New York Times Part 31 Updated in Thread 2 - Page 4

part 1
awesome start...
cont soon dear...

I am waiting for "LAGI" MOMENT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!😍😍😍😍

Part 2: A question and an Answer

At the airport, Maan sat crossing his legs as he waited for his Daadima to show up any minute at the Arrivals entrance with a show of unceasing tears and flow of relief in her eyes for all of New York to see. Like she'd attained everything unachievable from that single maternal hug and her lifetime of prayers to never be away from him answered that very moment. In reality she'd only left their Manhattan penthouse three months ago for a short trip to India in the name of shopping for the upcoming wedding of her friend's granddaughter.

The thought that the wedding season in New York was soon approaching shook him up then, putting him into those long stretches of troublesome nightmares where he was always running in a Sherwani with a hundred others following his trail. Not to forget the half hour laborious meet-up he will have to endure the next day. His Daadima had blackmailed him for days at end over phone, then coerced him and finally brought upon him unfailing tears. To gain his displeased acceptance to set him up with another one of her friend's daughter she'd picked from the bottomless list of prospective brides she kept ever ready. This made him think sometimes that Daadima had all of the New York's elite as her friends, just so that she could whip up an eligible bachelorette's name from thin air any time of day.

Just then a tall, slender American woman walked into the waiting area and sat diagonally opposite to him. She seemed to be in a hurry and dug into her bag and brought up a compact and without losing time began dusting her nose. The sculpted tone of her calf muscle came into view just as her eye-let white skirt panel parted and he could see those runner's legs gaining soft mass and led his eyes to the curve of her hip and it had been enough of a tease to get him out of his preoccupation about Daadima and her ways.. Again, her white eyelet strapless top ruffled about where her skirt disappeared and a thick white bow around the top of her waist highlighted the shapely swell of her breasts. Her high blond pony and a long muted face had him figure she was a model awaiting a trip off to those distant exotic lands where runways appeared out of every street corner. She turned and flashed him a quick smile before she retouched her pale lips in a color that was in the same neutral tone. Then she was gone, leaving him breathless for the instant the air around her brushed him, a very floral spice wrinkling his nose.

He stretched lazily after that welcomed distraction and the model had truly been a small momentary indulgence. Oh! He loved woman, but only he didn't want them ending up on his bed when he wasn't sure he would prefer them just the same after the haze of the night booze would wear off. Not to forget how annoying some of them were when they threw themselves at him. It sometimes made him wonder if the women realized that they had lost their appeal the same moment they flashed their "I'm single and hot and can be s**tty if you need me to be" neon signs at him. No doubt they made enviable accessories when their hands laced over his jacked sleeves, their fingers knotted with his and he went around declaring his unavailability at carefully picked parties. He certainly didn't believe in showing off. However, neither could he deny the shameless boost his ego received when women vied for him on such occasions.

But it was a mystery even unto himself, at what stopped him from looking at the photographs that Daadima spread out as a fan on the table and persisted until he ran through them; flicking them onto her lap like a dealer at a Las Vegas poker table and responded in the affirmative much to the dismay of his Daadima. It was excruciatingly painful, even more so, when she would hold a wan face and sit next to him with a silent fury, refusing to speak until he could put it in words the kind of girl he would want to marry. Eventually, she always gave up and would switch on the television to drain down the dead silence between them. He knew then that her mind was elsewhere, scheming at times to soon make their Khurana family be known for one other person - a prospective daughter-in-law of the family - than just the pair of grandmother and grandson that the whole world knew of.

