Short Story #13: Another Instagram love story

"Hey, listen, Sarah just broke up with her girlfriend and she wouldn't stop crying, she is going to be staying with me for the night, let me spend some time with her now. Also, isn't it too late for you there? I will talk to you tomorrow, okay?", she said, as he stared at her face on the video call.

'She is so beautiful', Aarush thought, smiling at her face on the phone screen.

It was one of the very few times they had connected on video calls in the last one year that they have been close friends.

"Oh, I'm sorry, yes, please take care of her, and hey you did tell me that you wanted to talk to me about something?", he asked.

"Oh, yeah, hmm, may be tomorrow?"

"Sure, good night, Shruti", he said, as they hung up.

He woke up to the noise of his neighbour's lawn mower. 

"Aargh", he moaned as he reached out to his mobile phone to check the time.

"9.32! Damn, I am late!", he exclaimed in whisper.

The big day was here. He had been planning this day for over two months now.

He quickly scrolled through the notifications on his mobile as he checked for messages from her.

Nope, none. Ofcourse, it was only 5am for her, he thought.

"Hey, everything ok?", he messaged her.

He spent the day cleaning his apartment, carefully wrapping the gifts, watched a few episodes of Sienfield as he finished packing his bags and got ready to leave for his flight.

The idea of surprising Shruti in Germany scared him as much as it excited him.

On his way to the airport, he was scrolling through instagram messages and reading some old conversations he had with Shruti.

He was so much in love with her, and of course she had no idea.

Ping.

"Hey Aarush. It has been a long day, but everything is okay. Whats up with you?", her message read.

"Nothing much", he replied, smiling but keeping it casual as he quickly moved through the queue at the arline counter to check-in.

"..but just dreaming about the future may be :)", he typed.

He put on his earphones and scrolled through Spotify for a song to suit his mood, as he waited to board the flight.

Aarush realized he wasn't even hungry, he just had butterflies in his stomach.

He has never done something like this before.

He almost felt like a hero from steretypical indian romantic movies.

"How far in the future? ;)", she replied.

Aarush sat in his seat, and tucked his little backpack under the seat. He was just a few hours (twelve to be precise) away from her and he had many little anxiety pangs as he thought about this.

"I don't know, but may be just far enough to see me happy with someone", he replied, immediately feeling flushed and stupid.

'What if she didn't have feelings for me? What if she was not ready to take this friendship any farther? What if she feels I have made this awkward for us to be good friends?", he thought, as his heartbeat grew louder.

A message from her.

"Wow, that would be someone lucky for sure", she said.

Aarush clutched his heart as he typed this with almost-freezing fingers "Haha, don't live in la-la land. You don't know me offline. I am a very difficult person, you haven't even met me ever".

"Of course, I haven't met you. But fortunately we have enough mutual friends for me to know you are not a robot or a fake account, LOL" 

"You would never know, I could still be a smart bot who is a CAPTCHA expert may be", he said.

"Haha, also the fact that I have been talking to you every single day for a year now, and you have been so kind to me, you have always been there to comfort me whenever I felt vulnerable and needed someone", she said.

She was still typing something.

Typing...

Nothing.

Typing...

He stared at the chat screen for the next two minutes until the flight took off and the mobile network wasn't available anymore.

He sighed, put his mobile phone inside his bag and rested his head backwards, putting his hand on his chest and heaving a huge sighing breath as he watched the well lit Delhi city from thousands of miles above. 

'When I wake up, I would be in the other side of the world, and the closest I have ever been to Shruti', he thought.

As soon as he got to the conveyor belt at the Berlin airport to pick up his rucksack, he connected to the WiFi to check Shruti's msgs, it had indeed been a long wait.

A hundred notifications from all the social media apps and his mobile almost hung up on vibrating incessantly.

As he sat in the taxi, he opened her message.

"Hey. There is something in my head that I need to tell you, it would be unfair if I didn't let you know this is running in my head. As much as I love the relationship we share, in the world inside my head, it's different. A parallel world, may be. It's a happier place. A world where we wake up next to each other every morning, spend the day smiling and thinking about the kisses, cook together and gossip like high school girls, work out together as our dogs watch us, travel places and while I meet new people in the beaches and make friends, I see you lying down by the sea reading a book and listening to music from the 80's, and we experience life together as we grow old as best friends. 

This seems like a perfect picture to me and I don't want to ruin this picture in my head with reality. I know I am jeopardizing our friendship and making things awkward, but I think if I don't tell this to you now, I may never. But I think I am in love with you"

WOW, he thought. His heart now pounded much harder. And louder. 

'Well, I thought I was going to surpirse her, but this just put me on the sky', he thought as he smiled so wide with a tear in his eye.

He read and re-read the message a few times, until he believed what he thought was unbelievable.

There were also a few messages from her after that.

"Aarush, I am sorry if this kinda ruined things for us"

"Aarush, is everything okay? Your number has been unreachable since evening"

He clutched his mobile harder as he typed, "Thank you for sharing this with me. I think the picture in your thoughts is very sweet. Beyond words. I know that so far we have lived in a real world, away from this parallel world of yours. But what if both the worlds could meet?"

He read this message about ten times to make sure he phrased every word right.

Two long minutes.

"Omg, Aarush! Are you serious? I mean, am I getting this right? Am I misunderstanding this!! :) :)".

He read the message as he got out of the taxi and walked to her door.

Aarush rang the door bell and waited for the longest 20 seconds in his life ever.

She opened the door.

"Oh my God! AARUSH!! How????" She flung her arms around him and hugged and cried in joy.

"I don't know what to say", she sobbed between smiles, "Did you come all the way here for me?"

He pat her head lightly as she cling to his chests still hugging him.

