6 Chapter 6

Like every other weekend, I was lying beside him when suddenly he said: "I think we should plan something, I mean somewhere a sort of small trip."

"Trip??" I asked surprisingly.

"yeh, on weekends," he said.

"hmmm," I nodded.

...

We planned to visit Auli, a place in Uttarakhand and probably one of the skiing destination in India. Biki informed me that his cousin Pragya along with her husband, her brother and two of his college mates will accompany us.

It was a shivering December night and was about midnight. I saw their car stopped in front of my room. I took my bags and was about to move towards it when I saw Biki with a glass of rum, coming towards me. I saw two other guys one with an upright moustache and other probably as tall as Biki was. Beside them, I saw a beautiful girl with blonde curly hairs in her woollen pyjama and a blue hood with the symbol of Pepsi into it. She was Neha, Biki's college mate. The guy with the moustache was Prakrit his cousin and the other was Tarun his batchmate. After the formal intro, we took our sits and proceed toward Pragya 's home.

...

"Biki, I need to pee," I said hesitatingly.

"What?? Now!!" he said.

" Yep, it's urgent".

"aah! let's do one thing, I'll tell Pragya she'll take you to her home.

God knows why I rarely used to have a formal introduction with people. I was meeting her for the first time and how lucky I am that I met her in this condition. It was a dark road with stray dogs, I saw Pragya covering her self with a pink blanket and her husband Raj with a Rucksack. Pragya was as tiny as I was, with a cute smile, with her light brown hairs tied in a bun while Raj at first instance seems to be a bearded gentleman, who might be very serious about everything. But later I realized he was totally different from what I imagined. In fact, he was a compendium of Bollywood dialogues and was the man who cracked dialogues and jokes throughout the entire trip.

....

So it was a chilling winter and about 1.30 am at night. We started our journey to Auli. It was my first journey with the man I fell in love just a few months ago or with a stranger I knew since 3yrs. And the coincidence was that it was the same Christmas eve and I am celebrating it with him in anothextremities, yes, this time with snow cap mountains instead of those sand dunes where I first saw the dawn of my life.

...

"Biki is she comfortable in speaking Hindi??" Pragya asked Biki as I was not talking for a while.

"No no, she can," Biki said and laughed.

This is one of my demerits that whenever I felt something special I covered myself into my thoughts and started finding ways to keep the fervour with me forever. I like to close my eyes, be calm and feel the moment as if it exists till infinity. But at that time I decided to broke my silence as this might give the wrong signal to them at the first phase.

"I can speak," I said and smiled. So this was the beginning of our conversation which resulted in a never-ending bond between me and them, and assimilation of them into my memories.

.....