Elevated...

Introducing PeeVee to bloggers is like introducing the Pope to christians. Or introducing Tarla Dalal to kitchen enthusiasts. Or introducing Rajnikant to God.

Err.. You get the point.

You all know her. You all read her. You all follow her. And you all love her.

She's one of those writers who can entertain people even if she writes only one small paragraph.

But right now, she's got more than a paragraph. She's got a little tale for us. One of those that never fails to delight us with it's simplicity, emotions, brilliance.

So here it is, a guest post from my fellow-blogger, friend, fellow foodie and FRIENDS-fanatic, and a kid sister- PeeVee (who I'm often tempted to call BeeVee, but then that would be just too gay), from Confessions of the chocolate obsessed.

Ta da!!

***

Elevators always give me the feeling of having left my stomach behind.

As this one went down, I checked my reflection in the mirror, more out of habit than anything else. While I earned a few snicker-filled glances for my supposed vanity, the good part was that I saw the perverted old man trying to look down my shirt stealthily. I gave him my best “fuck-off” stare and ignored him while the others in the lift wondered where my sudden rancor came from.

Not that I cared, the afternoon was dull and sluggish either way.

As the doors opened, I shrunk back to save myself from the melee; the way the others rushed out, it was almost as if the KFC had set up stalls of free chicken buckets outside. I waited till everyone was out; I was in no hurry, no specific planes to catch, worlds to save. That was when I noticed him.

He was by no means the cutest/hottest guy I’d ever seen; certainly not a Greek god – not even tall enough to pass off as one. Nor did he have the perfect body to drool over, what little I could see of it. He didn’t even stand out of the crowd, just another face… another person waiting to take the elevator.

But I had a slow-mo* moment. I saw him smile at something his friend said, deepening the dimples in his cheek into deeper grooves. His eyes sparkled with amusement, a feat very few men can genuinely achieve; smile with only their eyes, that is. His hair stood up at the back of his head like Harry Potter with such adorable charm that I could only stare. The light purple stripes on his shirt made him look almost handsome.

You know that feeling when you instantly crush on someone? The quick tightening of the intestines, a sudden awareness, to say silly things to him, a need bordering on desperation for him to respond, to at least notice?



I didn’t freeze nor did I fall head over heels for him at first sight. In this desert of cute-starved women, I was just another survivor who witnessed a mirage.
Mirage, I say, for he was gone before I could even process the words to make one sentence. Gone with the melee going into the elevator this time; almost as if God had destined us to go in opposite directions and never meet.

I shook my head to displace the stupid thoughts of God being jobless enough to sit and plot out scenarios to make my love life interesting and started walking but I couldn’t help looking back inside the elevator.

And tripped over the unused mannequin on the side.

As luck would have it, he was looking at me. With a grin. It was one of those moments when I wish I had Sita-like capabilities of being swallowed by Mother Earth.
Ah well. It wasn’t like he was going to marry me anyway, I thought to myself, plunking my slightly-hurting tush and slightly-bruised ego on the stool. As I ordered my chocolate crusher, I found myself still thinking thoughts about him.



Simple attraction. While the world had gone on and become muddled and tripped over its own tail about love and related maladies, these two simple words had lost their way. How about two people liking what they see of each other, acknowledging the same and moving on with their lives? Or in my case, ONE of us doing all the liking and acknowledging. But why couldn’t it be that simple? I wished it would be after wondering how he liked his coffee.

I wondered if I was making up the philosophical angle to explain away my own unusually flirtatious behavior, as uncharacteristic as it was, or if it actually held any weight. As I slurped my way to the rocky end of the crusher, the waiter placed a cup and a napkin on the table startling me out of my thoughts. I started protesting about not asking for the coffee when he pointed at the napkin.

Coffee?

I spun around to see the dimples firmly in place, eyes almost daring me to refuse. It was almost like he knew I didn’t crush like this often. I walked over and spent the four most prolific hours of my love life by that café window, right before he had to catch his flight.



Turns out it WAS that simple.

And I found out that he liked his coffee black.

P.S: Dedicated to that unknown cute guy outside the Kalyan Silks lift (with his girlfriend/wife) who didn’t quite meet my eye the second time :)

*slow mo moment – the part in movies when everything moved in slow motion and you can see everything in HD like the heroine flipping her hair and her ‘dancing’ eyes and the hero reaching for her hand and shit. You get the point. If you don’t, you obviously haven’t watched the prescribed amount of Bollywood.

***