The Weirdly Wondrous Story of Your Crush It is 2014 when you first meet her at the graduation party. Her face shines amongst the crowd. Bright skin, deep black eyes, perfect teeth and an air of humility around her. She approaches you and over gin and tonic, asks you casually, I heard you are quite well-travelled. You liked the background research. You nod and shrug it off, saying, just a little. You are? She tells you her name. Sharanyaa. Spelled with two As in the end. What do you do? She's a junior from the university, a travel writer. Where did you last go to? Kabul, she says. You are smitten. A woman going alone to Kabul. You imagine accompanying her. The thought likes to linger. Tell me more. She tells that she works for travel magazines for airplanes, and they pay her to travel and write about these places. It seems too good to be true. You want to ask who the godfather is. Media industry is harsh to outsiders. You tried such jobs but they all slammed doors at your face. Your non-Delhi accent and your small-town family members with zero network felt like a curse. You compliment how she's doing everyone's dream job. She is speaking. You stop listening to her and instead look at her perfect teeth and lips enunciating measured words. A small part of you wants to kiss her. Other parts of you is either too conscious, too chicken-hearted, too consent-sensitised to immediately police such thoughts. You add her on Facebook after reaching home. You both never talk. For years. In 2019, you get active on Instagram and you find her there. You follow, she follows back. You start responding to each other's stories. You try initiating conversations but always encounter a dead end. You don't miss a story. She also seems to watch your stories within a few minutes. You post more often. Once she has checked, you reread what you posted again, noticing the commas and the articles, pausing to wonder if she liked this phrase in particular. If there's a typo, you get worried if she would get that your grammar is flawless, it's just the keyboard. The stories she takes time to check makes you anxious. Has she unfollowed me? You ask yourself and verify her following list. Sigh, she hasn't. Must have gone out. And then, hours later, you notice her view. Phew. She's there, as smitten.
