THE HEART HAS ITS REASONS Part II

Dear Friends 

The wait period is over and the second part of the story "The Heart has its reasons" is here. I have been receiving e-mails in  appreciation of part I and urging me to publish the 2nd part quickly. So the second part is here and I hope you enjoy it even more than the 1st one. Enjoy the story and please leave your comments.

Part II

The next two days at the office were full with activity, and secretly, Nisha wished that she would be able to see Deven more often.  Finally, on the third day Deven suggested that they go to see a movie. Having informed maa that she would be late in the evening Nisha looked forward to spending time with Deven.  They saw a hilarious movie with Sharukh Khan in the lead role, her favourite hero. After the movie they settled in Deven’s car to leave for Nisha’s house. The next moment became memorable for Nisha. To her surprise Deven caught Nisha’s hand in his own to catch her attention.  Lightly caressing her soft and small hand, he described to Nisha, how attractive he found her. He also told her, how much he liked being with her.  Feeling a little embarrassed and feeling the colour rise on her cheeks she pulled out her hand without responding to requests by Deven to share her feelings too.   Soon Deven started the car and dropped her home.

Nisha kept reliving the incident.

The next morning back to work, she found a file returned on her Desk.  She had dealt with a training project for middle management level officers and had spent a lot of energy and time over planning its details. Each such plan was supposed to be moved through various levels and evaluated by rotation among officers nominated by the board. The names of such officers were not revealed to the team proposing the project. The project could not go through the evaluating members for the approval of the board because the foreign component, suggested by her, was considered to be unnecessary by one officer. That person had opined that expenditure on foreign component may turn out to be an extravagance on the part of the company.  In fact from the way the comment was worded, Nisha could easily guess that the manager did not support the concept of training the workforce and considers it to be a waste of time and money. The problem from this kind of evaluation of the scheme of a project was that she virtually had no clue as to who had raised any objection or had appreciated the scheme. There were comments from ten members only, without any revelation of their names or signatures. All the other comments were appreciating various aspects of the plan proposed by her. 

Now, she would have to explain why foreign training component is considered an essential feature of this project. She would also be required to give justification as to how it could build capabilities of the personnel in the company in the area of business development and what benefits could be derived out of it in the long run. She found the differing comment baseless and irritating. She also became a little apprehensive because a delegation from Australia was scheduled to visit the company, the next week and any delay in decision making will be disastrous at this juncture and may jeopardise the whole training plan.  She caught the file and went to Sulakshna, her Team Head’s room.  She found Suneel already seated in her room.  She greeted both of them.  To her surprise, she found Suneel telling her that he thought that she had worked hard on the project. The three of them had an engaging discussion on different aspects of implementation of the project.  After broadly agreeing on a strategy, just before leaving the room she detected a funny glint in his eyes.

She started pondering over the possible reasons for it or could it have something to do with her or the project.  Suddenly it occurred to her that that the person objecting to her plan could be Suneel, and now he was mocking at her for the frustration she felt, which may be apparent from her body language. “Oh, it was so easy to guess. I wasted so much time brooding over this issue. It was Mr. Suneel again playing his pranks,” she thought. “But then why did he seem so deeply involved in the discussion?”She mused further, “Was he just putting up a show and enjoying himself at my expense?” She was tempted to stay back with Sulakshna and air her views, but she was already hard pressed to complete her job urgently and stopping for a discussion would consume another quarter of an hour. So, deciding otherwise, she  went back to her cabin.  She felt a determination rising inside her to make the project a success however; hard she might have to work on it. The discussion held in the room helped her a lot in outlining the course that was required to be followed to get the project through another round of evaluation after highlighting the benefits that would accrue from the foreign training component. Soon she was deeply absorbed in her work.  She sat late that evening to complete her work so that she could move the proposal again next morning for the evaluating team.

In the next few days, she found herself looking forward to spend some more time with Deven and disliked the fact that she had become very busy.  However, one morning she found an opportunity to visit Deven.  As she knocked on the door, she bumped into Meenakshi who was coming out.  She could sense that Meenakshi was upset over something.  She overheard a familiar voice which was a little raised as she entered the room and could make out that some argument was going on. Suddenly all the eyes fell on her and she felt as if she had been the subject of their argument. Dismissing this feeling she greeted Ajay, Suneel and then Deven. After exchanging the greetings Ajay left the room and as expected by her Suneel too left the room without saying anything to her. Alone with Deven she enquired as to whether anything was wrong but Deven declined it and said it was a normal argument regarding planning of a scheme. Deven had to leave for a meeting with the CEO so they did not get much time to talk.

Nisha went home early that day because maa had telephoned her specially to do so.  When she entered the house she noticed that maa had cleaned the drawing room that day with much more care than usual. The best thing she liked about her house was that maa kept it very clean and comfortable.  She often joined mother in decorating the drawing room by spreading beautiful linen on table, covers on sofas, arranging flowers in the vases. She liked helping her with cleaning the artefacts that her father had brought from various places in India and abroad while touring on his official duties.  She was quite proud of the collection they had.  There was a chess board made of Italian glass with white and black squares painted and the chess men too in glass delicately made, wearing dresses that represented the army of the whites and the darks. There was a big face of Durga delicately carved out of shoal wood which was brought from Kolkata. It hung on the wall facing the main gate as if bestowing blessings on all who came to the house. There were brass plates from Moradabad, hung on the side walls facing each other. On a narrow shelf on the right wall stood a miniature Tajmahal, in white marble, reminding of the original in Agra. There was a pleasant aroma in the room and she realised it was opium room freshener that father had brought from Puducherry and she had loved it very much.

“There is something happening, what could it be?”, she tried to guess. It was neither maa- baba’s anniversary nor any body’s birthday.  A birthday in her house was not less than a festival, and all the members of her family participated heartily in the preparations for its celebration. If it were her or her younger sister’s birthday then the festive atmosphere may begin even two months ahead of the ‘D’ date. The birthday baby would keep singing about her forthcoming birthday and reminding others about the approaching great event.

So full of curiosity Nisha went looking for maa from room to room. She looked into her parent’s room where generally maa would be at this time of the day, but could not find her. Nisha heard her humming her favourite old movie song and followed it to the kitchen.