Sugarcane Juice: Episode 03

Chapter 4

‘Sanika…’ called Pritam, walking by her side making sure that nobody else in the group listens to him.

‘Hmmm?’ she replied, keeping pace with others towards Sweet Zuse – sugarcane juice shop inside their company campus. Sweet Zuse had become famous in the campus since it opened a few months ago. Sanika and group occasionally visited it. Though Pritam was not a big fan of the shop, he used to stick with the team till the end of lunch hour.

‘How does she look?’ he asked with a slight hint of blushing.

‘She…? Who?’, now she looked up wearing a confused expression, still walking.

‘Have you noticed that girl? Err… one with grey eyes?’ as a picture of her in sky-blue formal dress, that she was wearing that day, flashed across his mind.

It had been almost two weeks since he first saw her. Thereafter, it had become his routine at lunch time; silently sitting with the lunch group, glancing at the special-one every now and then, and getting back to work as if he had achieved some milestone for the day!

Even though the lunch timings of those two groups did not exactly match, Pritam had been lucky enough to catch a glimpse of her all these days!

‘Grey eyes…?’ she stopped walking ‘What kind of color that is for eyes? It could make sense if you say brown or blue? But grey?’ to tease him!

‘No… it is grey… the eyes are grey!’ with delightful expression he continued ‘Never mind, you could see that tomorrow!’ He was very sure that he would get to see her next day as well!

Meanwhile, the other members were enjoying the tasty sugarcane juice. Bindu offered a sip or two to Sanika from her glass.

They had a sandwich shop right opposite to Sweet Zuse. The shop, though comparatively small, had enough space to put some chairs in the shadow of one of the adjacent buildings. He casually looked at the people having their meal there.

Pritam, an ardent fan of Sherlock Homes, had this habit of ‘observing people’ trying to ‘deduce’ something out of it, though he invariably failed every time!

This time he had a surprise in store though. Yes, his grey-eyed girl was there with another female friend, sharing some light moment! Both of them were laughing. But she seemed to be considerate about other people in the surrounding; it was evident by the way she used to cover her mouth with hands, each time she laughed!

This made her look even better! With her hands covering those perfectly-aligned teeth, there was no distraction to view the shining grey-irises floating in the milky-white sclera! 

‘Nature really took its own time to design her, it seems!’ he was feeling bit poetic.

Suddenly he remembered Sanika! 

Sanika should see her! 

Or to be precise, he wanted to hear some nice words about the ‘grey-eyes’!

‘Hey,’ Pritam quickly reached Sanika ‘There she is…! Right in front of you, in the sandwich shop!’ he mumbled.

‘Which one of them, dude? Are you talking about the one who is looking at you?!’ Sanika flashed a witty smile.

‘What??’ thrilled to hear that! He did not need second invitation to check out what Sanika just said!

Yes! Sanika was right; he just caught the grey-eyed beauty looking back at him, though she tried her best to quickly look away! That was enough for him! Enough to assume that his admiration was not being mistaken for stalking!

Sanika saw him turning tomato-red. He stood there looking down, eyes wide open in amazement, smiling and blushing!

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