"Ofcourse. It has been a few months since I realized you are the one"

"Okay, this is another instagram love story, then. Well, I'm not complaining", she giggled, wiping the tears that fell on her cheek.

They stood there hugging, like time had frozen.

Short Story #12: Unconditional

“Are you sure you don’t want to go to school?”, I asked her, slowly pushing the hair off her face as she lay on me, hugging like a little ‘Koala’ or that’s what I called her every time she did this.

‘Nooo, ma-ma’, she said, her lip curling into a pout and eyes welling with tears.

I kissed her forehead softly as I got up, lifting her slowly and dancing around singing ‘kuchi kuchi raakamma’ in baby voice as Tara chuckled.  

‘It’s been 3 years and she is still entertained by that song”, Sid laughed, busy making some orange juice for breakfast.

I looked at her smiling and admired how beautiful her tiny features were (of course she didn’t look anything like me), as I wiped the little drop of tear on Tara’s cheek and told her ‘Tara is such a big girl now, daddy and I are coming with you to school today and let’s do a picnic lunch after school, okay? Yay, picnic lunch at the park, woo-hoo!'. She smiled and hugged me again, but this idea did cheer her up a bit.

Tara is now five years old and it has been three years since she came into our life, and not a day has passed without all these cuddles in the morning.

Two soft meows. “Ah, look, Fluffy is up”, I said.

Tara ran across the room to lift the cat, tripping over her toy and breaking it accidentally. I picked her up from the floor even before she started to cry, “You are okay, you are okay, do you want feed some treats to Fluffy while I get ready?”, I asked Tara handing over some treat sticks for our tom cat.

Forty minutes later, we arrive at Tara’s school, listening to rhymes and singing along throughout the 15-minute car journey while we braved the Bangalore traffic.

“Pa-pa, pa-pa”, Tara said, confusedly looking around as we walked towards her class. “Papa is parking the car, he will be here now in a minute, Tara kutti”.

“Oh, look Tara, here’s Jo ma’am”, pointing out to her favourite teacher. “You are a sweet little girl, be a good girl in school today, and we will pick you up soon for picnic, okay?”, kissing her cheeks, and I saw her walk holding Ms.Jo’s hand, as she animatedly pointed towards her clothes and shoes and talked to her with whatever little words she knew.

I was looking at her so proudly I almost didn’t see Sid coming, until he tapped my shoulders and said ‘Let’s go meet the Principal”.

Mrs.Hiremath welcomed us with a broad smile.

‘We are glad that Tara is doing great in school, but we also wanted to know if there’s anything more could do to help her feel more comfortable?”, she said.

“I really appreciate the school and Ms.Jo especially for all the efforts to help out Tara”, I said, humbled genuinely. “We are taking it one step at a time, teaching her little things every day and making learning fun for her at home, we take her out to the park to play which could be harder for her here in school with other kids, we spend a little more time every evening teaching her to write and draw and express herself better with words or art’, I paused.

“We are grateful that Tara is having extra help in school to cope up”, Sid started explaining, “..umm, may be she can have little breaks in the schedule, or when she needs time taking more than one instruction in class, but I’m sure Ms.Jo is already doing all that she can, Tara seems to like school better now, and you can let us know if there’s anything more that we can do as well, but thankfully with great care I guess we are managing the her difficulties quite well”.

Tara was diagnosed with dyspraxia when she was 2.5 years old. She reached her milestones later than she should, she did have minor difficulties with writing, drawing, eating on her own, with movements, especially playing, she did bump into things or trip over and fall a little more, understood instructions slower and found normal activities of her age a little more challenging. But it did not hinder her happy and kind spirit, and she was as chirpy as a little duck.

“Great, then. We will definitely keep you updated on her progress”, Mrs.Hiremath concluded, as her assistant Chetan walked in with tea for us all. After some general conversations over tea, we walked out of the school, holding hands, a little lost in thoughts.

“Do you think Tara will have the perfect life when she grows up?”, Sid asked.

“Of course, Sid. I don’t think we should worry about it, she is going to be an amazing teenager and adult. We might need to be a little more patient with her as she grows up, I’m sure we will be. If she makes mistakes, we are here to help her, that’s what parents are for right? She might have a little difficulties with day to day life, but who doesn’t?”, I said, reassuringly.

Later that afternoon, Sid and I sat under the tree eating some tamarind rice and appalam (Sid’s fav menu for picnic lunches), as we watched Tara play with a dog in the park. She was so fond of dogs, cats, and birds and she was definitely a baby version of me with animals, I proudly thought.

“Don’t you think we learn so much from Tara every day? I mean she teaches us a lot of simple things’, Sid said.

‘Hmm-hmm. She is a constant reminder to live in the present, to be happy and kind all the time and to look beyond our limitations. And also a reminder to be calm when you stress, to live one day at a time’, I added.

Tara ran to us, took her dog soft toy from the basket and put it close to my face and said ‘Ma-ma, kissie’ and then took it to Sid, ‘Pa-pa, kissie the puppy’ and then ran back to the dog and the woman to show them her dog toy.

“What a little wonder she is, she always has so much love to shower”, Sid said, proudly. “Isn’t she the best thing that happened to us?!”, he put his arms around my shoulders and looked at my eyes, smiling.

“Every time I look back in time, I am so happy and grateful we chose to bring her into our lives. I still remember the little shy girl who refused to look at anyone, and when people called her ‘different’ and when our family and friends questioned our choice of adopting her, we knew she was very special and that she needed us, more than how much we needed a child. And look at her today, she has changed our world. And filled it with unconditional love”, I said.

Tara ran to us smiling for a group hug, or ‘goop huggie’ like she said.

“Unconditional indeed, precious”, Sid said, hugging us both.