RAVINDER SINGH LO VE S TO RI ES THAT TO UCHED MY HEART Contents About the Author Also by Ravinder Singh The Girl Behind the Counter Omkar Khandekar A Train to My Marriage Vandana Sharma A Love Story in Reverse! Sujir Pavithra Nayak Flirting Vinayak Nadkarni The Divine Union K. Balakumaran Just Because I Made Love to You Doesn’t Mean I Love You Anjali Khurana One Night Stand in Hariharapuram Mohan Raghavan May God Bless You, Dear Yamini Vijendran Cheers to Love Renu Bhutoria Sethi Synchronicity Jyoti Singh Visvanath Love Is Also a Compromise Manjula Pal A Village Love Story Haseeb Peer Never Forget Me Renuka Vishwanathan A Tale of Two Strangers Swagata Pradhan Bittersweet Symphony Jennifer Ashraf Kashmi Heartstrings Dr Roshan Radhakrishnan The Most Handsome Kaviya Kamaraj A Pair of Shoes Manaswita Ghosh The Smiling Stranger Lalit Kundalia The Last Note Amrit Sinha The Uncertainties of Life Arpita Ghosh Another Time, Another Place Sowmya Aji Clumsy Cupid Reuben Kumar Lalwani Here’s How It Goes Arka Datta Love, Beyond Conditions Asma Ferdoes Editor’s Note Notes on Contributors Follow Penguin Copyright PENGUIN METRO READS LOVE STORIES THAT TOUCHED MY HEART Ravinder Singh is a bestselling author. I Too Had a Love Story, his debut novel, is his own story that has touched millions of hearts. Can Love Happen Twice? is Ravinder’s second novel. After spending most of his life in Burla, a very small town in western Orissa, Ravinder has finally settled down in Chandigarh. He is an MBA from the renowned India School of Business and is presently working with a prominent multinational company. Ravinder loves playing snooker in his free time. He is crazy about Punjabi music and loves dancing to its beat. The best way to contact Ravinder is through his official fan page on Facebook. You can also write to him at [email protected] or visit his website www.RavinderSinghOnline.com. ... I Love you Rachu ... Dear Frnds pls spread this msg until its reach to my rachu I thinks she knows my name Ebook Downloaded from: EBOOK4IN.BLOGSPOT.COM ALSO BY RAVINDER SINGH I Too Had a Love Story Can Love Happen Twice? ... I Love you Rachu ... The Girl Behind the Counter OMKAR KHANDEKAR I leaned over the parapet of the balcony of my apartment on the fifteenth floor. The preparations for the evening bhajan ritual had begun, I deduced from the escalating hum downstairs. The building watchman was arranging gray Neelkamal chairs in a semi-circle between a sleek red Honda and a black Chevrolet SUV. I looked back up at the jumble of skyscrapers. Yardley Gardens was one of Mumbai’s plushest townships that my family had recently relocated to from the humble cobwebs of Nashik. The westward sun made me squint and I withdrew to my cushy C-backed bamboo swing, resuming the novel in my hand. There are few things as relaxing as an evening breeze tickling you while you turn the delicious pages of Adiga’s The White Tiger. It was now nearing six and I could hear the boys playing football downstairs. In spite of wanting to join them, I stubbornly clung on to my novel. I didn’t want to open my mouth and make a fool of myself. I remembered reading ‘It is better to stay silent and be thought wise than open your mouth and be proven foolish’. Or was it the other way round? Immaterial, I wasn’t leaving. My tenth standard was to start in a few days’ time. You could say I was a little nervous. The relocation was a little bit of, like they say, a ‘culture shock’ to me. My father had taken up a new job that offered thrice the pay of the previous, along with a horde of benefits like company quarters at this place, a Tata sedan and discount coupons at various dining joints. A personal pizza was no more to be shared by the family. The visit to the restaurants no more meant a strict decorum of mere daal, a paneer subzi and roti. I could unblinkingly order appetizers to overpriced Cokes without a warning eyebrow. Just the very thought of them now made me hungry. I got up from the swing. ‘Ma, can I have some money? I want to go out, eat something,’ I shouted as I went inside the house. ‘Why do you want to go outside?’ The voice came from the living room. I spotted her knitting, red and white yarn balls by her side. ‘Your grandmother has packed us some …’ ‘Mom!’ ‘These kids of today,’ she muttered without annoyance. She was quite jovial ever since we’d moved in. And in spite of being the unwilling kitchen recluse that she was, she made me take a plate of parathas to both our neighbours, without paying any heed to my ‘But what do I say to them?’ What happened next is something I fervently hope that twenty years later I will look back and laugh at. She set aside the half-finished scarf for my grandmother and fished her hand into her purse that hung by the armrest of the couch. All the years we stayed with my grandparents in my native town, there was a non-stop bickering between my mother and grandma. The day we left, I sneaked a look at my mother crying in my grandma’s lap and the usually stoic lady that my grandma is, even she couldn’t hold back the Ganges streaming down her eyes. ‘Don’t spend all of it,’ she said. A crisp hundred-rupee note, from which Gandhiji grinned at me. The elevator doors opened to a shockingly electric environment. I mean, when you come to such a colony, you expect people to be silent and, what’s the word, ‘sophisticated’ to the point of being considered curt. But with the noise these kids made with their Ringa Ringa and catch and hopscotch and whatnot, I almost felt like I was back in Nashik. I avoided eye contact and went to the main gate. The path to the street was blocked by a team of sweaty T- shirts and delirious outcries of boys of my age and less playing football. Let me tell you something about me and football. First, I hate this game. Second, and by no way because of the first pointer, I am no good at it; although, that doesn’t stop me from admiring a good game when I see one. And admire I did the fat guy in the midfield as he dribbled the ball between his legs. A tall stick lurched towards him. Our fatso quickly defected to his left and furiously kicked the ball at a scared teenager who turned reflexively to his side. The ball hit his elbow. ‘Hand!’ the fatso screamed in delight and duly encashed the free kick. I was impressed. I looked at them from a distance, hoping they would notice and call me over. Maybe they were too engrossed in the game or maybe they didn’t care about a stranger gawking at them. I stood unheeded. Sighing, I made my way to the exit. Spencer Mall is more of a two-floored convenience store. I was thrilled to spot an escalator and hopped right on. The first floor hosts a small cafeteria consisting of three chairs each around circular wooden tables. There is a glass counter on the left where you get ‘The best Frankies in town’. Confession—I had no idea what Frankies were. I wondered if they were so expensive that it would drive my pride of being loaded away. At the first floor, one takes a U-turn to face the cafeteria. I occupied one of the empty tables and studied the menu. The contents were reassuring. A basic vegetarian Frankie cost around forty and went up to fifty five if you wanted many fancy fillings. Schezwan paneer Frankie commanded my interest. I went to place an order at the glass-top counter and there she was—the Girl behind the Counter. ‘Hi! And what would you like to have today?’ she smiled at me affably. It was almost a smile of recognition, as if she had been privileged to have known me since ages and that I was her favourite customer. I bit on my braces—her perfect pearly whites probably never needed dental treatment. The thick and sleek black tresses almost shone and one lock of hair hung cutely on her dusky face. Her eyes were everything the on-screen actors swoon to and poets write couplets about. You get it, don’t you? She was probably a few years older than me and wore a black T-shirt that read ‘Joe’s Frankies’. I tried to power up. Speak up, I screamed inside and mentally rehearsed what I had to say. Just order as you would normally do and say ‘Thank you’ when you get it. How hard is it? A question popped in my head—how is schezwan pronounced? C and H are silent, duh, came the answer. How can two consecutive letters be silent, I wondered. Well, it just sounds better, doesn’t it? ‘Sez-waan’, I reasoned. But this is taking too long, way beyond the line that separates a customer from this pint-sized nincompoop. And was that sweat on my forehead? ‘Sir?’ the girl asked unflinchingly, her expressions intact. I hoped she wasn’t just pretending to be calm while hunting for an alarm button under the counter. ‘One plate schezwan paneer Frankie,’ I said and instantly felt proud that I didn’t stutter.