Perhaps, not the whole world, but they were a known lot in India, with his Khurana aunts and uncles and his own grandmother holding the reign to most important private sectors and renowned chains of industries that made the newspapers nearly every day. However, he was the odd one among all, removed from their rich inheritance and the mansion that came with its forgotten stories of the past and settled in the quiet commotion of Manhattan. He'd left the mansion and everything else dear, soon after the death of his grandfather and went on rare short vacations to India that only made him want to come back to New York that much sooner. He couldn't ever tell why, but being lost in the subway crowd felt safer, made him more hopeful that he would find his way out faster than out of the emptiness that remained back home. Not so much him than it was for his Daadima - to live alone in a mansion where she'd lost him to a job seven seas beyond, her husband to the inevitable turn of time and old age and a few others to their ordained selfishness and guilt. And those were reasons enough to have accepted and given his inconceivable assent to meeting the girl Daadima had chosen for him, as a token of love and admiration he had for her strength in having lasted those tough times. Still, it was madness when Daadima assumed that any woman would last the tests of his time, his petulance and his little idiosyncrasies that could drive them crazy as hell once the initial allure wore off. For all the unconventionality and levelheadedness she was known for, she was irrational at best when it came to him.

Sighing, he got up and began walking towards the Arrivals area. He kept close to the grill, his fingers running through the metallic cool of the stainless steel rods as he contemplated his decisions, his doubts and his entire life that he would have to spend with someone he would only meet for the first time tomorrow. Because he'd not had any one given reason for having evaded marriage, he had never articulated them well to his Daadi, who misunderstood it for his usual reluctance to engage in a relationship of any kind. His failed communication has come to bite him back and it worried him to no end.

Oh! Shit...his disarray of thoughts showed no signs of settling, he reckoned, as he anticipated his Daadima to show up at the gate any moment.

When he was about to stop and lean over the grill, his feet felt a shove, then a thrust far more than his shaken balance could take to continue holding his ground. Now he felt a sudden blunt force on his hip bones, his eyes scrunched from the onshoot of pain, from having landed on his rear.

"Lagi? She sounded unmistakeably Indian, taken back that she could cause any mishap at all, "I'm so sorry...I didn't see you standing here"

"Of course Laga...What are you fuc..." That was all he could manage to mutter under his breath when her face came into his full view and by some improbable delusion, perhaps from his perturbable sense of balance from just having fallen down, he thought his verbal slashing would cut her skin in the raw.

She bent down with a worried look and in the heat of the moment, took his wrists to help him up. One beat. She glanced up and blinked, her eyes pooling from a fraying show of embarrassment. Another beat passed before he could lurch, push any movement into his limbs and pull his weight to tower over her. There was the distinct pain in his lower back, his elbows that felt like having struck by a hot metal rod. But they all seemed to fade against a blankess, being stored away in another darker recess of his brain to be retrieved later and endured.

"I was looking for a friend and turned and didn't see you come to a stop suddenly" Yes...Indeed...Really? Whatever it is that she meant with the fast moving of her lips.

His hand ran through the side of his hair and his brows shot up at the sudden mix of poise and the ruffling he sensed inside him. Now, there was another warbled echo in his head as she spoke again quite briefly with the translucent brown of her eyes coming into focus in his head, the glint he'd seen there softening up to a smile. There was that crushing, a lack of breathable air and he thought he needed an open field full of it. Lots of it, for the air around him was filled with an unctuous smell, filling his nose and traveling down his lungs like wisps of sweet poison he was inhaling.

"Yes...Right" He said, his right sounding more like a question and he turned around to walk away without another look at the woman who had hands down made him reconsider all his notions about women he'd had until then.

***

"And to think you are my friend..." Geet held Meera tight, feeling the warmth of an affectionate embrace after ages, "I should only be surprised if you ever showed up on time"

"If you may be so kind to shower your gratitude on to Mr.Yash, I shall be obliged" Geet let go of her and Meera gestured a hand toward the man standing behind her, a mocking smile on her face while his mouth stretched into a wide one and his eyes showed a traceable hint of mischief.

"Yash, Geet...Geet, Yash..." Meera did the introductions, "And not to forget that you are doomed just as I'm in having him in your team"

"Hey!" Yash threatened glancing sideways at Meera all the while shaking Geet's hand, "Now it doesn't help that we all share the same sentiments about you too"

"Speak for yourself Yash" Geet poked at his hand with her index finger.

After another exchange of smiles at each other, to be assured of renewed friendship and of newly forged ones, Yash took over her cart and walked ahead, letting the two friends catch up on the endless topics they sure must have had to talk about.

