Meeting a Stranger!

More often than not, certain rudimentary or fundamental things become so inexplicable yet so adoring that you are not really complaining that it has happened, but you are actually enjoying and are actually craving for more of it, at times.

So was this pleasant-sweet acquaintance of mine in an interesting training session that I attended very recently. Names are withheld for all known and unknown reasons.

For the first two days I didn’t know it was this guy that I was talking to for nearly 8 months or so officially. I have heard a lot about this dude and have wanted to see him sometime or the other, a plain curiosity at that, like how managers say “Just wanted to give a face to the name that has been much praised”.

Well, so we spoke on the first coffee break of day 1 during this training and he tells me that he knows me and asked about which project I am into right now and so on.
I was a bit pissed-off at that because, for once I wanted to disassociate myself from the project/domain/account that I belonged to, which has been tagging along with me like a 24X7 shadow or the “Hutch” doggy that keeps following you wherever you go for nearly 3 years now! I don’t have a choice now do I? So, I update him with whatever that I am up to presently and even then the foolish girl in me doesn’t seem to realize that it was the very same guy that I knew of or wanted to meet.

There was an air of significant arrogance and “I-kind-of-know-it-all” around this guy that made me think about the faint similarities that he had with one of my closes friends.
Well, temporarily I discharged the thought and went back to the training after the break.

The next day, I had to deliberately attend to my unsettling fetish for “Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows” to take it along to the training classes with the hope of finishing it off (for the third time!) as I was in the trailing end of the book’s completion.

It was lunch time and I was rushing past the pages of HP7, sunk neck deep into it totally unawares of the surroundings, when I was startled by a voice that said “So, you are a fan of Harry Potter??” For once, I thought I was hallucinating as I didn’t see anyone right ahead of me or next to me, but then instantly I realized that the voice came from behind me and then I craned my neck to turn around and see the owner to whom it belonged to.

Bingo! It’s the same dude. I was like arrghh! I don’t want to start a conversation now, that too not on HP7 where-in I have to talk for it while the other speaks against it. With the gush of these thoughts clambering over each other inside my head, I utter a muffled “Yes”, hoping hard that a monosyllable response would end the conversation at once.

But I was wrong. He said “So this is that last book in the series eh?”.

Still not looking up fully I said “Yeah!”.

With that he quickly added “But hasn’t it been almost two months since the book got released, and are you reading it only now?”

Now, I HAD to look-up, holding the page I was reading with my index finger on it I closed the book and told in an irrefutable voice “I am reading this for the third time”

He didn’t stop there either, instead continued on asking “Ohhhh…So, you were one of those that pre-booked, stood on those long lines on first day and got the book? But why do you read it three times?”

I was really irritated now, “Do I really have to get into the details of how I procured this book now? Does it really matter? I read it more than once because I like it, is there a problem with that?”

A little flabbergasted with that reply, he said “No, I was too curious to know what’s there in that book to be read so passionately?”

With piling up anger showing its shade of red on my face I retorted back saying “What’s NOT there in that book for NOT to be read so passionately? And in any case you wouldn’t know about a Book unless you read it!”

He shrugs his shoulders and says “whatever” and walks away. And I go back to my book.

It was in hindsight that I realized that may be he wasn’t even trying to mock me, but was genuinely trying to make a conversation with me, which I overlooked to understand and reciprocate in a normal manner.

Phew! I hope he forgives my nutty sorta behavior and with any luck we may get to meet and have some decent talking soon!