I was on my way to the pantry at our office, when I bumped into one of my friends who was also going the same way. We were both talking about the weekend, when my phone rang. It was my wife. The name "Lucky Mumbai" flashed on the screen. My friend giggled and asked, "What have you stored her number as?"
I showed him the screen, "Lucky Mumbai", it read. He was still giggling when he asked, "But why?". "Well, she hasn't changed her number when she moved to Bangalore last year, after our marriage. So it's still stored as Mumbai.", I explained. "But her name isn't 'Lucky'. Are you trying to subtly point that, she is lucky to be with you", he mocked. I smiled at his joke, shook my head and started wondering where to start the explanation from.
It was the first semester of my engineering. My college was a good 60kms away from my home, and so I used to stay in the college hostel. One evening when I was returning to my room, my phone rang. I used to have a LG phone those days, one with a small 1.5" screen. . It was an unknown number. "Must be one of the telemarketers", I thought. Looking at the number on screen, I was contemplating whether I should ignore it, or pick it up and give them an earful. I chose to do the later. I picked up the call, and before I could hurl some of the most choicest abuses, I heard the "Hello" from the other end. It was a girl.
"Hi!!", I managed to mutter. "Pehchana nahi", she giggled. A tug of war started inside me, between the fluttering heart which was already skipping a few beats and the ever so defensive brain, which had started drawing a list of suspects, behind what was obviously a prank. "Ji nahi, nai pehchana!! Kaun bol rahe the aap", I sloppily said. "Kya yaar... School khatam ho gaya toh doston ko bhi bhul jaaoge kya". She is clearly flirting with me, my Sherlock of a brain thought. "This is Srabani", she said. It took me a few moments to register. "I got your number from Ipsita, thought would check up on you. But now it seems it was a waste. Tumhe toh main yaad bhi nai". In my defence, we had hardly ever spoken in school. I used to think she was way out of my league, and the only reason she knew I existed was because she used to sit next to my sister. To be actually talking to someone for whom you had once nursed a crush is unnerving in itself, let alone being caught off-guard.
"Arey yaad kyun nai hai. Bilkul yaad hai, woh toh yahaan network kharap rehta hai toh sunai nai deta theek se. How have you been". At this point in time, I had switched from being defensive to full on damage control mode. We spoke for about 20 odd minutes. It turned out, that she had taken the year off to prepare for her medical entrance examinations, and her days were mostly being spent in either coaching classes, or hogging street food, or sleeping. She said that she had gotten my number that afternoon, and she thought it would be fun to prank me. I remember standing on a piece of rock, right outside my hostel when I was speaking to her. I remember it because, ever since then, whenever I have spoken to her from that hostel, it has almost always been, while standing on that piece of rock. By the time I had hung up, I was already itching to text her.
Later that night, after a lot of retrospection I mustered up the courage to send her a text. Torn between wanting to text her and looking like a desperate loser, I zeroed in on one of the forwarded messages lying in my inbox. It took immense effort to press the send button.
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"Sent"
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"Delivered"
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"Why wasn't she replying."
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"Maybe she hasn't seen it yet."
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"Oh come on!! It was sent ages ago. Of course she has seen it."
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"She just thinks you are a los.."
"LOL" she had replied. I looked at that for quite a while, before sending her another text, asking her if she's had her dinner yet. That opened our first ever dialogue over sms. I told her about my college, my hostel life, my exam for which I hadn't started studying at all. We chatted for quite some time. After wishing her good-night, I kept the phone aside, opened the book and started thinking about her. A couple of hours of day dreaming later, I closed the book, switched off the lights, and went to bed. I spent the next hour in bed, re-reading our texts.
The next morning, I woke up just minutes before the exam, thanks to my roommate. I managed to get myself in the college uniform(yes, our college had uniforms), grabbed my belongings, and ran towards the college building. I reached the exam hall just in time. I kept my notes and my bag, outside the class, and was about to switch off my phone, when I saw it's screen flicker to life. "1 unread message from Srabani". I opened the message. "Best of luck. Call me after the exam.", it read. I switched off the phone, and entered the exam hall, with the most moronic grin possible, plastered across my face. I sat on my desk, totally oblivious to my surroundings. "She remembered...", that's all I could think of.
"Abey chal.." The roll number behind me barked. "Behra hai kya bey. Bola na usne, question papers print ho ke nai aaye hain. They are going to reschedule this paper at the end of this week. Ab chal." I followed the trail of my ecstatic classmates, out of the exam hall, out of the college building, and towards the college canteen. "Ek veg patties aur ek coke", I ordered and dailed her number. "Itni jaldi exam khatam ho gaya tumhara. Kuch bhi nai likha kya" she laughed. "Exam ho jaata aaj, to sahi mein kuch nai likhe paata. Padhai ki kahan thi maine. Woh toh shukar hai ke aaj ka paper cancel ho gaya.", I explained. "Wow!! Lucky you", she teased. "Indeed. Actually all credit goes to you. You wished me before the exam, and that seems to have bailed me out. I am pretty sure I would have flunked otherwise." I said with as much sincerity as I could. "Oh really!!", she faked surprise in the most adorable manner. "Now you can't let this gift go to waste. It is now your moral duty to wish me before every exam. You don't want me to fail do u. I would need all the luck I can get, and it turns out that you are lucky for me." By this time, we were both short of laughing out loud. "You know what, that's what I should call you from today, Lucky. Infact, right after this call, I am also going to save your name as 'Lucky' in my phone."
Oh, I was just flirting with her. I have never addressed her as 'Lucky', ever. But I did do something else. That day after hanging up, I went into the contact details of my phone, and changed her name from "Srabani" to "Lucky". It's been more than 10 years since I edited that contact in my phone.
Since then, we have fallen in love, finished our colleges, spent years apart living in different cities, fought often with each other, and ocassionally with the world. In this last decade, my phone has changed too, and so has her number. But through all of this, through all these years, she has always, without fail, continued to be, "Lucky" for me.