The only choice

He sat looking at her eating her diet ice-cream, and thought to himself, good grief, he had clearly misunderstood when she said she worked for a government organization. Army intelligence is not exactly a government organization. How had he ended up here. Now, then when he thought about it, probably the fact that she was his friend’s sister and he met her at his house, he had stood watching her while she was listening to soft rock, working on some computer security, taking over her brother’s study and making it into a small office, working late into the night, wearing yellow coloured, tight pyjamas. On being introduced, she had looked up at him and smiled putting her hand out, saying that she was terribly pleased to meet him. That was what did it.

He had gone with his friend to their old watering hole, sat there eating peanuts that came in paper covers, and drinking from plastic glasses, they were celebrating his return from Srilanka after serving in the Indian peace force. Having seen the sweet sorrow of suffering, he wanted to be back to his extinct life as a news reporter. He wanted to go and cover the new India, the innovative ideas coming from unexpected quarters, developing new technology with advanced basics suiting rural conditions, ideas that were coming from every nook and corner of the country. He was sure he did not want to cover some political event, even if he would get to do some live recording of an upcoming honest politician making history during prime time. They sat discussing varied topics, and when the place shut they had gone over to his friends house and that’s when he met her, and all the memories came flooding back, in a moment of single thought that day, she had reminded him of his old love, so unlike him, it was the same difference that struck him, which he found missing today. Now she was sitting digging into her ice cream and reading some new classic, Now, then he felt she was acting natural and it was he who felt like a real imitation of his old self. When he told her he would be going off for a few weeks to the north east on a working vacation, without looking up she asked him if he could give an exact estimation of when he would be back, said she could then plan another assignment. He asked her if she would like to come too, and she said no. Once again, he had the feeling that a definite maybe from her would have been better than a clear no.

So many times he had wanted to know about her work, but she never allowed him to probe. Some times when he got within a close distance from knowing, he felt like he was dealing with a Microsoft tech support agent. He was finally tired of the uncertainty, he walked towards her feeling a calm storm within, and reaching her side he wanted to ask her why she treated him that way and instead asked her what was all that paper on her table, she looked up and told him that was the completed research work that she had been working on, and she had kept a detailed summary on his table so that he would know what she had worked on. All his thoughts seemed wrong, he had wanted to confront her and now having drawn a blank, he stood there wondering if it was a deliberate mistake, why had she been demanding patience all along only to so easily let him see what she worked on? He had no idea whether this was a common phenomenon with all women or was she unique, whether he was a perfect misfit and was this his only choice?