A proverbial love story - Part 1

The concept of bounded rationality states that the behaviour especially the decision making of an individual is limited by the information he or she possess, the cognitive limits of the mind. In accordance with this concept, this story is a manifestation of the random thoughts which got provoked in me due to the observations of the world around me and the countless Bollywood movies which I have seen since from my childhood. Hence an intelligent reader like you would have now set his expectations about the creativity and innovativeness in this story to a realistic level: P Some of you will completely agree with me that this story deserves to be called ‘A Proverbial Love Story’.

Tonight was different. It was neither Friday nor Saturday night. There was no loud rock music blaring out of his music system. No one was dancing. There were no boxes of half eaten pizzas lying around. There was no one else. Tonight, Sameer was all alone in his messy room of the hostel. He was holding a glass full of whisky in his left hand. In front of him was the half empty bottle of the blue liquid. He had already guzzled four double shots of it in last one hour. The room was full of darkness except for the glow of his mobile screen being lit intermittently as he was fidgeting with it. Fingers of his right hand kept moving up and down on the keypad many times. He reached to one particular number in his phone book every time. But he could not muster courage to press the call button. People say alcohol makes you loosen up and speak about things which you would never tell someone while in full control of your senses. But tonight, that theory was being proved wrong. He had surrendered himself to Alcohol. He was feeling giddy and disoriented. But still his mind could not allow him to speak to Vaishali. As he tossed down one more peg of whisky, the convulsions inside his stomach became extremely intense, forcing him to open mouth and throw out. He then fell sideways on the bed and closed his eyes. Ironically, the darkness in front of his inebriated eyes vanished when he shut them close. All he could see was the glow of a smiling and beautiful face of a tall, slender and shy looking girl sitting quietly in one corner of a class. It was the first day of her basic level German language course. She did not want to miss the pronunciations of the alphabets of this foreign language. As the teacher was explaining the important differences between the sounds of a and ä, o and ö along with u and ü, he was disturbed by one guy among his students. In his harsh and agitated tone, very much characteristic of the German speaking people, he scolded him. Sameer certainly did not have the best of the introductions, anyone could have hoped for, to the entire class. Thanks to the teacher, everyone came to know that he was looking at the girl sitting in the corner of the class. Before calling off the class, the teacher asked “what else would you like to know about Germany?” Sameer immediately raised his hand and asked” Sir, would you tell us something about October Fest. Is it true that in Germany beer is cheaper than the mineral water?” There was a little laughter in the class. Vaishali was amused by the awareness of the questioner. But she was also disenchanted by his interest in the topic of beer. Her eyebrows went up to form a perfect bow.

After the class got over, Sameer was waiting for bus to go back home, when he saw Vaishali also waiting over there. He wanted to talk to her. But he didn’t know what to say. He did not want to deteriorate his reputation further. He did not want to be seen as hitting on her, although that’s what he exactly had in his mind. He could not stop himself from looking at her. Finally he gave in to his temptation. He went to her and introduced himself. She snapped him saying “Are you the same guy who was asked to concentrate on the studies in the class?” He replied “It was not my fault. I am not used to have such nice distractions in my class. I am a final year student of Mechanical engineering.” He expected her to blush, but instead she decided to introduce herself “My name is Vaishali. I have finished my Masters in Arts this year and I am learning German language so as to settle down with my fiancé in Germany after six months.” After 5 minutes of silence between them, a bus came to the halt and Vaishali got inside. She was relieved to go away from the stare of Sameer.

P.S : I will post the second part of the story on tomorrow. I hope you enjoyed reading the first part.