23 chapter 23

No one, no one can ever argue with the finality of the voice when ASR sets his eyes on something. Lavanya is quite an intelligent woman and hence she knew better than to argue with him. He smiled internally pleased with himself while seeing the flash of decision being made behind the dark orbs of her eyes.

"Khushi was a very different girl to start with. She was very aloof and hardly talked to anyone--"

"I know most of this Lavanya, can you please recollect and try and tell me one such thing about her that you might have observed, which probably an outsider might not have?" he suggested.

"Look Mr.Raizada, let me very honest with you, she wasn't like my best friend or something, not even a very close friend. I just found her very mysterious you know from the whole lot of the people around me, I found her different and I just reached out to her myself. She never talks about herself at all. If you do reach out to her, the only way you would know that she indeed needs a company is when she sits with you in complete silence. She a very good listener I must say, she always listened to what others talked about their life with a very keen interest. But when it comes to her, she shuts off people. So I just want to say, I hardly know anything about her; I reached out to her and she felt comfortable in sharing my silent presence sometimes, I was just being there. That is all."

"You are really a good friend Lavanya. So, if there isn't anything else, I guess our meeting wraps here--" he raised an eye-brow looking at her hoping she would come up with something.

"Um, actually there is something else I'm not sure if that makes any sense for whatever purpose this information is needed---"

"Just tell me, anything any small little thing will be very helpful, trust me" he assured her and she took a deep breath.

"I noticed this myself; she maintains this kind of abnormal distance from men---"

"What???" he asked incredulously.

"I mean, although generally she is aloof from everyone, when it comes to men, she is all the more aloof. She doesn't really mingle with them well. It's always only for professional purpose. If anyone tried to approach her for anything else beyond work, she freaks out. In this cooperate world, you know how it is, but she freaks out beyond what is necessary. Self defense is one thing but she becomes this ferocious self which I thought is very abnormal. You would see these complaints filed by her in that file which comes under sexual harassment in workplace, but trust me, I have seen it all very closely and all those instances aren't that severe to actually file a complaint---"

"Like what?" he almost snapped suddenly finding himself very much disoriented.

"Um, like this one incident when one of my colleagues asked her out for a date, if she wasn't interested she could have just said a simple no, trust me, he is a good guy and would have let her be. But I have seen her go all ferocious on him, even cursed him and in turn filed a complaint. I'm not blaming her as such, but this seemed strange, because I have genuinely seen it in her eyes, she was strangely scared very much actually. She just doesn't even like a guy's presence around her. She is unusually very self conscious and pissed beyond a limit if a guy is around the vicinity of her, but she manages pretty well as long as work is concerned. She is very conservative that way, or so I concluded that myself--"

"She isn't" he more or less mumbled to himself.