34. Asking her out for a Movie

It was sometime in February of the last semester, the spring was in full bloom. I was closest to Ansh at this point of time than ever before. Aditya Chopra and his team were celebrating the tenth year of DDLJ success, and in line with that the Fun Republic multiplex was screening special shows of the movie. This particular movie was quiet famous amongst our hostel friends, often during regular gossip sessions we repeated dialogues from the movie, for example Tazzy would imitate king khan saying,
“Ab sari zindgi to doston ke sahare nahin gujari ja sakti na, senorita”
“Badde badde deshon mein, esi chotti chotti battein hoti rehtin hain… senorita”
“O ji mein Raj… na kon Raj…o tuhada juai…hain…o tuhada juai hai na Kuljeet, oda jigri dost raj…”
“Ja simran ja, jee le apni zindgi”
”Jo logg hume ache lagte hain, woh hume pyaar se Tazzy bulate hain...”
And everyone’s favourite,
“Yeh tumhare pardada, kabhi school hi nahin gye… Yeh tumhare dada panchvi fail, aur mein tera baap, metric fail… ha ha… toone to London mein fail hoke dikha diya…o koka o pochi …”
“Meine tujhe yeh tuntunna bajane ke liye peda nahin kiya hai…”

The boat was sailing well,
“Now it’s time you ask her out for a movie, Harry” my gang was filling my head with all sorts of fancy ideas.
“Hmmm…” I was thinking and my thought was that ‘am I going too fast, wouldn’t it send any wrong signals etcetera, etcetera’
“Shouldn’t we wait and allow it to happen naturally?” I asked and seriously meant it.
“Come on yaar, asking a girl out for a movie is a natural thing!” he replied and the logic seemed perfect to me, ‘o my love guide what would I do without you’, but then there was another problem.
“How should I ask her out?”
“With your big mouth”
“That’s okay but… how” I was literally shivering at the thought of asking her out. Though we had been talking regularly now for a month, but asking her out for a movie was a tough thing for me. I had never felt so nervous before, my heart beat was faster than normal. Even if your friends suggest you a good idea, that is only twenty-five percent of the job done, I still had to call her up and ask her out for the movie, now that was the difficult part of the whole process.
“Okay I will try”
“Don’t try, do it”
“Alright I will!” I said spiritedly.
“Yes that’s the spirit” he reciprocated.

That night after dinner we were in Tazzy’s balcony, just him and me and the screen of my mobile flashing her name. I was restless and scared, kind of different, my entire body was trembling. Not that it was the first time I was calling her up but what I was going to ask her was different and for the first time. The whole event was kind of big for me, ‘what if she says yes’, ‘what if she says no’. I was so scared I wished the call never connected. But it did connect and I was searching for words.
"Hi Ansh"
"Hi how are you" she responded in her usual soft voice. Then there was 'I am fine, your fine' routine and I thanked god for such fillers because it was difficult to directly get to the point, I had to beat around the bush, round and round before even getting close to asking her out for the movie.
"I've heard they are screening DDLJ for the valentine" I said casually, of course pretending.
"Are they, really?"
"Yes, they are celebrating their tenth year of success"
"It's my favourite movie" said she and made things easy for me to craft"
"Oh is it, it's my favourite too"
"Really! I was in class seven when it was released. I was small"
"I was small too, what a coincidence!" I quipped
"Time flies..."
"So it does" I agreed and then "How about seeing it again in the theatre?" I finally asked and waited in anticipation. She went quiet for a while, I guess thinking.
"Yes...but alone..." she seemed doubtful and before she rejected the idea I'd better said something to push my proposal through and what came to my genius mind was,
"We can take friends along; you can take your friends"
"Yes" she said half willing half not, "Then we can go"."That's great, it'll be real fun I bet" I was so thrilled to have her consent. I forget to talk anything else…