Geet twisted her neck as they advanced towards the exit and took a sweep of the floor continuing to bustle with the airport crowd that grew dense by the minute.

"Everything ok?" Meera asked and she turned ahead, clutching at her bag with an extra firm grip, like it was slipping away from her.

"Yeah...I bumped into this man..." Her memory clouded, "No. May be a guy? I mean I couldn't tell. I was looking all over for you and didn't see him stop suddenly over by the grill and ran my cart straight into his"

"Good, you have already started to learn the New York way of getting ahead...You just have to shove people around" Meera smiled, but Geet held her expression from before, a searching and a nervousness in her eyes causing her to blink rapidly.

"Listen..." She tugged at Meea's hand as they walked, insisting for her to listen in all seriousness "He wouldn't believe you know...that I hadn't done it intentionally. I told him I was sorry, but he just said, "Yes...Right?" and had gone his way"

"Oh! Common..." Meera said, her voice dull and thick with a lack of interest "We have all sorts of crazies here. You will get used to it. This is no Toronto"

Of course, she would get used to it. That hadn't been the problem at all. Before she was about to step out of the airport exit door, she caught herself looking back again into the expanse of the baggage claim area. She didn't think she could tell Meera what she made of the "Yes...Right" Two simple words that didn't have a context that instant when he'd looked at her like he was seeing another person in her place, mildly surprised, and in an open denial to acknowledge the woman who was apologizing to him. That disturbed her very much. It was as strange as finding herself in New York in search of a home when she'd left one behind.

If she would ever see him again, she wanted to ask him who he saw then. She paused as Yash opened the car door for her to get in and settled herself on the back seat occupied with the usurping of those vague open ended questions in her head. It was much later when she realized the tiny gnawing that had been bothering her all through the drive. A cold sweat broke into her palms as the words reverberated though her awareness.

What if he'd indeed seen someone else in her place then...

Wow , this was a descriptive update for "Lagi" moment, now included, "Yes.. Right?" moment. You gave a complete description of this Maan and he somehow differs from the former one . I don't know if I am making any sense,

You think this Maan is different?

I just switched up his monologue and brought it before their Lagi moment. Last time around, he had the same preoccupation and attitude about Daadima's obsession to get him married and towards women in general. Sure he was surly too, questioning why they always tripped and fell in-front of him to get his attention, but I had twisted it a bit around and said the same thing that he only sought them out until they kept their distance and wasn't throwing themselves at him.

Surely everything is more explicit, given that the ellipses have been filled with a burst of words...😆 But I'm hoping to do more justice to their characters, to their motives and their thoughts this time.

And of course, would like to hear that NY times 2 was better than the first one...I'm only asking to be approved of not having spoiled it for all of you :)

Awww New York times is back!

Muuuh to you Hasini. 🤗

part 2
nice part...
cont soon dear...

Part 3: The case of mistaken Identity

Monday 8.00 AM

Sasha jumped off her seat leaving the chair behind her rattling at its wake.

"Good Morning MK" She said with that same side tilt of her head and her plastic smile, untiring with the cloying attention she ever gave him. Of all the people he wanted to ban from a two mile radius of his office lobby, she certainly was one.

"Morning Sasha" He walked past her, but paused remembering to give her instructions about his list of visitors for the day. There was still that meet-up to deal with, after all.

Sasha had the headset slightly lifted off her ears and listened on, while the lady in the phone call - he could hear from the shill voice escaping the earpiece - kept on with her rambles.

"Sasha...There is someone Mrs. Khurana is sending to meet me. Once she is in, please send her right away to my office. I don't want her to be kept waiting around"

She beamed with a giant nod of her head, lolling with a little more vehemence than usual. Right! That reinforced nodding was what she offered to convince him that she was just as - or perhaps more - interested in him as the executive admin who boarded up the 53^th floor.

He didn't wait to acknowledge any of those wider smiles or sudden mark of interest with his passing by their desk, which was all, in his head a HR violation waiting to happen. He didn't stand to benefit from it, when he never sought the women who openly showed their interest in him. If only they had read it in all the 6 years he'd walked the same lobby and not stopped by for a casual banter, except when he'd to leave them phone call or visitor details.

