And Then He Looked At Her......
The first time Jodha Sharma stepped into Skyline Infrastructures, she was soaked in the scent of wet earth and nerves. Mumbai’s monsoon had clung to her like a second skin - her cotton kurta damp near the hem, her sandals sticky from the walk across the narrow lane. She had pinned her ID badge in the auto, her hand shaking slightly, lips muttering the company name like a prayer.
She didn’t expect it to smell so clean inside.
Glass partitions gleamed. Grey concrete walls met smooth wood in neat right angles. There was something oddly poetic about the place ... sharp but softened, like someone had carved stillness into every inch of it.
She was ushered in, introduced to her team - the planning division ... and given a desk by the large corner window. Rain dripped steadily outside, tapping the glass like time itself was pacing.
They told her Mr. Jalal Mohammad would address the new interns at 11 a.m. sharp.
She hadn’t thought about what the owner of this famed company would look like. Probably older. Reserved. She had vaguely read that the firm was run by the grandson of the original founder, but there were no social media photos, no puffed-up interviews, no visible digital footprint. Just stories ... the kind that floated in hushed tones .. He started on-site, worked with labourers, prefers silence over flair, doesn’t entertain nonsense. Ruthless with errors, calm in crisis.
~
At 11:07, he walked in.
He didn’t say a word at first. Just looked around the room like he was measuring it ... not in square feet, but in silence. He wore a black linen shirt with sleeves rolled up, faint streaks of dust near his wrist like he hadn’t cared enough to wipe it. He had a lean frame, not muscular, but compact - like someone who lifted more than he spoke. His face was unreadable, almost stern, but his eyes... his eyes were something else. A still storm. A silent dialect.
And when those eyes swept over to her - just a passing glance, half-curious ... she forgot the name of her own college for a second.
“This industry doesn’t forgive vagueness...” he began. His voice was like cement --low, dry, and strangely grounding. “You mess up one decimal, and someone’s ceiling leaks. You cut corners, someone’s roof falls. We don’t play with homes here. We build them.”
His words didn’t try to impress. They just… landed.
Jodha didn’t say a word that day. But she watched the way he spoke to the site leads, the way his fingers drummed on his thigh while thinking, how he always paused before replying ... like every sentence deserved editing.
The days passed like snapshots after that.
She wasn’t directly reporting to him, but he passed her desk sometimes. Asked about a plan she’d corrected. Nodded silently when she got something right. Once, during a layout discussion, he asked her opinion in front of the others.
“Do you think that slope would drain rainwater effectively, Sharma?”
The way her name sounded in his voice ... No ... not sweet, not cold ... just aware ... did something strange to her pulse.
She answered, voice steady. He didn't compliment her. But the next day, her revised sketch was the one forwarded to the team.
Another day, she dropped her notepad walking across the corridor. Papers scattered. And he… crouched to pick one up.
Their hands almost brushed.
Almost.
Neither looked up.
But that evening, she stayed up wondering how a near-touch could echo so loudly.
Two weeks passed. Rain came and went. Her kurta sleeves darkened daily with ink and effort. She stayed longer than needed. He noticed ... but never said it aloud.
Then, one Friday afternoon, something shifted.
She had stayed late. The office was emptying. Only the evening guard and the tea boy remained, murmuring about a leak in the basement pump. She had forgotten her umbrella and was deciding between getting drenched or waiting.
She was standing at the edge of the porch when his shiny black jaguar stopped in front of her.
He rolled down the window. Rain slapped the roof like a stubborn lover. His eyes were tired. He had a file open on the seat beside him, pen still between his fingers.
“Where do you stay?”
She blinked. “Parel..”
“I’m going that way”
There was no smile. No offer. Just those four words.
She got in.
The drive was quiet. Wipers swayed. His dashboard smelled faintly of old coffee and petrichor. She didn’t know what to say. So she watched him ... one hand on the wheel, the other occasionally adjusting the AC. His sleeves were still rolled up. Raindrops clung to his hair.
At one red light, he turned slightly. “You remind me of someone.”
She looked at him. “Is that a good thing?”
He didn’t answer right away. Then, with the faintest lift of his lips ... not a smile, not quite ... he said, “I don’t know yet.”
When she stepped out near her street, he said nothing. Just nodded. The kind of nod that held too much for a second and then disappeared.
~
The next morning, her mother woke her up with a tray of cardamom chai and a shy smile.
“Jodha… we got a rishta proposal. Very good family. Respectable people. From Mumbai itself.”
Jodha was still rubbing sleep from her eyes. “Maa, not again.”
“No, no. Just meet them, beta. They’ve seen your biodata. Boy is a civil engineer and MBA. Educated, grounded. Handles his father’s business. They’re very simple. No pressure. But they insisted you be the one to say yes or no.”
She sighed. “What’s the name?”
"It's... haan? What now? Your purse is on the table Ji" Her mother shouted.
Her mother only smiled and rushed off to her husband. “Wait. I'll be back.”
Rain tapped against the windowpane again.
