Reviwed by Aanand Vasu.
I stepped forward, but the girl in me did forbid me from taking the next step. Every second I stood there, he felt more embarrassed. So I decided that, I would at least leave the room.
I was rolling on my bed thinking about the kiss, which would have been my life’s first kiss, and the darkened face of Shantanu.
The next morning Anu was ready with coffee for me and tea for Shantanu. I was reminded of my mother, but Shantanu felt it otherwise. He felt uneasy that, why she should do that to us. Shantanu couldn’t retort to Anu’s reply ‘Should I not serve tea to my brother?’
Shantanu impulsively turned down his head away at my sight. He avoided my eyes while speaking to me. He was very uncomfortable. He was so very disturbed about the previous night’s incident.
We reached college a little after 10AM. Project demos were already going on. Our classmates swarmed the department with laptops to get their projects demonstrated soon.
Our turn came. Shantanu was supposed to be one of the best ever presenters of our class. His charming presentations, which always fetched him an edge over the other good projects was absent that day. He sounded dull and absent minded.
I managed the situation, and we got our projects evaluated. We got good marks. Sir complimented the efforts taken to bring out such a neat piece of software, but he awarded more marks to me, and the least in our team to Shantanu, thinking that he was one of those sleeping team members, because of his poor response in the demo.
That evening in hostel, I had ruminations about the previous day’s incident. We had another solid week for our 6th semester exam. Divya just then entered our room.
“Hi Guys”
I was sitting in grave silence. I was lost in thought, and was staring at the wall.
“Hey Elvi. Elvviiiii” She came near me, and shook me by my shoulder. I was startled for a moment and said, “Oh hey hii”
“Hey what’s wrong yaar? What are you thinking of so deeply about? Microsoft!”, with a sarcastic smile. I was thoroughly annoyed. ‘Why would they bring in Mic for everything?’
Anu joined, “Ya even I have been noticing her, something is wrong with her. I wanted to ask but had forgotten due to this projects stuff”
I remained silent. Divya again, “Oh come on Elvi what’s wrong?”
“Nothing yaar, I m just fine..” before they could respond I myself felt like sharing it with them, so I opened up. I explained what happened the previous night. “I am feeling so bad. He is such a gentleman. He never ever made any amorous move before. I made him feel guilty.” I told them looking down at the floor in grief.
Anu, “Oh! that’s why both you guys were looking grave the whole day.”
“Come on sweetheart. That’s alright. It’s not a thing for which you have to worry about.”, Divya
“But is it wrong to kiss someone whom you are going to live with for the rest of your lives? Why did I give him such an impression, as if he had attempted to commit a crime?” I continued in my melancholic tone.
Sangi who was silent till then, “May be she feels bad for missing the kiss”
‘Sh*t! Damn the understanding of these room mates. How did she find out that, it was one of the reasons’ Anyway I managed, “Stop the nonsense. I feel bad only for making him feel bad.”
Sangi retorted, “Hey hold it. He must have badly wanted to kiss you. That’s why he is creating such a scene.”
Anu countered, “Hey he is not that sort of a guy. He is gem of a person. He must have really felt bad about it.”
“Good or bad everyone has feelings. He is no exception. He is no saint either. May be he might have wanted to, yet that’s not bad either.” Divya.
A few seconds of silence, everyone was looking at me to say something. I looked up at them and said, “If a kiss is all he wants, he deserves much more than that.”
Obviously they were all puzzled by my reply. I gave them a break for them to digest what I had just told them. I then continued, “I am taking him again to gramps’ guest house.”
“Are you nuts?”
“You must be kidding.”
“Hey you sound serious, aren’t you?”
Another momentary break, “Yes I am.”
“You mean…”
“Yes I mean the same.”
“Shantanu will never acquiesce for anything of that sort”, Anu.
“Whether or not he does, you can never do this.” Sangi. She looked at Divya for support.
Divya after a deep breath, “I know you. You would never get back from what you have decided upon. All I can say is, just be safe and careful, you have got dreams to conquer.”
I always used to wonder, how someone could be so matured, thoughtful and most importantly pragmatic. Divya had always earned my respect in every action of hers, and in every word she said.
Anu and Sangi wanted to tell something, but they stopped themselves. As always Divya’s statement concluded the discussion. We all keeping this thing aside watched the movie, ‘Get Smart’.
After the movie we went to bed. I expected Shantanu to call me, but it was not so late so I did the calling myself. I fulfilled the formality of saying, ‘I love you.’
