章 14: ‘The prank’
My phone beeped again after a few minutes; I checked, once more, it was Sneha’s text. I ignored it and placed back the phone aside. At precisely ten p.m. my phone started ringing, the call was from the wrong number.
“Hello,” I picked the call and said.
“Hello, Sid,” she replied.
“What is your name? I would not talk to you any further until you tell me your name,” I cleared my intentions to her.
“Neha,” she told me without any argument, unlike her usual way, which was startling; moreover, her name was quite surprising too as it was just similar to Sneha. For one moment, I thought both of those girls were the same, and Sneha was merely doing a prank with me. What did Aniket say ‘she changed her number recently’ and what if she was using two different numbers to call and text me? Suspicion started coming into my mind, but I couldn’t clear my doubts just by asking her straightforwardly; of course, she would lie. Why would she accept that she was doing the trick with me? I thought not to ask her directly; instead, I continued talking to her. I knew I would reach the truth sooner or later, only if there were any.
“Who picked your phone when I called you this morning?” I asked her the question which was messing around with my mind the whole day.
“When did you call me?” she asked.
“I called you in the early morning. Someone picked the call; it was some guy. Who was he?” I asked.
“How is this possible? My dad is not at home. He is out for some work for two days, and I also don’t have any brother; it is my mom and me who are in the house. How can you say some guy picked the call when there is no guy in the house?” she replied and asked at the same time. She was also surprised; I could feel that in her tone, she was asking genuinely.
“But someone picked it. I am sure about that. I disconnected the call as soon as that guy picked it. You can check your call logs; you would definitely see my number there,” I tried to explain to her.
“I do not need to check my call logs. I switched off my phone after talking to you because the battery of my phone was pretty low. And I turned it on only after waking up, and I woke up around eleven a.m. You said you called me in the early morning, so there was no chance someone could pick my phone when it was off. You must be in your sleep and misdialed the number of someone else,” she replied. I told her to wait for a moment and checked my call logs; her number was there. How could that be possible? Was she lying to me? But why would she lie to me when I hadn’t given her any reason to do so or had I? I thought for a while that if there could be some reason which was making her lying to me. But I couldn't find any such ground, which meant she was telling the truth. There could be only one explanation for that confusion; there got some problem with the phone line. I dialed her number, but the call got connected to someone else. That had happened with me earlier too. So there was no guy, I thought and felt relieved. And by the time one thing got clear to me, she was not Sneha. Their voices were completely different. Neha had this soft and sweet voice, but on the other hand, Sneha’s voice was husky. They were two different persons; it made me pleased as I didn’t want to be played by some girl. Now another dilemma was to tell Neha about Sneha.
“Sid, are you there?” she asked when I didn’t speak for quite some time.
“Yes, yes, I am. I guess you are right. I might have dialed someone else’s number. I might be in sleep at that time,” I said and thought not to tell her about Sneha for the moment as I was not sure if I was going to talk to Sneha again; or if she would be willing to speak with me when I completely ignored her texts. So, I didn’t find any need to tell Neha about her.
“Anyway, tell me something more about you. Today I only want to talk about you, your life, your family, your friends, education, likes, dislikes, and whatever else there is but just about you,” that night I didn’t give her any chance to ask me questions. She didn’t say anything and started talking about herself, which was again unexpected. There was no tinge of uneasiness in her way when she began telling about herself. She was getting comfortable with me, and I liked that. She told me she was the only child of her parents. Her dad had a small business in the village, and her mother was a teacher in the local school. She did her schooling from Narkanda only, but she moved to Dehradun to do graduation. She was doing her graduation in commerce stream, and she was in the final year of it. She wanted to be a teacher, just like her mom. She came home for her vacation. She had childhood friends in her village and some from her college. She liked to spend time with her friends while wandering around, seeing nature. She was trying to call one of her college friends who recently changed her number when she wrongly dialed my number. She told me many more things about her village and its beauty, the people living there, her friends, her family, her college, her hostel life. She shared her future plans with me. That was the kind of talk I wanted to have with her from day one. For about two hours, she was talking, and I was listening when she suddenly stopped.
“Why were you trying to call me in the morning?” she asked abruptly. I took some time to think of an exact reason which made me call her in the early morning then I remembered it, it was her picture which she sent before going to sleep, the image which took away my rest. That was the reason, but I didn’t want to talk about that picture or anything related to that with her when she finally was able to speak to me about something which was not creepy.
“I wanted to talk to you more. I was kind of missing you,” I replied. I didn’t tell her the exact reason.
“Are you sure that was the purpose?” she asked as if she was not satisfied with my answer.
“Yes, yes, and I was not feeling sleepy too,” I assured her.
“Okay,” she replied after a few seconds. I changed the topic and again started asking her more about herself.
“Have you ever fallen in love with someone?” I asked. I was not sure if she would answer that question, but she did.
“Yes, I have,” she said.
“Is he still there in your life?” I asked.
“No, but he is in my memories,” she replied.
“Do you still love him?” I asked.
“Yes, I do,” she replied.
“Did he leave you?” I asked.
“Yes, but not by choice,” she replied. I got that. His parents might be against their relationship, the usual thing to happen in our Indian society, I thought.
“What happened?” I still asked while knowing her answer.
“Life left him, and ultimately he left me,” she replied.
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