Pressing the button for the elevator, he stood in the queue of men and women awaiting their cloistered capsules to carry them off to their work floors, when one of the four elevator bells rang and Yash came rushing out.

"Hey MK" Yash gave him a shout out before he sped past him. Given that Yash was already beyond the earshot distance to return his greeting, he kept his silence and simply nodded and watched Yash beginning to double on his foot while he was still in the center of the domed lobby. Now, here was a man running toward Sasha and the other front desk bimbos who went that same extra mile in keeping up with his reputation for at least one office dalliance every two years. This, he could never understand, he thought, when Yash was another personality at the Foosball table they occasionally teamed up for, when he wasn't around women so much to be precise. With that conclusion, he disappeared into the crowd moving ahead of him, to suffocate in the cinching elevator air all the way to the 63^rd floor.

***

She took in the gold trimmed glass panels lending a predated New York style decor to the entrance. The large swivel door swished around and let her into the central lobby, which towered three floors high and a very large chandelier hung all the way down, like it was a growing crystal tree of gold and glass that inched down every year. This massive structure of modular hallways and its array of elevators did a convincing job of bringing her peace about having taken a job with the company far from home, which Meera had tried and failed all through dinner and in the time they had talked before falling asleep.

Her eyes swept past the curving desk that seated a row of receptionists all tangled in phone cords or typing away in a clicking trance. Now, a company that employed 10 front office folks must pay a good deal once she would be made permanent after the initial temp tenure of the first three months. She would have her own bank account then and perhaps even a credit card if all went as planned. Not that Dev had ever made her feel like she was being court martialed every time she went shopping. But there were still questions on rare occasions: Why? I thought you already owned a pair of black pumps? He'd never mandated that she call him before she charged his card, but she'd done it duty-bound from the start of their marriage, from the insecurity of not having made her own money all her life and that had continued for long. So much so that that in the last few years she'd realized it had been too late to sever the habit without showing much had changed between them. That she'd changed too. But this job in Manhattan was going to change all that without calling to Dev's attention, without her having to work at it. In a few months, her little plastic card would wire on a small stash of her cash with a single swipe at the counter, the next time she would go shopping in New York and little would she know that it would be the single defining moment of her financial independence. Until then, she had his card, Meera's apartment and some cash and a job that could bring in more of that.

She took in a deep breath and held her file a bit closer to her chest and walked to the front desk assistant.

"Hello...I'm Mrs Khurana and I'm here to see..." The woman gestured her to stop, making her knot her eyebrows with curiosity and annoyance that New York was turning out to be one city filled with enough rude people to make up for all the kindred spirits put together from the rest of the world.

She bent down, picked a few cards and started speaking into the headset about a flower bouquet that was to be delivered to Broadway and 5^th. Geet could still hear the remnants of the speaker's voice, when the lady from behind the desk looked at her abruptly, her face holding a mild annoyance and said, "63^rd floor. Take the first left and your will find him in the last room" She slid a white card over the smooth granite desk, "Here is your temp access card for the elevator and doors, you can come back and do badging at 2.00 PM in the afternoon"

Once done with her long and fast instructions, which Geet was still lining up in her head, she again got back to instructing whoever it was on the call. She must have really read my mind, she thought. It was just customary that companies kept their front desk folks stocked with information on the new joinees, but this was a little far fetching to believe that they could identify walk-ins just by the mention of their name and send them marching to their reporting managers. Even before that line of thought could finish, she was looking around to spot the corner that entailed the dozen elevators. Her heel slipped on the floor and her feet twisted a bit when she was half-way through the lobby, but thankfully the strap held on and she couldn't help but mutter a prayer for the one less thing she didn't have to worry about. Another deep breath and then she marched in to the elevator to meet head on whatever it is that was waiting for her in the 63^rd floor.

The first left she could find and the last room was no trouble at all. She knocked and waited to be called in, her one hand crushing her other little finger as she stood by the door.

