‘The call’

I was sitting in my room, occupied with my thoughts when my phone started ringing; it was an unknown number. I felt like I had seen that number before too so, I picked the phone and said, "Hello". There was silence on the other end. I again said hello, there was no answer, and the call got disconnected. I put my phone aside and once again went into my thoughts. After a few minutes my phone started ringing again, the same number was flashing on it. I thought for a few seconds whether to pick the call or not, but it got disconnected one more time. And then the damn phone started ringing again for the third time; I picked it up and said hello with some annoyance but only received silence. I was going to disconnect the call when I heard a very soft and tender voice of a girl from the other side.

“Hello," she replied.

“Who is this?” I asked. After a muteness of a few seconds, she replied in the same discreet manner, “May I talk to Riya?” There were both shyness and tenderness in her voice, and for one moment, I wished myself to be Riya so that I could continue my conversation with her, but that was not possible, and by that time I realized, she dialed the wrong number.

After a pause of a few seconds, she asked the same question, and now it was my turn to stay silent. I was in quite a dilemma; neither could I say Riya speaking nor I wanted her to disconnect the call, so I tried to act smart and said, “Maybe, maybe not if you merely tell me who exactly Riya is?” She went silent for a few seconds, and I got anxious by thinking that she would cut the call, but she did not and replied in her same sweet voice without any tinge of vexation, “She is a friend of mine. Now I was left with no tricky words to keep that call in continuity. I had had no choice but to tell her that it was a wrong number that she had dialed.

“Okay,” she replied and went silent but did not disconnect the call, and that made me confused. There was stillness on both sides. It was awkward, but it was feel-good awkwardness.

“Sid, come downstairs; we are getting late for the market,” my mom called me and broke that muteness. Oh yes, this is my name, Siddharth, by birth and Sid because Siddharth is too long to pronounce.

“May I know your name?” I tried to have some conversation with her.

“Maybe the next time,” she replied. ‘So there was going to be the next time’ I thought, and that made me relieved as well as happy. I was not sure why I felt glad, but I was pretty much looking forward to talking to her again.

“Okay, as you say,” I said.

“Bye, Siddharth,” she replied.

“Bye,” I answered, and she disconnected the call. I was going to come out of my room when her words 'Bye Siddharth' rang in my ears. How could she know my complete name when she heard my mom calling me Sid? Do I know that girl? Or maybe she does know me, I thought. But then I ignored my suspicion by assuming that Sid was a common nickname for Siddharth and went downstairs to join my mom; she was waiting for me at the door.

I finished shopping with her as quickly as possible and even missed a few items just because I was quite in a rush to come back and continue my conversation with that girl. We came back home within an hour, and I straight went ahead into my room. I settled myself on the bed and took out the phone from my pocket. First, I saved her number with the name 'Wrong Number' and then started searching for her on Watsapp. Her number was there, but I could not see her profile picture. She might not have saved my number yet, I thought. I sent her a text saying ‘Hi’ and started waiting for her reply. After a few minutes, she replied to me with the same ‘Hi’ text.

“May I know your name now?” I repeated the same question that I had asked her before leaving for the market.

“Why do you want to know my name?” she texted back.

“I think conversations are initiated by knowing names of each other," I wrote.

“Why do you want to have a conversation with me? Are you such kind of person who once knows there is a girl on the other side of the phone and starts bothering her with texts and calls?” she texted. It was quite an impolite remark on my disposition, but for being a female, it was not a wrong question to ask. I could understand her concern as most of the guys do that all the time; I had seen a few guys in my own college doing the same, but another truth was that not all guys were the same.

“No, I am not that kind of person. I will not text you if you ask me not to bother you again, I assure you,” I wrote back. My self-respect was more important to me, so I was ready for any of her, whether that could be in my favor or not.

“Okay, let's just say you are not that kind of person, then why exactly you want to know me? What is your real purpose behind it?” she texted back. I had started feeling she was interviewing me. I was not ready for any such questions. I only wanted to talk to her, nothing else.

“I don't know,” I gave her an honest reply.

“Okay then, when you get an answer to that, we will talk again. Till then, good night,” she texted and left me staring at my phone while thinking about what just had happened.