Readers Write In #857: Crush

By Heisenberg

“You are such a sweet friend, Ashwin.. Good night now!”

When Isha told this on phone Ashwin’s heart raced, but he liked that feeling. No girl had ever said that to him before. It was new not just for him but also to the small group of friends who were grinning ear to ear hearing this. “Buddy she’s so into you.. you’re the first among us to get a girlfriend” said Vivek, Ashwin’s roommate. Real or not, Ashwin was willing to buy that dream Vivek was selling him. It had been an eventful night on phone and at the end of it Isha had said those lovely words. For Ashwin it didn’t matter that he had not met Isha in person yet and all their conversations have been only through phone.

At 18, hailing from a small town, Ashwin had joined his engineering course in Chennai just two months back. It was 2004, Ashwin and his small group of friends represented the quintessential small town guys of that era. These guys had grownup watching only Indian movies and had imagined colleges in big cities existed in an alternative reality from that of their hometown. This was supposed to be the place where they meet their girlfriend, take her for a movie at Sathyam cinemas, hangout in spencer plaza, and groove to A.R.Rahman’s songs at a nightclub. Alas, the reality can’t be farther from their imagination. The college was neither as exotic as they had imagined, nor were they the studs seen in those movies. These guys were timid in having even a regular conversation with girls. They would blush if a girl from their class called out their name, even if it was just to pass a notebook given by their professor. But end of the day, when they reach their hostel, they would let their imagination take them to places they can’t go.

Ashwin and his group of friends from small town were staying in the college hostel on campus. Staying in a boys hostel during one’s college days is a unique experience. You get to meet guys from all walks of life, coming from every part of the country. There were the weirdos who rag their juniors in perverted ways, drunkards who are sober only for few hours in the morning, dimwits who had fallen for pyramid schemes and trying to recruit naive freshers into the same. There’s always the one go to guy for everybody in the hostel who usually has everything required by these adolescent guys high on hormones. In this hostel it was Govind -who was referred to as the ‘Google’ Govind as he had an answer for all their needs.

Among many other things, the ‘Google’ guy in hostel had a creepy list of phone numbers of college girls with information like their name, place they studied, etc. He would give out one contact in return for a small favour like buying him a beer or loaning him the bike for an evening. Rumour was that the numbers and names more often did not match and he was just a fraudster. Remember the year 2004 was pre-smartphone era. Mobile phones were just starting to get into the hands of more people in India. The mobile numbers were strictly used only to communicate with somebody and it was not tied to any other thing like bank accounts. It was also not uncommon to receive SMS jokes from unknown numbers.

One fine evening, Ashwin decided he had enough of being single in this new big city he had moved to. He decided to ask for a contact from ‘Google’ Govind. He thought at least this way he will be able to speak to some girl, and she can’t see him quavering on the other end of phone.

After buying him a beer, and a pack of cigarettes, Govind finally gave in. “Here’s the contact — name is Isha and she is first year student at Stella Maris College”. Though Ashwin felt guilty of getting a girl’s number through this means, he couldn’t contain his excitement. He had his dinner early and sat in his room watching the clock. He was calculating the ideal time to make a call — not too early to disturb a dinner or not too late to disturb a sleep. He had sent out his roommate Vivek on the pretext of having a serious call with the family, so that there would be no disturbance.

At around 9.30 pm, Ashwin punched in the numbers in his Nokia 1100 phone. It was ringing on the other side. In the lonely silence of his room Ashwin could hear his heartbeat.

“Hello” said the voice of a girl on the other side.

Ashwin hesitated for a second.

“Hello, who’s this?” the girl asked in an enquiring tone.

Ashwin gathered all the courage he had and muttered “uh.. Hi, is this Isha?” in a deep base voice. He was surprised where this new voice came from him.

“Yes, this is Isha.. Who’s calling?”

Ashwin had not thought about what to say to her. He just blurted out whatever came in his mind.

“Hi Isha.. I.. I’m Ashwin from Anna University. I got your contact from a friend who said.. um.. you’re the most beautiful girl at Stella Maris”.

This ridiculous, obvious flattery may not have worked for anybody, any day. But, cupid was kind to Ashwin on that day. These were early days of mobile phone and calls from strangers were not a common thing yet. Isha was curious about this smooth talking guy with a deep voice and how her number had reached to a college she had never set foot in.

“Hi Ashwin.. I don’t know about the college, but I have heard from guys that I was the prettiest in my school” flirted back Isha.

“So what do you study Ashwin?”

