Love happens when you least expect to find it and love at first sight at that. I work for a Mumbai based Shipping magazine and hence have to attend various programmes for getting stories for the magazine. On 20th April 2011, I was invited to a Maritime College for covering their college festival. I reached the venue on time, but due to the delay in the arrival of Chief Guest, the programme was delayed for more than an hour. Little did I know that my V Day love story would start here.
I had been trying to get in touch with the person-in-charge all this while, but could not, since he had asked the admin staff to not give his contact details to anyone (May be he forgot to exclude the journalists from that list). Anyway, after persuading the admin for some time, I finally got the number of the 'Person-in- Charge"- Hemanga Baishya (my real love story hero). Angry with the delay, I called him up and was a little rude when he came to the office to meet me so it wasn't exactly love at first sight for me. He was a third year cadet and was the Chief Cadet Captain of his college. He took me to the programme which started in a while.
He took charge and took me around the campus and I still didn't sense my great V Day love story coming. That is when we got the chance to talk about ourselves and surprisingly found that we both were really comfortable talking to each other. We spoke for around 20 minutes standing at the jetty of his college, after which I went to meet his Director. When I came out, I found him waiting for me at the entrance (was it love at first sight for him already?).
He asked me to wait for some more time, but I had to leave for another meeting. He came to drop me till the auto stand and while walking towards the auto stand, we stopped by at a sugarcane juice stall and had the juice and he kept clicking my pictures. When I left from there, little did I know that my real love story hero would call me up on 22 April.
A little surprised to receive his call, I couldn"t talk to him, because I was out with my friend. Then on 23 April morning, I got up to find his friend request on Facebook. That day we chatted for the entire day and spoke till almost 5 am. He stayed in his college hostel, which was located at a distance of 2 hours from my residence. He used to travel those 2 hours every day for our great V Day Love story to meet me after my office hours. Everyone around us thought we were the best couple and should be together. I, on the other hand wasn"t sure of getting dating a guy younger to me (one and a half years). But, controlling your feelings for someone you really want to be with is always difficult and the mind stops working.
On 2 May, Hemanga and I went out for dinner. That day he was feeling a little low and continuously kept asking me if I would ever leave him. I tried explaining my stand to him, but in vain. At last, while we walked towards the station holding hands, I could not control my feelings and told him how much I loved him (Yes!! I proposed him). I wasn"t sure what he felt for me (Though I knew he wanted to be with me. I wasn"t sure if that was love). He was quiet for some time and then again held my hand and started walking. I was a little shocked- there was no reaction from his end. But, as we walked he suddenly said, “I love you too." Everything stopped there. It was only then that I realises it was love at first sight for me all along.
We made our relationship public the very next day and also went out for a short trip to celebrate this new relationship. He accepted that for him it was 'Love at first sight." I was flattered and then got to know that he always loved me and all this while he was trying to hear that from me.
Now he is out of college and is sailing with a well-known Hong Kong based maritime company. It"s been 5 months since he has been out of sight, but not out of heart and mind. In these 5 months our relation has grown stronger. And now I am eagerly waiting for the month end for him to come back although it won't be on Valentine's day.
This was my short real unexpected love story. The one I hope will end up in marriage- the institution which will keep us together forever not just for Valentine's day.
By
Seema Singh