"Come in" A very male voice sounded careless, perhaps even a bit distressed if she could take a guess at it.

Opening the door, she let herself in and turned around to find the same man she'd bumped into at the airport look up from his monitor. She blinked and found herself catching her breath and felt her new sky-blue shirt and black trousers were a bit too tight for the first day. That or she'd just puffed up from the burst of nervousness she didn't know she was suffering from then.

***

He got up from his seat with a sudden jerking and realized he'd given the same reaction as that of Sasha's to his entry into the lobby. His hand went straight to his tie which he fumbled to loosen and failed and instead cleared his throat as if he was finding his voice for the first time. "Erhm...Are you supposed to be in this room?"

Without a word she shifted the weight on her foot and he could glean a sudden discomfort with his presence, but she paused and he heard her speak in a monotone, "I spoke to the lady in the front desk and she gave me the directions to your room"

"Oh!" He said at first and then a second later steadied his voice before he added, "But you are a bit early. I have a meeting in another 20 mts"

Again, that choking inside him and her eyes, a shade of brown he'd never seen and could make out the same even as he continued to stand behind his desk, while she still was at the door. The second time around, he felt, he was far equipped to handle whatever mind-tricks that she had played yesterday and could possibly do in his very own private office room. Her attire was primly formal and her hair was in the same high ponytail with her bangs swept sideways. Without his knowledge, his eyes lowered down to the length of her willowy body and found himself looking at her face again without any distinct opinion forming in his head. It was another long second before he heard a censure in the emptiness there.

Shit! Where were his manners? And what sort of an impression would he be making if he wasn't going to take time for the girl he might have to end up marrying?

"I'm Maan..." He walked around his desk and shook her hand, thinking it was the only appropriate gesture to remedy the initial awkwardness that still lingered from the airport. "Don't bother about yesterday. It's all good"

Shit! Just the thing he didn't want to bring up and with her forehead creasing with embarrassment, he realized he'd been the one to put notion of apologizing into her head again.

"I'm Geet and I'm really sorry about yesterday..."

He let her speak her bit and motioned towards taking the couch in the corner of the room. Walking back to where he kept his mini-cooler, he got her a soda after asking for her preference.

"Just coke would be fine" She said and thanked him, "Thank you..."

He saw the fluster on her cheeks and a mild surprise on her face when he handed her the drink.

"You look nice...formal...I just didn't expect is all" He reckoned how terribly judgmental that would come across and corrected himself the same instant, "That you could be having an office close by" That last stretch came out in a cramming fast slur, that he was beating himself about the easy slips.

Her head titled a wee bit, her eyes crinkled with confusion and it all made him feel like he was the biggest dumbo in the world for no reason at all. From that less appealing idea, he again cleared his throat for the second time in 5 mts.

"I apologize I haven't yet had the chance to read up your email, otherwise I would have known you are from around and we could be meeting in a less formal setting"

The straight piece of hair that slightly twirled around by her ear distracted him as he added, "But since I was told that you were fine to come over to my office, I didn't bother with it. As it is, I'm sure this is all a little weird and this office setting sure does its share to make it all the more intimidating"

He was being too nice, he told himself and faintly shocked that he could be good at speaking to women without wanting to beat the crap out of them with his logic in his boardroom talks, or wanting to take them out as his date for a party. He glanced at her to find her brows caught in a perpetual knot of confoundment.

"Not really Sir" She said matter-of-factly and the shock he'd felt only a second ago was nothing in comparison to the magnitude that hit him now. "This is certainly my first time, but I'm sure I can do a good job at it without being scared at what might come my way"

Sure...whatever. That sounded like an unoriginal piece of interview boasting he'd heard from the numerous times he'd been part of a panel. Surely, the woman could loosen up.

"Sir?...You can call me Maan...And really, you don't have to work on it alone. There is my piece too and these things take a long time to fall into place. More like 6 months or even up to a year..."

"But I thought I had only three months to prove myself" She seemed strained, weary only from listening to him, "Has things changed in the last month? Does everyone get this extension?"

