Two things happened before I met her again

On Monday evening, I got a call from Mathew informing that Lize has been admitted in hospital because of labour pain. Lize and her husband had the reputation of coming late for every engagement they had to attend. I was pretty sure that the child would follow his/her parent’s footsteps and come late than the 10 February deadline.

But the child decided to make its presence felt on 17th January’s evening. We all were at the hospital waiting for Lize to deliver. However due to complication Doctors took a decision to caesarean late evening. Finally when the operation completed, 18 January had already dawned. Kavya was born just after midnight of 18 January 2011. A little underweight, the baby and her mother were in good condition. After waiting with the happy parents, we went home. I had to be in office the next day.

The next day when I reached office, another surprise awaited me. I was promoted after missing an opportunity 6 months back.

18 January was turning out to be a good day.

I decided why not meet her today and hopefully complete hat-trick of good news.

I messaged her to meet me in the evening. She did not reply for a long time. I thought she might not be interested after all.  I learnt after marriage that she kept her phone in her purse and would not look at it for many hours. Finally she did reply with a confirmation.

We decided to meet 6:30 at Dadar. The day passed like that with more office issues than thoughts about her. With so many rejections, I had stopped being excited about these things.

I started around 5:00 from the office. At around 6:00, she messaged me "I left"

I smiled. My devil mind and my eager fingers was tempted to reply "I Right".

But the question was about impressing the girl and a message like this would put the odds against me and my sane mind decided against messaging her. I was as usual on time and surprisingly she did not keep me waiting much.
Dadar is a pretty crowded station with lots of restaurants and place to sit. It was not my first trip to Dadar to meet a girl and I had a good idea where to go.

But then she stumped me. She did not want to sit in a restaurant and she would prefer sitting somewhere and talking without the waiters disturbing us with bills. Only place where waiters would not disturb was "Cafe Coffee Day" but she did not want to sit in a restaurant at all.

We decided to walk to Shivaji Park and talk there.Shivaji Park, a big public ground and a very famous landmark is almost around 15 minutes walk from Dadar station. I suggested we can also talk while walking.

So we started walking and talking as we walked. I told her about me and she told me about her. We talked about our expectation regarding our partners and we talked about everything that we could think of and can help the other to make decision.

We walked along the busy Dadar streets talking, sharing and discussing our life. Shivaji Park still eluded us. Neither of us were aware of the road to Shivaji Park nor we felt the need to ask somebody. We were just engrossed in our talk that it didn’t matter that we were walking for a long time. When the light finally started fading, we decided to come back to Dadar station failing to find Shivaji Park.

Shivaji Park was the destination but the journey was more interesting!

Walking back I had made my decision. But then it was always a one-sided affair but I needed her to confirm too.  It was a good thing that the decision was based on us rather than the complete family

She had also made a decision. When we finally parted way in Dadar station, I asked for 2 days time to revert with my decision. Later she told me that When I told her about two days, she was pretty sure my answer was No.

I bid her good bye and asked her to message me when she reached home.

As I took my train to Borivali, I almost knew that my search was over!