I was thinking about the decision the whole night. I made up my mind, and there was no turning back. Neither the temptation nor the guilty feeling had it, but my adventurous nature did. That was the one which drove me into drinking vodka, and been responsible for various incidents like the action at the theatre.
As always even this time the curiosity and thrill of doing something that I was not supposed to do took over me. I called Shantanu before I could change my mind, “Hi honey still not asleep.”
He sounded back to normal. I was a bit relieved. I replied, “You wanted to kiss me right?”
“Yes, but I m really sorry. It was a mistake. I..”
I interrupted him, “I want to kiss you.”
‘Silence’
“Not just that, I want to make you feel I am all yours.”
Showing posts with label projects. Show all posts
Showing posts with label projects. Show all posts
Project Turn On (LXVI)
Reviewed by Lakshminarasimhan.
This post is dedicated to this blog's recent followers 205 889, Karthick and Enbanathan.
In our college symposium I was made the person in charge of all computer science related events. In fact, I was the one who asked for it, in spite of Shantnu warning me to concentrate on my academics. We conducted Programming contests, debugging contests and half a dozen variations of these.
Participants either got annoyed, or were intrigued about the tuff questions set by me. Our senior Harini, who christened me as Microsoft told me that I was proving to be a worthy candidate for Microsoft. I rather felt, that exercise helped me a lot in gaining more knowledge on coding and concepts.
Shantanu was also satisfied about the way symposium activities added to my knowledge. He dreamed more about me getting into Microsoft than me. We finished our 2nd assessments in the week after the symposium. We had our 6th semester exams in a month.
The symposium was academically useful, nevertheless it affected our 2nd assessment marks. As always all our 3rd assessment tests were replaced by mini-projects. That was one hell of an important thing for me, if I wanted to continue getting 9 in that semester as my 2nd asses marks were bad. I decided to do all projects in teams with Shantanu, as he would surely get me good marks in projects.
Anu and Sangi my understanding friends agreed to my idea of doing projects with Shantanu. We did include either Shantanu’s friend Hari and Palani or my friends if the team can have more than 2 members nevertheless the two of us had to do the entire coding stuff.
Anu and Sangi did manage, but Shantanu felt a little bad to leave his usual project companions Hari and Palani behind, as they were his only friends at college, who didn’t have any professional relation with him. Anyway he could never say ‘no’ to me, especially, if he saw my eyes turn red from their usual blue, and he in fact cared more about my marks than me.
The days were not enough for us to complete all the six projects. I stayed back in one of our classrooms with Shantanu till 8.30PM, beyond which I had to finish my dinner, and go back to hostel. We were doing well, but with that pace we would never be able to finish all 6 projects in time.
The entire department was busy doing projects. During the day we saw all the gangs, especially the bisexual ones under trees, classrooms and even on footpaths with their laptops, bugging themselves in completing the projects.
Most teams were mixed teams with a minority of the team working, and the rest resting. Tamarai and Vikram the two geeky guys of our class were teams together, and that was supposed to be the geekiest team in the department. Krishna and Sundari were teams together in most of the projects.
At hostel girls made sexually explicit comments about the duo Kirshna and Sundari. However bad I hated her, I never admit making comments about someone which were not true, and when it comes to sexually explicit comments, I would never ever approve of them. Girls stopped making such comments, at least in my presence.
We spent hours and hours together, but we never had even minutes for love or romance. The project work was killing us every second. Shantanu being a perfectionist never compromised on anything less than the best. This had us work longer, however the results we knew were really going to pay off.
It had become our usual schedule to go to bed by 2AM or even later. However engrossed and busy we were, Shantanu made it a point to bid as ‘I love u’ every night over phone before we went to bed.
In those weeks that had passed with the project works, I almost forgot mom; skipped a meal. At times even before brushing I turned on my laptop to check, whether the solutions that occurred to me in my dreams really worked.
Apart from doing our own projects, both of us were obliged to help our friends. This was the reason, why we had to work so hard and long. Nevertheless our friends were very helpful. They did everything they could do to support us, unlike other mixed teams where everything right from abstract submission till documentation will be done by a single person.
While at hostel we discussed things online, and coded independent modules. In the next evening, we integrated the program parts that we coded individually the previous night. We had only two more weeks for the deadline for the projects’ submission. We still had more than 60% of the work to be completed.
The worst part is one can never estimate the time one would take to complete a program. So, the work remaining may very well be more than 60% in terms of the time it would take. So we really started worrying, with 50% more time, and more than 60% of work, yet to be completed.
