LOST AND FOUND

He was standing all alone in a room full of people, wondering. What was I thinking? Travelling all the way from Bangalore just for an event. But then, this was BNLF! Bloggers from all over were attending. What better time to meet, greet and learn, right?

Around him, people of all ages were networking enthusiastically. Shouldn’t I be doing the same? He was still contemplating, when his train of thought was broken by a push. He was about to shout, when he noticed an attractive pair of almond shaped eyes. A girl had pushed him accidently in her hurry, apologized and walked away in her jiffy. All in a matter of few seconds.

“Shubham, don’t you want to go in? The band’s about to start playing. Come on!” said Drishti, a fellow blogger and friend to our introverted Bangalorean hero.

Shubham and Drishti both sat in the last few rows singing to the lyrics of ‘Brick in the Wall’ and the likes. Later, they sat through the talks, first Purba Ray mesmerized, and then Arnab Ray inspired. While he heard the talks with apt attention, in the coffee break his eyes searched the beautiful stranger.

“Who are you looking for?” asked Drishti.

“No one,” he lied.

Before she could probe further, Drishti’s mobile rang. “Sorry, got to take this. Hubby calling. I will catch you in the hall,” she said to him and walked away.

Drishti was sitting right next to him throughout the remaining talks. But having a friend didn’t curb his anxiety. Shubham felt as if he was suffocating and to add to it, he couldn’t stop thinking about the stranger.

During the lunch break, they were surrounded in a group of bloggers. While Drishti did all the talking, Shubham just pretended to listen. He needed fresh air, he thought. Without telling her, he walked out of the place and stood at the entrance pondering. This time his reasoning was interrupted by loud laughter. He looked onto his left. Standing with some lady near the Segway counter was the girl that he had been searching all along, the stranger! He looked at her and the very instant she looked at him and smiled, as if she knew that she had just curbed the hurricane in his mind. But, like a statue, he just stood there transfixed. She walked past him into the hall and his fears got an upper hand. That was the last time he saw her. He returned to Bangalore, a disheartened man.

The next few days, his blogger friends posted articles and pictures of the conference on the social media. Desperately, he searched through all the images to spot her. But to no avail.

While searching through the images a second time on the Indiblogger Facebook page, he got a friend request from a girl called Mehek. A look at the profile picture revealed it was his lovely stranger. With a fast beating heart, he accepted the request. Two seconds later, he got a message from her.

You froze at the wrong time – it read.

Is it too late for us? – he typed and sent.

For a few minutes, there was no reply. Then he got a message again.

It read – Not yet... :) BTW, I am from Bangalore too!          

P.S: This is not entirely a Fake Story! If you joined all the true parts of it that really did take place at the Blog Now, Live Forever (BNLF) conference, then you do have a story that is True.