The conversation started to take off. Ashwin couldn’t believe his luck. Not only the contact he got from ‘Google’ Govind was genuine, the girl was flirting back at him. Another thing that greatly helped Ashwin was, he just had to say few ‘mmms’ & ‘ oh ya..’ and Isha would continue to speak about things on and on. Over 40 minutes had gone by and Ashwin barely noticed his roommate Vivek had comeback.

“Ok Ashwin.. nice speaking to you.. It’s pretty late and I gotta get back to my assignment. Talk to you later…” said Isha.

Ashwin threw his phone on the bed with a beaming smile and some sense of accomplishment. He cockily boasted to his roommate all about the call and how he had made a new girl-friend (not girlfriend). Vivek had a hard time to believe his awkwardly introverted roommate had done this improbable thing. Vivek wanted him to prove it. Ashwin hesitated to call Isha again just to prove a point to his roommate. He was afraid she might find him annoying and cut him off for good. But he came up with a brilliant alternative plan.

Ashwin logged into Orkut from his desktop and looked up for Isha living in Chennai. As he scrolled through numerous Isha-s that came up in the search list, there was one profile which said she was a student at Stella Maris. Unlike Ashwin who had a lame profile picture of “A” on fire, this had a real picture. The profile picture was of a girl in a red dress, holding a pug pup in her hand. If this was the Isha that he had talked to a while ago, she must indeed be the most beautiful girl in her college. At least that’s what Ashwin thought.

For a minute, he could put Isha in all those dream scenarios he had imagined — hangout at Spencer Plaza, movie at Sathyam cinemas, etc. A pat on his shoulder by Vivek, woke him from his trance. Vivek dared him to write on her Orkut Scrapbook.

‘Hi Isha.. This is Ashwin! We just spoke a while ago.. good to see you on Orkut’ . As soon as he wrote, there was a notification of new scrap in his profile.

‘Hi Ashwin, so now you are stalking me online also :)?’ came the reply. The smiley at the end suggested she was just kidding.

‘I didn’t know one could do assignments on Orkut’ — Ashwin continued from where he left on phone.

‘ You’re funny 😀 .. I am really doing the assignment now.. Talk to you tomorrow’, wrote Isha.

Ashwin logged off and was looking smugly at Vivek, whose jaw had dropped at the last reply.

Ashwin impatiently waited for next day to make the call. He called Isha about same time and she picked up the call and continued the conversation from where they left. Ashwin was getting comfortable in extending the conversations with her. Isha would do the bulk of the talking about most mundane things in her daily life, but he found it interesting to hear from her.

Three weeks since they started talking, the calls started to last for hours sometimes. One day when he called her number, the phone went on waiting call for some time. 15 minutes seemed like long time for Ashwin. Finally Isha called back and said “Hey guess what.. I got a call from some guy named Karthik from Bangalore.. just like you, I don’t know how he got my number”. For the first time Ashwin felt possessive about her.

“Why did you pick a call from a stranger?” asked Ashwin in an irritated tone forgetting that he himself was one just three weeks back.

Isha was taken aback. “How can you decide who I speak to? Didn’t we start talking the same way.. I like making new friends and you don’t get to dictate what I should or should not do”.

The call was abruptly cut. For the first time in his life Ashwin felt mixed emotions of anger, jealousy and helplessness. He did not want to call back and explain, yet he was insecure she would probably be on call with her new friend from Bangalore. His mind kept replaying last words and he could not sleep peacefully. Around 4 am, he texted a single word ‘Sorry’ to her and waited restlessly for her reply. He went for his classes as usual, but all he had in mind was if he would be able to talk to her again.

Two days went by and her reply never came. Ashwin withdrew himself from other people and spent his time alone in the hostel. Vivek looked at the pathetic state his roommate was and convinced Ashwin to give up on his ego and try giving her a call.

Finally Ashwin gave in and made the call. Isha picked it up after a few rings, but her voice was unusually dull. Ashwin had a guilt pleasure in imagining that she had been sad because of the fight they had two days back. Finally Isha opened up, “You were right Ashwin. I shouldn’t have spoken to that anonymous guy from Bangalore. The other day he called me and spoke very sleazily.. I never picked his call after that.. Now he has passed my number to his friends and they are harassing me.. They keep calling me even if I don’t pick up and text very vulgarly.. I feel scared”

Ashwin became furious as Isha spoke. He so wanted to tell her ‘I told you so’, but refrained from doing so. He genuinely felt sorry for her and wanted to help her out in anyway he could but felt helpless himself. He thought of confronting this anonymous guy from Bangalore but he wasn’t very good at confrontations and worried if it could backfire. He held all these thoughts to himself, but showed only his confident side to Isha.

“Isha you just pass me the number of that Karthik from Bangalore. I will take care of the rest”.