Outside, Mumbai was soaked in greys.
Inside, something in her heart stirred ... a flicker. A question. A breath caught between now and what-if.
She didn’t get the name that day.
And strangely, life moved on as if that pause didn’t exist...
~
They didn’t speak again after that drive.
Not directly.
Not even in the corridor or during the Thursday reviews or the quiet, caffeine-stained evenings when most of the interns left early but she stayed behind - sketching, correcting, revising.
He never acknowledged the lift home. Never referred to the way the silence between them had warmed during those few traffic lights. She wasn’t even sure if she had imagined his words, that strange line ... you remind me of someone ... What had he meant?
Maybe it was just a polite deflection. Maybe it meant nothing.
But something had changed.
She noticed it first in the way he looked at her work. Not with indulgence, but with… attention. Focus that weighed, assessed, and lingered a moment too long.
Then came the way he once adjusted a blueprint she had drafted ... but left a corner untouched. The corner that held her solution. Almost like he was saying, this part... I trust.
And once, she heard her name through the glass.
“Miss Sharma did the second draft?”
His voice from his cabin. Low. Even.
“Yes, sir.”
Silence.
Then... “Tell her I liked the grading approach.”
Tell her. Not good work. Not inform her. Just - tell her I liked it.
A whisper passed between the walls, and settled somewhere in her chest.
~
The weekend came. A rishta was supposed to come with it.
But no one told her the name.
Her mother hummed a lot that morning. A new dupatta mysteriously appeared on her bed. The dining table was wiped down twice. Her father took out the silver tea set that only came out for "good families".
“Are you sure you want to sit in for this, Jodha?” her father asked casually.
She frowned. “Why wouldn’t I?”
“No pressure, beta” her mother added quickly. “Just meet them. They’re very respectful people. Boy’s side is from Colaba. Good background. Handles a construction firm...”
That word.
It hit her stomach like an uneven heartbeat.
Construction.
“Which one?” she asked, her voice steady but her fingers wrapping a little too tight around her glass.
But before either parent could answer, the bell rang.
And then came the phone call. Her aunt, calling about a medical emergency in the family. Some distant cousin’s son had gotten into a biking accident. Her mother rushed to answer. Her father followed.
The rishta was cancelled ... or postponed ... before it even began.
Jodha stood there, half-dressed, half-ready, with her hair still pinned up and that new dupatta lying like a question on her shoulder.
No one told her the boy’s name.
But for the first time in days, her heart beat faster ... not with hope, but with confusion.
She didn’t know what she was waiting for.
She didn’t even know who she was waiting for.
But she knew one thing.
Something inside her had begun to ache like wet earth before the first crack appears. Not pain. Not love. Just… an ache. Familiar. Dangerous. Beautiful.
The next week at the office, things were strangely normal.
Too normal.
Jalal didn’t speak to her. But during one site review meeting, he handed her a file - directly, no assistant, no middleman. Their fingers brushed. Neither flinched.
Later that day, she walked past the staff library room and paused.
He was inside, seated by the glass, a book of poetry open in one hand, the other lazily tapping the edge of the page. The rain slid down the windows behind him like paint melting from a sky.
She didn’t mean to linger. But he looked up.
And their eyes met.
Not long.
Not intensely.
Just enough.
And in that second ... sharp, fleeting, foolish .... she saw the flicker of something that hadn’t been there before. A softness around his gaze. A stillness that saw her, not just the intern.
That night, she walked slower on her way home.
Not because the roads were wet.
But because her thoughts were no longer still.
She tried not to think about it. She truly did.
But it kept coming back ... in the silence between words, in the slope of his shoulders when he stood near the site map, in the way her name still sounded sharper in his voice than anyone else’s.
Was it anything? Was it something?
She didn’t know.
All she knew was this -
She hadn’t fallen.
Not yet.
But she had started standing too close to the edge
~
One day later, just after a client presentation, she was filing sketches when a message came in from her mother.
The boy’s side wants to meet again. They liked what they saw. They’re asking for Sunday. Please say yes this time.
Jodha stared at the screen. Her pulse thudded in her throat.
What they saw?
But no one had come.
No one had met her.
Had they seen a photo?
She replied simply...
What’s his name?
Her mother didn’t respond for two hours.
When the message finally arrived, it was just one line...
“Jalal Mohammad”
She stared at the message for so long, the letters began to lose their shape.
Jalal Mohammad.
She didn’t read it twice. She didn’t need to.
Because the moment she saw the name, something inside her stilled.Not with shock.
Not even with panic.
Just a strange, heavy knowing
As if every silence between them had been waiting for this reveal...As if her heart had always known what her brain was too cautious to guess.
~
The next day, she walked into the office the same way she always did ... with her badge above to her dupatta, her hair tied up in that slightly messy bun.
But something had shifted.
No. Not in the air.
In her.
She was hyper-aware now ... of every time he passed, of every time his gaze lingered two seconds longer than necessary, of the slight scrape of his thumb against a page before he handed it to her.
