Vijay and Nila have only one thing in common - they take the same bus at the same time everyday. What if this mere commonality steers their life into a whirlpool of uninvited feelings, wholesome conversations and unexpected connections, taking them...
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Nila was not going to lie and say she wasn't excited to see Vijay. Because she was. As soon as she landed in Chennai, she thought of seeing his face. It set off loud blaring alarms in her head but for now, she was going to ignore it.
Nila tried to peep inside the bus to get a sense of where Vijay was standing but she couldn't spot him. The crowd wasn't bad but it wasn't see-through either. She climbed in and was glad to have the conductor right next to her. She quickly got her ticket and found a good handle to hold onto it.
Then, she resumed her search.
Her eyes caught the familiar brown pair of eyes somewhere in the middle of the bus and she smiled. Nila waved at him and only then spotted another pair of eyes looking at her. Vijay whispered something to the other guy next to him after which his friend glanced at her again and smiled. It was almost a smirk. She couldn't tell.
When the next stop came, the human traffic cleared out a bit and she could see the rest of the guy. Vijay's friend was lean, had silky-soft hair and perfect jawlines — all angles and planes. He was taller than Vijay and lankier but he was the kind of man artists would pick as their muses. But even though he was handsome and model material, her eyes preferred the rugged messy beauty of Vijay.
They moved next to her. "Hi," Vijay said. They had been bickering like old friends in the chat but it felt like they regressed back to their initial stages of awkwardness. She hated it. Nila was so bad at rapport building and small talk so she had been so glad that phase had been over with Vijay. She couldn't imagine doing that again. "This is Krish, my best friend from college," he said, pointing to his friend.
Vijay laid open a palm towards her side. "And this is Nila, my favourite garbage can." He winked at her.
Nila grimaced and knocked him with her elbow. "Is this how you introduce me to your friend? What will he think of me?" she hissed, breaking the ice, thankfully.
Vijay chuckled. "Chill, Nila. I told him about you already. He knows who you are."
"And I hope you said good things."
Krish looked back and forth between the both of them and tucked in a smile. "Oh, he did. He wouldn't shut up actually. I've never seen Vijay so whi—ow, man!" He hopped on the leg that Vijay kicked him on.
"Don't listen to him."
"So, Krish, how long have you known Vijay?"
He adjusted the bag on his shoulders and that's when she noticed how heavy it looked. What was he carrying inside? Bricks to build his classroom?
"From undergraduate. He used to flunk in his papers because he never used to attend classes. He was always on the ground, practising and training his ass off. The profs told him he needs to at least do the bare minimum in his academics so he shoved his big ego aside and asked the topper of the class for help."
