Darling In Pink

It was my summer vacation. After having spent about twenty days doing absolutely nothing, it was finally time for me to do something fruitful. The scheduled date for the in plant training, at the Air Traffic Control, arrived. Me and four of my friends, got together at the railway station, and strolled towards the ATC wondering out loud what they might have in store for us.

We were at its gate after a while and were asked to ID ourselves, twice, before being allowed to proceed further. We searched the building for the classroom, but some guy misdirected us and so it took us a while, but we managed to spot it before late.

The classroom was well air conditioned, so was the entire building, but by the time we arrived, there were not enough seats left on the boys' side for the five of us to sit together. So we occupied the last row on the girls' side.

We then ran a check on the class to see if there were any good looking ladies amongst it. There were a few OK ones, but none of note. Then we noticed the only girl sitting on the boys' side, a few rows in front of us. She had our curiosity and we waited to see if she was any good. But the boy beside her caught us peeking. He must have been her boyfriend, he started staring at us. But later we found out that the girl is someone whom we would never again bother to look at. She was ugly. But we weren't in any position to explain it to her BF, who kept shooting stares at us every now and then assuming that we were still looking at her. After a while, we got used to it.

The classroom kept filling up, but there was no teacher in sight. We whiled away time chattering about our uneventful summer. The only person who had spent his holiday worthwhile was Nanda. He'd had his passion for pencil sketching rekindled and spent his vacation trying to master his talent. He displayed us his portraits and gained a lot of appreciation.

The doors of the room opened yet again and this time a girl dressed in pink walked in. I turned my gaze towards Nanda, on my right, and found him gaping at the girl with an awestruck expression on his face. He glanced back at me and I am certain he found me equally amazed. 'Damn! She is beautiful!' we nodded to each other. She moved to sit in the row in front of us, in the seat diagonal to me. I knew then that those three days were going to be memorable.

Classes started, and unlike any other, they were interesting. Airports and airplanes have always fascinated me. And thanks to the overly enthusiastic coordinator, we got to know a lot about the girl in pink. She was from SSN, same course as us, same year as us and her name is Deepika. Her mom had been an employee at the ATC and the coordinator happened to know her. All reasons to rejoice.

I've always wanted to share a classroom with a girl as beautiful as the one in front of me. Whenever the topic got boring, I would just sit back, relax, and admire her. She was insanely pretty.

Lunch hour arrived and we went to eat at the canteen, but the food turned out to be horrible, so we decided to bring our own lunch in the days to come.
Classes resumed and the coordinator informed us that we would be taking a tour of the place from the day after. I was excited, even more when he said that guys and girls should mingle up and form groups for it. I prayed for Deepika to end up in our group.

The day ended and we headed back to the station talking about how unexpected the day turned out to be. We started looking forward to the next couple of days.

Day two began and started rolling by. The guy with the ugly girlfriend still kept eyeing us but that had started to entertain us. We started taking count of the number of times he looked at us in a minute. Six times on average was a really big number. During the interval we decided to stare back at him, all together, and try to make him uncomfortable.But Venkat was not willing to do it, so we had to leave him out. Srini too was hesitant at first, but later he  joined me, Nanda and Vishal and we started staring at him like policemen would at a convict, but he didn’t look back at us. He turned his head around only a few minutes after we broke the stare, disappointment.

Deepika wasn't wearing a pink dress that day, yet she looked cute. The time for the grouping came up and to my utter appeasement, she and three of her friends were sorted into our group. We had to wait till the end of lunch hour for the tour to start though. We made good use of that time.

We ate our lunch in the classroom and after satisfying our appetites, I and Nanda plugged in to music. He hadn't brought his earphones, so we had to share mine. We listened to some good old melodies and watched in peace as Deepika’s movements synchronized with the tune. Her head nodded to the music, her hands played the tune and her smile was harmonious.

Moments later, the tour began. No one seemed to be doing any work at the ATC, the machines had it all taken care of, yet the guys were being handsomely paid. We visited various blocks to have a look at the proceedings and later we decided to go have a clear view of the runway. As I watched the planes take off and land, I secretly hoped for something dramatic to happen as in the shows of Discovery. But the air traffic people had the place well under control. The place had many interesting stuff, but not all of them kept us fascinated. Occasionally some boring topic would show up and at times as such, I would realize how priceless it is to have someone as pretty as Deepika in the group. But like all good things, the day came to an end.

Day three was promising. It was our last day at the ATC and our darling was dressed in pink again. I've heard people say pink is pretty, but she stood prettier. She had the top few buttons of her shirt unhooked, nothing was showing, but it certainly spiced things up. The tour began again and we couldn't help looking at her. Vishal started asking stupid questions to the demonstrators, hoping to impress the girl. But the questions sounded too stupid even to us.

Later we were taken to view the control tower. The lift was not big enough to capacitate all the members of our group, so we boys generously allowed the girls to use it and then started racing up the stairs. The run made me breathless, I reached the top and Deepika stood there blocking the coordinator from my view. The few other boys who were in my group other than my friends had decided to drop off and join the others. The coordinator, who noticed the meagre strength, asked me about it. I was already out of breath and to make things worse, Deepika started looking straight at me. She was hardly a few steps away and God! She was marvellous. I was at a loss for words at first, but then I somehow managed to tell him that those boys deprived us of their company. We then went on to have a look around the control tower. The whole place was so much fun, I started wishing to get a job at that place.

Lunch hour arrived again and I and Nanda did the usual admiring as the day before, but we were not growing tired of it, not even at the least. I also noticed that she had one of the most beautiful smiles I have ever seen.

The final stage of the tour was upon us. We were directed to some place that is used to monitor the air traffic. Our legs started to hurt due to all the walking we'd been doing. I stood facing a demonstrator with Nanda on my left. Deepika stood beside the teacher, yawning. The day had obviously been tiring for her, yet she managed to look so pretty. We even admired her in her drowsiness.

The day slowly drew to a close and we were asked to assemble at the classroom for a final meet. The coordinator asked for volunteers to give a speech about their experience at the ATC. One girl came forward and gave an awe inspiring speech, it was all technical, but she had attention until the very end. She gained a huge round of applause. Deepika was then called forward, but she declined the invitation. We would have loved to listen to her, but a few things are not meant to happen. Then to our surprise, the guy who had been peeking at us for the past three days, stood up. He gave a good speech as well, but his girlfriend was still ugly.

It was finally time for us to bid goodbye. We had one final look at Deepika and then we started making our way home. We were surely going to miss her, but we could always stalk her on Facebook. As we started walking out of the ATC, she and her friends over took us in their scooters. It was the last time, probably, that we were going to see her in person. Only three words came to our minds as we saw her ride away. We didn’t hesitate to voice it.

“We Love You!”