Chapter 4

He hated Sundays especially when he is in Chennai, it meant he had to miss the family for another long spell until he next visited Chennai. He was logged in to his MAC laptop which he had bought when he had gone to New Jersey couple of years back with a strong coffee next to his mouse pad which was obviously missing the mouse. He was randomly browsing some web sites with gtalk minimised on the task bar. “Karthik lets go to super market and come back, illana vunga amma thittuva” his father said. His father was a very successful auditor with handful of clients who occupied the top elite list in South India. When he works, he means business but if he is at home and not in the small room that said “Number Factory” on the door, a very friendly person but not a favourite for Karthik, he had always answered “Amma” whenever some one asked him “Amma chellama ? Appa chellama ?” and he new he was serious on that, but his father never used to mind that. He himself was a mamma’s boy until she died couple of years back. He loved his mother to that extent that he had literally stopped going to his office for almost three months and had asked his junior associates to take care of the office. “Karthik, va super market poitu vandhudalam” he said again. “Vandhuten pa” he said and gulped the rest of his coffee in one shot and smacked his lips. He had refreshed and left his computer without locking with his orkut scrap book window active. The moment he got up to leave, the refresh completed and the page loaded again, only now there was Zindagi Rocks :Are you there? 0 minutes ago. He came some forty minutes after doing the vegetable shopping in Spencer’s daily. He came to his room with a big tropicana tetra pack and a large Lays classic salted bag and sat in his computer chair. He swiped his finger on the finger pad and the monitor displayed the brilliant graphic that the apple is famous for. He entered the password and the orkut screen appeared again. He saw Zindagi Rocks :Are you there? 0 minutes ago. and saw the photo next to Zindagi Rocks. It was Archana and the photo was supposedly taken when she was shouting ecstatically from a very close distance. No wonder she was enjoying the moment, she was being licked on her face by a cute little puppy pug. He refreshed the scrap page again and saw four more scraps.

Zindagi Rocks : Ping me once you are there. 7 minutes ago

Zindagi Rocks : Testimonial ellam balama irukku ? 16 minutes ago

Zindagi Rocks : How do you know Srinidhi? She is there in mutual friends list. She is my cousin sister 24 minutes ago

Zindagi Rocks : Helllllllooooo ?????? 34 minutes ago

Zindagi Rocks : Are you there? 46 minutes ago

She had apparently analysed his profile inside out and was wondering how she found out his profile in orkut. He started replying “Srinidhi was my college jun” and decided not to complete that and clicked on Zindagi Rocks. His screen refreshed and was now showing her profile. He clicked on Scrap and found that she had locked her scrap book so were other links. She had only one testimonial which that read Happy Friendship Day in asterisk. He Placed his mouse pointer on some icon on the screen and the tool tip read 94 percent trusty and moved his mouse pointer a little and the screen tip read 85 percent cool and moved the mouse pointer a little and stopped abruptly after looking the three hearts - fully painted Red. He was both happy and cursed the bloody male community. He took out his blackberry and took out her number and shouted “Appa voon phone enga?” and his father said “It is there on the sofa”. He took his dad’s iPhone and erased something systematically on the bottom end of the multi touch screen from left to right with his thumb and a small arrow followed his finger and the phone was unlocked. He typed four numbers which were displayed on the screen as four asterisk and he placed a call to Archana.