Flashbacks: A Year To Remember (Part IV): How I Met Aditi

It was the August of our Freshmen year. I was already familiar with talking to Arka and being a comfortable part of that Freshmen Community he had created. There used to be several posts including some of girls’. And among those girls was the profile of a girl, Aditi.

In those times, she had the most attractive Display Picture among us (she still has). She was rarely online and her posts in the community were very few, unlike Arka, Polo, and me. I was really impressed by the choice of her Display Picture and that encouraged me to add her in my Orkut Friendlist after several days of hesitation.

Now, the first impression of Aditi came to me as her response to my friend request. I didn’t quite expect that she was going to accept the request, but the next day I logged into my Orkut account as usual, I saw the most unusual thing one can come across in any Social Networking site. It was a friend request from Aditi with a message that said she had accidentally rejected my friend request and asked me to add her back.

I really don’t think that Any living thing in the history (or in future) of mankind (social networking) might have possibly done a thing like this, given the fact that I was a complete stranger to her then (and also my display picture was SLASH, so it wasn’t remotely impressive). Most people don’t even care who adds them or not in social networking sites. But this thing she did stunned me.

We had a few brief chats on Orkut Scrapbook after this, but the actual “meeting” came about a fortnight after college started. In those days she was friends with a guy who happened to be in my class. One day, he asked me to accompany him to someone’s Hostel room to pick up his clothes. Meanwhile Aditi called him and they were supposed to meet as the college hours were over. That guy asked me to wait for her around the bend of the alleyway to his friend’s Hostel till he returned.

So, I waited. I already had an idea what she might look like with reference to her display picture in orkut, when the first glimpse arrived. A short, pumpkin shaped girl, dressed in black, with frizzy open hair which almost covered her face, hands folded and wearing a black backpack below the waist.

She already knew I was going to wait for her so when I waved, she started walking towards me. Now, usually, when two people meet for the first time, they exchange “Hi”s but the first thing she said to me was “Are you guys performing in the Freshers’?” (I replied “Thinking of something like that, lets see.”) She was real Crazy...

What a first meeting it was! Aditi, me and ‘that guy’ had a few more minutes of chat after which Aditi and ‘that guy’ parted. That night, I had some quality conversation over Google Talk. Turns out that, when you actually meet someone in person, conversing becomes a lot easier. And then there was the “Rai” incident which I will come to later.

As the time passed, the friendship between us kept growing. And she and Arka came to introduce me to the others. Today Aditi is one of my Best Friends, and she is a proud owner of many nicknames that I gave to her among which, one of them is just AWESOME.

Further: How I Met Pratip, Nirmalya... Keep Reading

To Be Continued...