The more-special-Anniversary!

Is today. The 28th of March. 🙂

Today’s six years(!!) from the day G and I first met – in person.

(Yes, sweetie – I am letting the cat out of the bag…!)

This is the story that I do not like too many people to know in normal circumstances – why? – ‘coz it is – well – embarrassing (don’t ask me why!) … !

So, this is 2001, and this friend of mine who’s from Bokaro originally is extremely homesick and I’m off to Meerut for the weekend – and ask her to come along, and she does. Now she’s never chatted – as in, online, y’know – and these are the days when ICQ was the hottest thing around – this was before Yahoo or MSN even got popular, and much before the days of Google Talk.

So, well – I log her into my ICQ account, and do search on users based in Delhi, and up pops a very interesting username – hawkeye. Why it’s interesting to me is because Alan Alda was called Hawkeye Pierce in M*A*S*H – and I was quite in love with him!

So then, I obviously had to talk to this person. Except that it wasn’t me talking, but my friend – let’s call her R.

So, R and hawkeye have a long conversation (apparently!) that weekend. R and I go back to Delhi. When I come back home a few weekends later though, and log in to my ICQ account, up pops this interesting username again. This time he’s on my friends list, and is online.

By this time I’ve sort of forgotten that whole episode – and am wondering who this person is.

We start talking. That night. The night after that. For weeks after that. But only online. And once in a while he would call on the hostel phone, or the phone at home when I was in Meerut.

I found him interesting, funny – and found that we have so much in common! We grew up reading the same books, and loved the same characters in them.

Once while chatting, he said “spitty” – and I was beyond shocked! Ern Goon was my favourite character from The Five Find-outers and Dog . 🙂

These and many other such things made us both slowly start becoming that one phone call in the day that made us stay all-smiley for the rest of the day – and night.

We first met in person almost six months later though – on the 28th of March 2002. At the Mac Donald’s in Kamla Nagar – not the one there is now. It used to be in another place earlier.

And then, we kept meeting – more and more often.

We’d go to an art gallery (Art Today – when it was still around) one day, to a book shop another time, browse through carpet shops, the Tanishq showroom in Connaught Place, Palika Bazaar, coffee shops (Star Beans in CP – it’s been closed for renovation for the last 4 years!), Janpath – and every time, in every place – we’d like the exact same things! I’m not kidding – from carpets to watches, from books to films, from clothes to paintings, from food to jewellery. You have no idea how unnerving this was…!!

The only thing that our tastes differed in – and still do – was music. He likes Rock. I like Oldies (Hindi and English), Classical, Jazz, and Blues.

Other things we differ in: I read more. And I read faster. I’m more liberal. He’s just a little bit conservative. He loves sports. I detest them. I love spicy food. He can’t eat too much spice.

…

So, anyway…

Today’s six years from then…

And today’s more special than our wedding anniversary…

And, I’m just about to leave office to meet him – and spend the evening together.

Oh, and our lives too.

🙂