And yet...
he said nothing.
As if he hadn’t seen the proposal.
As if their families hadn’t spoken.
As if that Sunday meeting wasn’t sitting between them like an unopened blueprint.
~
On Friday, it rained again.
And like always, she stayed late.
She told herself it was the workload, the deadlines, the elevation sketch that needed one last touch. But really, it was the quiet. The empty office. The comfort of being alone in a space that, somehow, still smelled like him ... dust, wet cement, and that strange calm he carried around like a second skin.
She was packing her things when a knock sounded on the glass.
She looked up.
He stood there, in the doorway, one hand resting against the frame.
Brown shirt. Rolled sleeves. That same unreadable calm.
“You’re here late...” he said.
She nodded. “Bas...Just wrapping up.”
He didn’t step in. Just looked at her for a second longer. Then...
“Take a walk with me?”
She blinked. “Now?”
His gaze didn’t waver. “Now.”
The company porch overlooked a quiet back lane. Rainwater had pooled in uneven patches on the pavement. A cat darted across the far side. The night smelt of mudand something more tender ... like her unresolved feelings.
They walked in silence.
Not awkward silence.
Just... full.Heavy. Silence.
Like there were too many things waiting to be said, and neither of them wanted to be the first to tip the balance.
Finally, he exhaled.
“You knew?”
She turned toward him slowly. “I found out three days ago.”
He nodded once. “So did I.”
Another pause.
The rain started again. Thin, persistent drizzle. Enough to feel, not enough to run from.
He looked up at the sky, then back at her.
“You know. I didn’t plan for this.”
Her breath caught. “Me neither.”
“I didn’t know my mother was looking at biodatas again. I told her I'm not yet ready but....” he puased.
“Mine’s been on some invisible mission to get me married since last summer.”
He smiled, faintly. The first real one she'd seen in days. It made something inside her loosen.
“So...” she said, voice barely above the rain “what now?”
He didn’t answer right away.
Instead, he stepped closer. Just enough that the tips of their shoes almost touched.
“I’ve built towers that stand in earthquakes. Bridges that bear thousands. I trust foundations. I trust design. I trust slow, careful planning.”
She tilted her head, trying to understand.
“But this?” he continued, voice softer now.. “I don’t know how to build this. So soon...”
Jodha’s throat went dry. “Then why not walk away?”
He looked at her, really looked. His eyes weren’t still anymore. They were full. Honest. and Expressive.
“Because even when I didn’t know your name... I kept noticing you.”
Her breath trembled.
“The way you hold your pencil near the middle. The way you tap your foot when you’re unsure about a measurement. That day when you got the slope right ... I stayed late that night, not to check your math, but because I wanted to see if you'd stay too.”
Jodha didn’t realisse her fingers had curled around the strap of her bag.
And then...
“Jodha...” he said her name like it was something soft he didn’t want to break. “If you say no... I’ll respect that. This won’t affect your work. I’ll make sure of it. But if there’s even the smallest part of you that thinks this could be something… I’ll meet your parents tomorrow...”
She opened her mouth. Closed it. Searched for words that didn’t feel too much or too little.
“I don’t know what this is either...” she whispered. “But I think about that drive every night. I think about you not saying anything after. And somehow… that hurt more than it should’ve.”
A beat.
Two.
Then ... quietly ...
“I don’t want to walk away, Jalal.”
Something shifted in his face then. Not a smile. Not relief.
Just… peace.
They didn’t hug. They didn't kissed. Didn’t hold hands. Didn’t say anything grand.
He just walked her back to the office door, his hand briefly brushing the small of her back in a gesture so gentle it barely existed ... but she felt it for hours after.
And when they parted that night, there were no words. No declarations.
Just this soft, steady certainty.
Like a foundation quietly laid under the surface ... waiting to rise, one quiet brick at a time.
The next week, both families sat in Jodha’s living room.
Jalal wore a white shirt. Simple. Crisp. His mother sat beside him, glowing with quiet joy.
Jodha came in with tea, like some cliche she thought she’d hate.
But when she met his eyes across the room, something inside her stilled again.
And this time, it wasn’t uncertainty.
It was a quiet, overwhelming yes
He held her gaze and dipped his head ... a small, respectful tilt, the same way he had in that meeting room the day they met.
Her lips curved.
And just like that, two people who never planned to fall… quietly, irreversibly, did.
And just like that, without touch or declaration, something permanent settled .... not with noise, but like concrete drying soft beneath their feet.
The End.
But really, the beginning 
~~
Boss-employee is hands down my favourite genre ... all thanks to Jahnu Dii’s unforgettable PBD. I have given Jalal the exact same occupation and car as Jalal Ahmed from PBD (hehe consider it my little tribute)
And no please don’t ask how the rishta came into the picture... it just did 
Big thanks to my bestie’s bhaiyya for helping me with all the civil engineering terms and technical bits
P.S. Idk what I've written. Brainrot 
Bade Achche Lagte Hain Naya Season
Cricket
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