The first green light.. Episode 18

Pavan was waiting for that reply back from the past 20 mins, though her status was green all the while, Ananya wasn’t probably in the mood to ping back her new follower! He had finished checking up on all his unread newsletter emails, cleaning up his mailbox – yea, Pavan didn’t have a lot of emails needing attention, I am sure you have guessed it by now! Having spent lot of time Pavan gave up on a reply and a disappointed himself thought of shutting out and calling it a day, just when a sound buzzed on the laptop and the window started being highlighted.. He quickly opened the window to see a pop up window in the right bottom corner saying…

Ananya: Hi

A perplexed Pavan on what should be his reply, went ahead with the standard without any delay..

Pavan: Hi, how are you?

Wondering if she is going to take similar time as the first one to reply back.. but she was quick this time

Ananya: m dng well, hw bout u?
Pavan: Very well thank you

Knowing that it was ‘her’ chatting, Pavan was keen to maintain the decency in the chats with full use of the written english language as compared to the cool chilled chat lingo by Ananya.

P: Thanks for acknowledging the friend request here.
A: no worry, i knw who u r

Eyebrows raised with the statement, Pavan was keen to know how was that.

P: Surprising to know that, how do you know me?
A: lol, we wrkd fr d sam co, i saw ur linkd profile – well ya i knw somthn bout ya
P: Yea of course, that’s how I added you on linkedin, its good to know you here as well.
A: Yea, gd to knw u too

A silence gripped on the chat as Pavan wasn’t sure of how to take the conservation ahead – asking anymore questions would be like invading privacy on the first chat itself, neither can it be like asking any other stuff – can make it too boring! To keep it going and realizing that it was about 1 am in the night he posted one question just to see if he can get any reply..

P: How come you are still online and awake, isn’t it pretty late?

For a moment, Pavan thought it was a little overboard for the first chat, but some things can’t be undone, can they?
After a brief pause came a reply..

A: Na, nt really, it’s my usual time to be online

Well, it isn’t common to be online at 1 am unless someone has real good interests to stay online, thought Pavan, like he did for now. Does she have a boyfriend? is she committed – maybe she has some very good friends whom she chats with so late. A Thousand things went through the train of thought but he had to wait sometime to be able to unearth these details..

Next, he saw was the green light turning grey.. indicating that she had gone offline! A disappointed Pavan, didn’t get a chance to say a goodbye and turn the first chat memorable! 
He optimistically said to himself that after all ‘it wasn’t a bad start’. A smiling Pavan went off to bed with these running thoughts..

Lights off..

Missed Opportunity.. Episode 9

Several days past by and there was no news of any new strategies being put in place by our stud, Pavan except for that effort of clicking on a button in Linkedin to add her in his network!! By now, he also had developed some close friends with whom he had shared his interests in someone in office, and as a usual ritual in friends, they had started pulling his leg. Teasing him on her name had become a common timepass for his coffee time group.

A couple of days later, a mail from the HR team flooded in everyone’s mailbox asking for participation in one of the corporate competitions. The event was being organized by an event management firm and employees of different IT firms would be representing their company in the competition. The competition was of a Paintball event – an event where males and females can compete in teams – each team asking for a participation of minimum 6 members. Each company of course can float in only one team, which meant only 6 people from one particular firm can enroll in. Given that Pavan was quite new to the firm he hardly knew anyone around and none of his group colleagues were interested in participating in the competition! Not that he was particularly interested in participating in the competition but he always wanted to meet new people – he wanted to shed that introvert image that he thought he had. Some time back, Pavan was mocked by a college mate of his for being a introvert and that had hit him hard enough. Though he always tried to be ‘not an introvert’, he made a conscious effort to avoid making people think that he is one!

