The Wrong Number

Chapter - 3

                                                                                       ‘The name’

I spent that day somehow while eagerly waiting for the night to reach. She called me around ten o’clock. I picked the phone as soon as possible and said,” Hello”.

“Hi”, she replied.

“How are you?” I asked.

“I’m good”, she said. She was a total stranger to me, but still, there were no queer feelings of such kind. It was like I knew that girl for a long time and those were our routine questions.

“I guess you have a few questions in your mind, which you like to ask”, she said.

“Yes and the first one is about your name. Why you are not telling me your name? It’s a very basic question that two persons ask each other when they start their conversation. Why it is so hard for you to tell me your name?” I asked.

“It’s not hard for me to tell my name, it’s impossible”, she replied.

“Impossible? Why is that so?” I asked astonishingly.

“Because I don’t have any name,” she replied. That was a surprising answer. How could someone have no name? Although I knew she was just kidding with me yet she seemed quite serious to me.

“How is this possible? Everyone has a name”, I asked.

“No, not me, I don’t have any”, she replied.

“But why?” I asked casually as I inferred that she was just trying to be playful, but she was not. She continued speaking in the same tone.

“Because I want you to give me a name”, she said. Now, what did that mean? Why she wanted me to give her a name? Didn’t her parents give her one?

“I don’t understand”, I answered vaguely.

“You want a girl in your life with whom you want to share your heart. Just imagine you are having such a girl, what you want her name to be?” she asked. Now that question was going to take pretty much time of mine to make me reach a perfect answer. I never gave any thought to such a thing. I was quite sure I wanted a girl in my life, but I wasn’t sure what her name should be. I mean I don’t think any guy does a study on such thing. Every guy has desires of certain traits which his girl should have but I don’t think he much cares about her name; I was one of those guys too. I started imagining some random female names and to my surprise, I couldn’t call a single name for a few minutes when I had the opportunity to call anyone’s but I didn’t.

“So no name is coming in your mind which can spark your heart”, she asked as if she was reading my thoughts.

“No”, I replied in defeat.

“The moment I gave you that question, you started working on the names. Don’t you have any idea that a name has no meaning until it connects to us in some way? Just imagine there is a girl with a beautiful name but you don’t know that girl and there is a girl in your life with some common name but you are very much in love with her, whose name would tickle you? Whose name would make you skip your heartbeat? Whose name you would want to call or hear every time? Of that random girl with a beautiful name you don’t know about or your girl with a common name?” she asked, but it was not a question as I knew the answer and so did she.

“But why you want me to give you a name?” I asked as that question was still there.

“You will find the answer to this question in some time”, she replied and the discussion came to an end.

                  She then started asking me questions regarding my family, my college and college life, my friends, and I was asking nothing in return. She was exploring my life and I was letting her do that. I was introducing every bit of myself to her without even thinking where that was leading me and when I had to stop. I wanted to share anything and everything about myself with her in a single breath. Neither I wanted to stop nor did she try to do so. She too seemed curious to know the whole me. She asked me what exactly I wanted to do in my life as in career, it was like she knew that I didn’t want to pursue that engineering field, but my dad wanted me to be an engineer, so I was kind of shattering my dreams to fulfill his and she got it by herself without my even saying or giving her any hint. She was listening to those words through my mind which I was unable to utter through my mouth. At that moment I realized, she was going to be more than just a ‘wrong number’.

                 We had had no idea about the hours passed while talking to each other. Neither did she say anything about the late-night, nor did I remind her about that.

“You want to sleep?” she asked as if she was reading my mind again.

“No”, I replied without even asking if she wanted to sleep or not, as I didn’t want her to. I wanted to add some more hours to that night.

“Have you ever lived in your imaginary world?” she asked. I used to wander around in this virtual world of mine before going to sleep and sometimes during the day too. In this world, I always had had some sort of magical powers to create or destroy anything, but I never used those to exterminate anything. I accustomed those powers to spread kindness or to find my love. That was a silly imagination that I never did or could share with anyone but I did with her. I felt grateful that she didn’t laugh at me after listening to me and my fancied world. She listened to everything in a very serious manner which I couldn’t expect from any stranger.

                   We talked until I saw the first shade of light of the early morning through the window of my room. By that time we both started feeling exhausted and were ready to go to sleep. After wishing Goodnight to each other she sent me a text which kept me awake for another two hours.

“What if this whole conversation was just your imagination? What if you were in a dream and this whole thing happening is just one of your visions? What if I were not real?”