ThankU for the roses! They were very pretty.

All of that started almost a year earlier. We had been in the same college. I was two years senior to her. Even though we were exchanging text messages for almost a month then, that was the first time I called her on her cell phone.

“Hi, when is your birthday?” I asked her. “I was just updating my contact book.”

“Oh, my birthday was just a few days back, you are late.” She replied coyly.

“Won’t you will have a birthday next year,” I persisted.

So she told me her birth date and I hung the phone.

A lot of things had happened between us in the next eleven months. The first seven months were great but the last four months were like hell for me. We had not talked even once during those four months of our estranged relationship. But I still believed, after all its not whether love takes you to hell or to heaven, important thing is that you are transformed by it.

I was not sure, if I should call her to wish ‘Happy Birthday’. I had two days to decide. It was Saturday and her birthday was on Monday.

As usual, while sorting my mailbox, I saw an interesting email. Let the stars decide was its subject. It was from some tech-startup that generates random numbers for you. The important thing was that they generated the numbers using cosmic rays.

That sparked my blue sky thinking. Don’t think I’m a day dreamer, but then, my first meeting with her was a true serendipity. And both of us believed in our dreams.

I knew the locality where she lived but not the exact address. I would generate a random number using this cosmic connection and use that number as the house number in the address, and send her the flowers. Even though the chances that she will get those flowers were very less, I should go with it. Why should I decide, let God decide it, I thought. And what would be more romantic, than finding, that there exists a cosmic connection between you and someone.

On Sunday, I placed an order for Jewels of the Sea – an elegant creation of white roses and pearls. On Monday, I went to office, but all I could think of was whether she received the flowers or not. I was not able to concentrate on my work there, so I came back to home and spent rest of the day reading all what we had exchanged in the our better days.

Three days had passed, and still I didn’t knew whether the flowers were delivered or not. Actually I started believing that they were not delivered. That is the end of it, I thought. No cosmic connection exists between us and I will not pursue this anymore.

On Thursday evening, she wrote back.

“ThankU for the roses! They were very pretty.” is all that she wrote.

All love stories are the same.

-anand