We worked at 150% efficiency while working together, hence staying together as long as possible was definitely a very good option. But the question was ‘Where?’ Finally we decided that we would work in my gramps’ guest house in the city.
The next day Anu, Shantanu and I left to the guest house telling grand pa, “I am staying with my friends on some work, for which we feel hostel not so comfortable”. Grand pa who was only too desperate for his only grand daughter’s love acquiesced without another word. I only knew it too well that he would have me killed, if he came to know a guy was one among the ‘friends’.
We worked and worked until we fainted. Actually it was not that hard but we did it terrifically big with a passion, as we loved to work in each other’s company, and we took sophisticated topics for our projects. The projects came up well. Near the deadline week we almost completed everything except for a few final touches and testing.
It was Tuesday of the last working week of the semester. Out of the 6 projects the demos for 4 were over, and obviously we topped in all of them but one. Shantanu tried to help Palani and Hari, and he gave the basic code of our complier project asking them to build up on the code, and change the interface to make it look like an entirely different project. Unfortunately we were caught, and our faculty got so very annoyed. We worried what would he do to our internals or worst case to our externals as well.
One of the good things I learned from Shantanu is not to worry about something that, we could do nothing about. So we got back to work as usual for the other 2 projects that evening. The project was almost over, and we would have very well finished it at our college, yet we left for the guest house.
The night passed midnight. Shantanu never got satisfied with what he had done. He kept improvising the project adding graphics and enhancing the interface. Anu as always went to bed in another bedroom. We continued to work for sometime.
I was drowsy, Vanessa Carlton’s-A 1000 miles was melodiously playing in my laptop that made me feel sleepier. I was tired of working till 3AM the previous night, and the project demos, that extended for the whole day, waiting in and around the department for the faculty. Shantanu asked me to go to bed.
I saw Anu sleeping soundly; I lied down by her side. Just then I remembered that we forgot to tell ‘Love u honey’ to each other. Though it was not a forcible formality, I had no intention of breaking it. I walked back to the room, where we were working.
Shantanu was exercising stretching and twisting his arms to let a proper blood flow. This was a normal relaxation procedure for an IT professional working for hours. I stepped closer to him, he looked at me, and I said, “Love u honey. Good night”
He inching closer to me tried to kiss me. For a moment the girl in me overpowered me, and I instantly turned away. Realizing the scene Shantanu stepped back and said, “I am sorry. Sorry….”.
He looked very embarrassed. I felt very bad about myself. One thing, I would have loved being kissed by him, and other, I had no intention of making Shantanu feel guilty. He was unable to face me.
I was struck there, clueless about what to do. My instinct said that, I should step in and kiss him.
This post is dedicated to this blog's recent followers 205 889, Karthick and Enbanathan.
In our college symposium I was made the person in charge of all computer science related events. In fact, I was the one who asked for it, in spite of Shantnu warning me to concentrate on my academics. We conducted Programming contests, debugging contests and half a dozen variations of these.
Participants either got annoyed, or were intrigued about the tuff questions set by me. Our senior Harini, who christened me as Microsoft told me that I was proving to be a worthy candidate for Microsoft. I rather felt, that exercise helped me a lot in gaining more knowledge on coding and concepts.
Shantanu was also satisfied about the way symposium activities added to my knowledge. He dreamed more about me getting into Microsoft than me. We finished our 2nd assessments in the week after the symposium. We had our 6th semester exams in a month.
The symposium was academically useful, nevertheless it affected our 2nd assessment marks. As always all our 3rd assessment tests were replaced by mini-projects. That was one hell of an important thing for me, if I wanted to continue getting 9 in that semester as my 2nd asses marks were bad. I decided to do all projects in teams with Shantanu, as he would surely get me good marks in projects.
Anu and Sangi my understanding friends agreed to my idea of doing projects with Shantanu. We did include either Shantanu’s friend Hari and Palani or my friends if the team can have more than 2 members nevertheless the two of us had to do the entire coding stuff.
Anu and Sangi did manage, but Shantanu felt a little bad to leave his usual project companions Hari and Palani behind, as they were his only friends at college, who didn’t have any professional relation with him. Anyway he could never say ‘no’ to me, especially, if he saw my eyes turn red from their usual blue, and he in fact cared more about my marks than me.
The days were not enough for us to complete all the six projects. I stayed back in one of our classrooms with Shantanu till 8.30PM, beyond which I had to finish my dinner, and go back to hostel. We were doing well, but with that pace we would never be able to finish all 6 projects in time.
