Whose life is it anyway?

She had been, even at that relatively early stage in the evolution process, unequivocally dubbed ‘wife material‘ by all those favored by the X chromosome. There was something about her that soothed the nerves, uplifted the spirit, cleared the mind and brought in smiles by the dozen. She had always been successful, but also had the rare gift of being popular at the same time. Thus the beeline of Ram‘s classmates who had conjured up imaginary ailments just for ‘medical dates‘, was long and as the school master would have resoundingly bellowed, in a manner designed to shatter the eardrums, ‘shameful‘.

"That‘s strange, this shouldn‘t be happening at your age. When did it first occur?" Sushma looked up and paused as she held Ram‘s gaze.

"Just about five minutes ago, when I entered your room," quipped back Ram, trying to bring about some softness in his eyes as he made his pitch.

Then Sushma smiled. And Ram Shankar felt something stir in the innermost depths of his being that refused to be put into language translation.

"I never thought you had a sense of humor in school Ram, by the way is something wrong with your eye?" asked Sushma, her own eyes sparkling with a life that was captivating.

"Sure, as a Doctor I need to always encourage good sense when it makes an appearance, however late," replied Sushma, Ram‘s morale was just going to crash through the roof when he noticed a rather disturbing noise emanating from his pocket, quite like the deranged ranting of Adolf Hitler asking for Monday morning job status reports.

Ram cursed himself for not having switched off his cell phone. But having defined diligence as one of his core values, he found himself answering.

"Mr Bose wants a leaflet for his Monday 9am meeting and he must have it."

At that point Ram could think of a million other things that Vikas and Mr. Bose could have ‘had‘.

"Then can I head back to office in an about an hour and start the job then," queried Ram.

Dr Sushma looked him in the eye, "Believe me I understand," she smiled back kindly. Then Ram saw they were no longer alone in the room.

"Hey since you aren‘t taking her anywhere, I suppose you might have no objection that she does lunch with me?" the suave voice of Cyrus, ‘the dude from school‘ interjected emphasizing ever so slightly on ‘aren‘t taking her anywhere‘. Ram could have thought of a million objections but societal norms in such regards are rather callous.

"Sure go ahead." He managed keeping as straight a face as was possible. "Some other time perhaps" he asked Sushma as he bid them goodbye.

"Some other time," she replied with a smile that offered some hope, though he wasn‘t sure whether it was just his servicing optimism kicking in.