The First Time (Love in No Time #1) Read Online Free PDF Page A

gum that was creating a havoc in me. I could smell him all day and wouldn’t need food or water or even air for the duration. I could live on that smell. I could live looking at him. His was a sartorial style unlike any Indian man I had encountered in my young life. Today he was wearing a crisp white shirt and black slacks with a striped mauve and grey tie. His cuff links were an understated silver and his brown leather shoes shown like sparkling water. His distressed leather Hide Design briefcase screamed “style” and “taste.” He definitely looks odd amongst other men in the line and some in the bus now with their dirty grey shiny poplin pants matched with an equally dirty green shiny poplin shirt worn over a white vest at whose low neck sprout a hideous matt of black and grey chest hair. And there is of course the ubiquitous gold chain that only adds to the creepy quotient of this ubiquitous Indian male ensemble.
    So it was rather disconcerting to see him dress like they do in the proverbial west. He should not know how to do this differently than anyone, for the context does not allow him to be imaginative, especially regarding his clothes. Clothes are clothes. They are meant to cover you in all the right and wrong places. They are meant to keep you cool in the summers and warm in winters. Clothes should be functional and not decorative. They should be comfortable. You are not meant to look good in them. Looking good for whom, pray tell us? Who is asking or admiring or telling? No one. But here he was looking good, smelling even better, and getting everyone’s attention in the process. So clothes can have affect, huh! He was certainly producing his own affect—he was the man amongst boys (or men who never grow out of their adolescent vagueness and their mother complexes; who never really look at themselves in the mirror to find themselves only to comb their spectacularly stupid looking hair or shave).
    He, on the other hand, knew how to look in the mirror He knew what he wanted or to be. I was so glad that I was sitting with him rather than some pickle-smelling, pot-bellied adolescent, talking loudly to his co-riders, cracking mind-wrenchingly bad jokes and following it with a game of cards played on the bus over a worn out, steel-rimmed briefcases.
    But what was this? He was actually interested in chatting up the adolescent than me?! What’s with this polite, social conversation with those who do not measure up to you in either the dress-up or smell departments? I was miffed. So I turned away from him and looked out the window. I prayed that his social politeness ran its course and his attention dragged my way on this one hour drive to our respective work places. And it does—faster than I thought. I turn towards him and find him looking at me.
    He smiles and then asks—“So how are you Ms. Sharma?”
    His voice is low and deep. The low is for me, I know and the deep echoes through my heart making it skip its next beat. So basically my heart and mind are both off their rhythmic kilter at that simple question.
    I say, “good” and then ask, “So how come you are traveling with ordinary people like us in a bus? I thought you hated public buses?”
    He smiles again—“Just didn't feel like driving today, Ms. smarty-pants.”
    He then leans into me, close to my right ear, trying to look awkwardly conspiratorial and hits me with, “I knew you would take the bus today. I knew you weren’t going to call me for a ride after last evening. So I thought why not take the bus with Ms. Sharma and see where her mind is at today.”
    I blink at him. Again, I am speechless. His face is almost in my face. I cannot even squirm under that heated gaze.
    He doesn’t take his eyes off my confused eyes and then his lips move again—“You look so pretty in pink, Ms. Sharma” and then he takes a whiff as if he is smelling me, “hmm, you smell good too—What is it? Soap, perfume?”
    I weakly say, “soap” and then