Of Palat and Probability.

I started out optimistic. In my teens, circa Genelia-as-Hasini, Kareena-as-Geet, being optimistic was the norm. 

In my early 20s, optimism blackened and shriveled and turned to pessimism, which brought along its close friend, depression. When you climb out of that hole, you are usually met with cynicism. This prevailed till one day when rational realism hit me like a truck.

A nice truck which I have been traveling in.

***

And that leads to this story.

Ever since I started working at this new place far far away from home, Kartik and I have started to feel like we are in a long-distance relationship. It’s quite a spectacular exaggeration, but if you told us that, we wouldn't agree.

This incident happened on a day when Kartik traveled 30 odd kilometers to have lunch with me (and his best bud who also works here — now that's quite a story, but maybe later!)

It was probably the romantic aspect of him making the journey just to see me, but as he left and I stood inside the campus to say bye, I thought of DDLJ, and ‘Palat’ and pretty much every other cheesy movie where this trope has been (over)used. 

And I decided to try it for myself.

I stood still, focused my eyes on the back of his head, and muttered ‘Palat’, a Hindi word which I have never used and which Kartik probably doesn’t know. 

It’s the thought that counts you know!

But deep down inside, I knew that this entire experiment is like when you check what 5+3 is on the calculator and when it displays an 8, you are all smug about it, because, OF COURSE, you knew that!

I knew he would turn and he did.

This wasn't some heart-to-heart connection, this wasn’t something that Tamil cinema and Hindi cinema have made their own. This was a prediction based on logic and probability.

Kartik Srinivasan will turn back, he will see if I am looking at him too. If I had walked away, he will tell me in the evening that he watched as I walked away.

He would also take that opportunity to call me unromantic and elevate his own status in this matter.

I would shrug it off because sometimes, he is right.

But this time, I was looking, and well, I got a blog post out of it.

I guess what I am trying to say from all this is that while a heart-to-heart connection, activated when just one of the lead couple realizes their feelings for the other, looks good in movies, it isn’t all that in real life.

In real life, it comes with familiarity, from situations, played out over and over again. It comes with practice and effort and all such boring words.

But whenever it comes, running through a field of yellow flowers to a crescendo of music is the obvious, logical next step.