The entire department was busy doing projects. During the day we saw all the gangs, especially the bisexual ones under trees, classrooms and even on footpaths with their laptops, bugging themselves in completing the projects.
Most teams were mixed teams with a minority of the team working, and the rest resting. Tamarai and Vikram the two geeky guys of our class were teams together, and that was supposed to be the geekiest team in the department. Krishna and Sundari were teams together in most of the projects.
At hostel girls made sexually explicit comments about the duo Kirshna and Sundari. However bad I hated her, I never admit making comments about someone which were not true, and when it comes to sexually explicit comments, I would never ever approve of them. Girls stopped making such comments, at least in my presence.
We spent hours and hours together, but we never had even minutes for love or romance. The project work was killing us every second. Shantanu being a perfectionist never compromised on anything less than the best. This had us work longer, however the results we knew were really going to pay off.
It had become our usual schedule to go to bed by 2AM or even later. However engrossed and busy we were, Shantanu made it a point to bid as ‘I love u’ every night over phone before we went to bed.
In those weeks that had passed with the project works, I almost forgot mom; skipped a meal. At times even before brushing I turned on my laptop to check, whether the solutions that occurred to me in my dreams really worked.
Apart from doing our own projects, both of us were obliged to help our friends. This was the reason, why we had to work so hard and long. Nevertheless our friends were very helpful. They did everything they could do to support us, unlike other mixed teams where everything right from abstract submission till documentation will be done by a single person.
While at hostel we discussed things online, and coded independent modules. In the next evening, we integrated the program parts that we coded individually the previous night. We had only two more weeks for the deadline for the projects’ submission. We still had more than 60% of the work to be completed.
The worst part is one can never estimate the time one would take to complete a program. So, the work remaining may very well be more than 60% in terms of the time it would take. So we really started worrying, with 50% more time, and more than 60% of work, yet to be completed.
We worked at 150% efficiency while working together, hence staying together as long as possible was definitely a very good option. But the question was ‘Where?’ Finally we decided that we would work in my gramps’ guest house in the city.
The next day Anu, Shantanu and I left to the guest house telling grand pa, “I am staying with my friends on some work, for which we feel hostel not so comfortable”. Grand pa who was only too desperate for his only grand daughter’s love acquiesced without another word. I only knew it too well that he would have me killed, if he came to know a guy was one among the ‘friends’.
We worked and worked until we fainted. Actually it was not that hard but we did it terrifically big with a passion, as we loved to work in each other’s company, and we took sophisticated topics for our projects. The projects came up well. Near the deadline week we almost completed everything except for a few final touches and testing.
It was Tuesday of the last working week of the semester. Out of the 6 projects the demos for 4 were over, and obviously we topped in all of them but one. Shantanu tried to help Palani and Hari, and he gave the basic code of our complier project asking them to build up on the code, and change the interface to make it look like an entirely different project. Unfortunately we were caught, and our faculty got so very annoyed. We worried what would he do to our internals or worst case to our externals as well.
One of the good things I learned from Shantanu is not to worry about something that, we could do nothing about. So we got back to work as usual for the other 2 projects that evening. The project was almost over, and we would have very well finished it at our college, yet we left for the guest house.
The night passed midnight. Shantanu never got satisfied with what he had done. He kept improvising the project adding graphics and enhancing the interface. Anu as always went to bed in another bedroom. We continued to work for sometime.
I was drowsy, Vanessa Carlton’s-A 1000 miles was melodiously playing in my laptop that made me feel sleepier. I was tired of working till 3AM the previous night, and the project demos, that extended for the whole day, waiting in and around the department for the faculty. Shantanu asked me to go to bed.
I saw Anu sleeping soundly; I lied down by her side. Just then I remembered that we forgot to tell ‘Love u honey’ to each other. Though it was not a forcible formality, I had no intention of breaking it. I walked back to the room, where we were working.
Shantanu was exercising stretching and twisting his arms to let a proper blood flow. This was a normal relaxation procedure for an IT professional working for hours. I stepped closer to him, he looked at me, and I said, “Love u honey. Good night”
He inching closer to me tried to kiss me. For a moment the girl in me overpowered me, and I instantly turned away. Realizing the scene Shantanu stepped back and said, “I am sorry. Sorry….”.
He looked very embarrassed. I felt very bad about myself. One thing, I would have loved being kissed by him, and other, I had no intention of making Shantanu feel guilty. He was unable to face me.
I was struck there, clueless about what to do. My instinct said that, I should step in and kiss him.
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