The road that's taken

It was a weird feeling. She even found it a bit hard to shrug it off. None of them, her friends, colleagues, various acquaintances, seemed to bear that sort of boisterous mood that they used to when in her company those days – when she was still “available.” Their unrelenting and irrepressible attempts at humour, with occasional “successes” – she'd give a snobbish, miserly smile which was still strong enough to have them in restrained rapture, the unconditional approvals, the matter-of-fact acknowledgements, were all missing. Instead, now, they were totally unruffled, cordial, all smiles, wishing her “all the very best!” (on all her future endeavours, some insisted). No cute silliness, just gentlemanly demeanour.

All this seemed to affect her in a mild – of course – but inexplicable way. She even wondered the possibility of one of these men classifying his relationship with her as “platonic.” Ah, ‘platonic,’ the word she endlessly made fun of, in her mind.

Not her fault really, she’s just so used to all such jazz. What a queen she was during her college days! The guys who showed no shame whatsoever in openly contesting among themselves to “get her,” the girls who tacitly acknowledged her “superiority,” all those crazy proposals, proposals so tedious that they were masterpieces in their own right. And, all the while, she was so level-headed leaving more men floored in the process.

And, now, she has this man beside her, who, to be fair to him, is smarter than it usually gets. Somehow, she wished he tried, visibly enough, to qualify himself for this. But, he seemed to be in no hurry. Instead, he was busy recalling some not-so-dull in-jokes with his friends. (“Some of my jokes are so ‘in’ that only I laugh at them!” he quipped to her asking for excuse, in between. She laughed.) She shrugged the thought off, smiling at herself, and waved her hand joyously when her eye caught a close buddy.

In a few moments, when she was introducing him to that friend, she couldn’t help but wonder a little, “So, just this man. That's it?”