He had finally made up his mind of participating in the competition albeit none of his known colleagues were participating. A couple of days had already passed by until he had hit that reply button to the mail and he was not sure if he would really snap up any chance of entering into that 6 member team. HR team was immediately to respond being apologetic about not confirming Pavan’s participation as they already had a list of more than 10 people fighting for a place in the 6 member team. He was wondering what were they going to do about the final team selection and how would they justify the non-selection to the other guys!! Anyways, HR wasn’t an easy job anytime!! Nevertheless, those who were not participating were always invited to come and cheer their company team and also at the same time enjoy other events at the venue. Work pressure being less that day, Pavan thought of giving a visit to the venue of the competition along with few of his colleagues.

Pavan’s life wasn’t so simple and neither was he lucky enough! He realized this again when he saw he was cheering Ananya playing in the 6 member team. Thousand questions and images whizzed across his mind like What if I was in the team? I would have got the best chance of my life to crack at least a small chat with her.. Could have had a good game of paintball and then good team outing if we had won the game.. Phew.. But life isnt so easy, you have to live through it !! Pavan managed to enjoy rest of the events, cheered his team to the fullest and returned home that day – lost… lost in thoughts.. as always..

Social Face..Book.. Episode 8

The fact that his Smiling approach did not work that day, Pavan had to experiment a couple of different strategies.. Aah.. that was just a thought or rather a style of writing.. Pavan was just trying to get in touch with that lady.. in some way or the other.. whichever way it would work it would work for him !!

Back to his desk with a piping hot coffee, he was busy whistling through some of his friends Facebook requests. Facebook, a pretty

new social networking site, new in his circle, was catching up super craze at that time and Pavan always wanted to be a part of it for sure!! The website had already created a craze in the West and it was now the turn of the developing nations to build a base on it. At this rate probably Facebook might be a good database of its citizens for any country’s administrative government!! Not worried about the government as of now, he was now busy going through some of the profile pics of a school friend. Pavan had discovered a bunch of school friends through the social site and was sure to make some more !!

Facebook gave super chances to show off.. (that’s my term) people can post pictures of themselves with people liking it, commenting on it!! Many of them also boast about themselves – some status’s run like “Ran 10 kms in 1 hr today.. yippee” to sweeter cuter status’s like “Fed a hungry puppy dog today..felt so good”. Well, comments and status’s like these go well with some of them or else they become a laughing stock in a group !! Coming back to Pavan, he was more of a person who used to be happy on clicking the like buttons more than using the Share button in Facebook.. For those who didn’t get that it was to say that Pavan mostly appreciated shared stuff by his friends rather than himself sharing something with his friends.

Done with most of the updates on Facebook he thought of why not check if Ananya had an account there! “A..n..a..n..y..” “Ananya Sharma – 1 mutual friend” popped up a drop down menu..Woah, she was very much available on Facebook. A quick click on the name and the faster internet connection meant that it took no time to reach her page and anyways time did not matter in this case!! There was her latest updated profile pic alongwith some details from the entire profile. Pavan at this time sort of cursed Facebook as it ensured that strangers were not allowed to pry on the profile details!! All he could see was the firm name and the current city – both of which were something he knew right from the start !! Pavan quickly went on to check the only mutual friend that they had and the best of his bad luck showed that it was an acquaintance whom he had just added while whistling through thousands of photos and hundreds of profiles!! Well, the mutual friend was from the same firm but had met him only once and probably had the shortest conversation with him!! Facebook gave Pavan an option to add her as a friend – but “How can I?” thought Pavan.. “Did I ever speak to her! Did she ever even look at me!!” “Aargh.. there was no way she would even think of adding me” his thoughts continued.. Nothing to be done he closed the profile page and turned on to thinking that there might be some way of putting the internet to use.

Linkedin, somehow became his best friend within the next minute and he quickly logged onto his account. Similar search here too and ready was the complete professional profile for his eyes !! He somehow thought “If I add her here, she probably might add me, as we are in the same firm – who wouldn’t want to grow their professional network? Isn’t it?”. A click on the “Add to My Professional network” and a small quick prayer to one of the crores of gods believed to be present above, helped him complete one of the tasks in his outlined approach strategy..