The Delhi Chapter : Page 33

Like a submissive deer, as it were, just waiting to be shot by her pitiless hunter;

I approached Bodhi's terminal one baby step at a time.

He was sitting with his earphones plugged on, devouring some obscure YouTube video.

He had a couple of mangled printing papers festooning his table.

And a rather dubious calendar with sparingly clad women, sitting pretty (read: hot) next to him.

My eyes (almost unselfconsciously) got pinned on that calendar placed on his table.

He somehow managed to realise from the edge of his eye that I had finally manifested.

He paused his video.

Took off his headphones.

Looked  up at me.

And said with a cryptic smile,

"Hmmmmm...

So you're done.

Show."

I surrendered my case on his table, and excused myself to use the washroom.

[Not that I particularly needed to.

But I somehow always feel peculiarly self-conscious when someone reads something I've written in front of me.]

****

By the time I came back, Bodhi had gone back to watching his video.

Which could only mean either of the two things:

a) The story was so insanely boring that I must have lost him exactly from line 4.

b) The story was perhaps in spurts, decently gripping, that he was actually done reading it all.

Hoping for the latter or at least that he'd have some feedback to give;
I stood there and looked down at my laptop on his table.

Certain paragraphs of the story had been dyed with fluorescent green.

Someone had also changed the font to a neat and readable: Trebuchet MS

[ Which I realised, in my time to come, is the font that Bodhi always used. ]

I kept standing there, still not being able to comprehend what exactly had happened.

"SAY SOMETHING!" I screamed to him in my head.
Anything. Good. Bad. Ugly.

Then at long last, he spun his revolving chair, looked me straight up in the eye, cracked his knuckles and broke into a smile (this time, a broader one), in that order.

He: "So, you are quite the writer, aren't you now?

Very, very nice, this is.  

I particularly liked the way you wrote this part.

This part, that and that."

[ Pointing at the little green highlighted portions.]

Which more than sufficed to make my day...