"Extension? No...of course not" His face crunched up with a trace of disgust at her bold suggesting and he wanted to ask, "Are you kidding me? Do you think I do this for a living? Meeting prospect life partners in his office every other day"

"Maan..." She began, but trailed off soon after and he was glad to have that repose, that momentary solitude to realize that he liked the way his name sounded when she said it.

"I'm not so sure that I understand. If I don't have an extension then I want to know what my responsibilities curtail for the next three months. As I said, I'm new at this, but I want to learn it all and show progress that will help making your decision..." She sat up a bit straighter and showed the right amount of eagerness in her eyes, her lips softening into a small smile, exactly like those consulting company women who came up to him to have their employees hired.

Shit! This chick was all business like him, but he didn't know if all this raw and formal addressing was working for him anymore. In that moment, he heavily regretted not having shown interest in arranging to meet outside his office situation.

"Geet...I don't think you should see going out on a dat..."dat...e as a responsibility, he'd wanted to say, but someone knocked at his door just then and he responded to the knock, asking them to come in.

It was Yash with a dramatic sigh of relief and he walked into the room rolling his eyes. "Finally...Sasha is one dumb female at the front desk" He exclaimed, "Uh! Oh...Maybe I shouldn't have made that statement in your presence MK"

"Ok...I'm just going to pretend, I haven't heard that" As senior manager of the business group, he shared a large responsibility in keeping his sub-ordinates in check, but he certainly was going to let that one pass when it was Sasha, the despicable, Yash was talking about.

"What brings you here?" He asked, remembering he wasn't meeting the IT Team until later that afternoon.

"Geet, Of course..." He pointed to her and Geet stood up from the couch, with the nervous clutch of her file to her body.

"Geet?" He questioned, his voice low from the preoccupation of the thousand possibilities he was mapping there.

"Sasha messed up again and sent Geet over to your office" He said with a roll of his eyes, "I see that you have already met, so I'm going to skip over the introductions, but there are things we finalized this morning with Josh and she couldn't have told you about that" Maan listened in with a distinct rumble in his belly, somehow the garbled message from another voice in his head already giving him a sense of what Yash was going to tell him then. Geet's face had much more clarity upon hearing Yash, as if she'd mistakenly gathered the undertones of their conversation all the while and had fought herself from calling him a pervert - considering him one among the million other bosses who made cheap passes at their employees.

"She will be the new IT intern with our team and will work with you directly. So after months of your asking, we have filled in that position. Now, that officially should end your rants at our team meetings"

He was scratching his temple with his index finger as he made sense of Yash's decree that Geet was the new intern and not the girl his Daadima had sent to meet him. Unaware, he turned in time to catch Geet's face drain out of all its color right after Yash was done announcing their new arrangement.

His breathing slowed after a few seconds, when he convinced himself that everything he'd spoken to her, however improper in its true intent, could still fit in with the context of a manager-intern interaction. There was still something very much amiss in the way he'd gone about treating her. His senses had gone out the windows and he'd behaved not as someone who'd argued his way through corporate hierarchy with sharp and flawless reasoning, but as an averaging assuming man who wouldn't question if it was the prize or a trap that lay waiting in the distance.

But she was neither...this much he could tell.

"We should get going MK...see you at our 1.30" Yash said and Geet walked towards the door.

Before she went out the door, she turned in her place and held out her hand to him again, "Thanks Maan...I'm looking forward to working with you"

If Yash had a question then in the way she was addressing him, he didn't voice it then. He'd always been MK to his team members, not Maan and he hoped that error on his part wouldn't give away much.

"I do too. All the best" He said and watched them disappear behind the grey steel door that began shutting behind them.

"All the best to you too..." Again, that tiny vexing voice in his head said. Indeed, he thought. He needed all the luck in the world when it was becoming a habit to make a fool of himself every time she showed up in his life.

If this wasn't some crude joke of coincidence played on him by destiny, then what else was...Sweet Jesus! How on earth did he ever conceive the idea that she was his bride-to-be?

I am lovin it.