Isha texted the number to Ashwin. Ashwin was just staring at his phone screen and was still wondering what to do. He confided the trouble Isha was facing to his roommate Vivek and asked him if he can help her out in anyway. Vivek had a way of making up stories and narrating it so sincerely that he himself would believe his lies. With a gleam in his eye, Vivek told Ashwin to hand him his phone. He called up Karthik and waited impatiently for the other end to pick up the phone. As soon as he heard hello from the other side, Vivek went into his narrative mode.

“Is this Karthik? I am inspector Vivek calling from cybercrime division of Tamil Nadu. We have received a complaint that you and few other guys have been harassing a girl named Isha from Chennai.” As he said this, he waited to hear what kind of response he got from the other side. When he only heard a feeble voice muttering sorry on the other end, Vivek’s confidence in his new role grew. He started abusing this guy in the choicest of words as Ashwin watched in horror. Karthik on the other end was terrified and kept mumbling out sorry after sorry. In the end, Vivek told Karthik, he would let them off with this warning, but all of them had to send an apology immediately to Isha.

When Vivek ended the call, Ashwin still had an adrenaline rush of watching this drama unfold in front of his eyes. He thought had he been in Karthik’s place he himself would have completely believed whatever Vivek had just said. As the two roommates were sharing a laugh on how they had fooled a bunch of guys in Bangalore that they were in trouble with cyber police, Ashwin’s phone rang. It was Isha.

“Ashwin.. What did you do? I have been receiving sorry messages from all the numbers that were harassing me”

Ashwin was very pleased that the phone call by Vivek had it’s intended effect. He wanted to keep Vivek out of the picture and tried to take credit in solving the distress of his damsel.

“Hi Isha.. I just confronted those guys and threatened them with consequences if they don’t stop the harassment and apologize to you immediately.. Don’t worry these guys won’t disturb you anymore”

Still surprised Isha said “How did that even work? I can’t believe you just made them stop it immediately.. I feel so light now.. You’ve been a lifesaver”

Ashwin felt he had bridged distance between them and now he was indeed her one true friend in need. He now felt like he had to protect her from something like this happening again and doing so would also fend off any potential competition from other guys in the near future.

Ashwin slowly told her “Isha, I may have made these guys apologize today.. But we still don’t know how many others have your number.. Why don’t you change your number and then give it only to people whom you trust?”

Isha had been thinking the same since the harassment started. What Ashwin said now was reaffirming her thoughts.

“You are such a sweet friend, Ashwin.. Good night now!”

Only a month ago, Ashwin had been a complete stranger to Isha. Now, he felt as if he were the one person she trusted most. But his mind couldn’t help but wander beyond friendship, imagining something more. When he first got her contact, he could never have guessed how quickly they would grow close, how easily their conversations would fill his days. For the first time, he felt a longing in his heart — a sense that what he shared with her was more than friendship, something nascent yet thrillingly real. It was late into the night when Ashwin drifted into a dream world with Isha, losing track of time and not knowing whether the dreams he had were born of sleep or was he still awake.

He woke up late the next morning and hurried to college, but his mind was elsewhere. He couldn’t focus on the lectures — his thoughts kept drifting to the evening ahead, when he’d return to his hostel and finally have a chance to talk to Isha. After the events of the previous night, Ashwin felt a surge of confidence and was determined to ask her to meet up in person the following weekend. As soon as classes ended, he rushed back to his hostel, his heart pounding not just from the sprint, but from the question he was about to ask her. His fingers trembled as he dialled Isha’s number and kept the phone in his ear. When he heard a new lady’s voice on the other end, the thrill he had turned into shock as the voice said,

“The number you’ve dialled is not in service. Please check the number and try again”

Ashwin tried calling again. He thought maybe there was an issue with the network. He walked out to the open ground next to the hostel and kept trying the number again for over an hour, but it still had the same result. It started to get dark, and Ashwin stared at the horizon blankly. Had she really taken his advice, but not trusted him enough to stay in touch? When it finally dawned on him, it hit him harder than he expected. It had happened so abruptly. Just last night he thought he was Isha’s most trusted friend. Now he was not even a stranger to her, but a forgotten chapter. Ashwin soon discovered that she had also removed him from Orkut. Vivek, who knew how much his roommate was looking forward to this evening, bursted out laughing when he learned Isha had ghosted Ashwin.

Times changed — Ashwin graduated from his university in 4 years, moved to Mumbai and started working as an IT engineer. As years passed Orkut faded into obscurity, replaced by the rise of Facebook, Instagram, and a new wave of social media platforms. Ashwin continued searching for Isha in every new platform, but without knowing her last name, he could never find her again. As for Vivek, this became his favorite story to tell whenever he had a few drinks and the story only got bigger and better over the years.