and thought how naïve he was.

And Ritu, who was yet to make any good friends in college, wondered whether she should’ve chided him and terminated her relationship with him after that last message.