K S Dhungel

With the first hint, I had been avoiding my father’s gaze to run an errand to the bank to make a draft. I was to find time for it irrespective of my tight schedule. Furthermore, my dislike for facing people and new places made it all the more abominable.

Yet, after knowing that there was no other alternative but to listen to my father, I decided to do the work for him. But my visit to that particular bank was not the first one, and I realised later, that it was perhaps this very fact that was unknowingly prompting me to do my dad’s work.

After a bike ride and some hectic moments later, I was filling the form inside the bank to submit it to a face that I later figured out was, quite familiar. And that was to be my incentive, I realised, for taking the irksome assignment.

It, however, did not take long for me to figure that out. A smiling face at the other end, of a girl, whom I had my gaze fixed for moments on an earlier visit, accepted the form. Then I waited for my name to be called out to pick up the draft.

Fleeting as our earlier meeting was, I was amazed to find out that she still remembered my face as much as I did her’s. But there was no way of knowing if she ever wanted to see me again, although I certainly was more than willing to.

At the end of a long silence and rustle of papers, she called out my name and said that I lacked the necessary papers to make a draft in dollars. Pleased at the prospect of once again coming back to her office, I happily left the bank.

I went early the next day, happy at heart, that I would be able to meet her, even if in the brief window of opportunity — while handing over the papers. No sooner after I reached the bank and finished the form business, I was soon waiting for my name to be announced, meanwhile immersed in my own train of thoughts.

Nearly an hour passed when my name was called from behind the glass pane, by the same girl and handed over the draft. A customary thank you and a smile later, I was riding my bike, happy as a lark. Floating on cloud nine, I reached the office even before I realised it and called my dad to say his job had been done. That was when dad informed me the girl had called him to say that an error had rendered the draft defunct. My luck, I thought, and again rushed back with a slew of thoughts crossing my mind, met her, smiled, and got back my draft. But as I ushered the document inside my diary, the glint of the engagement ring from her finger silently announced that the next errand to the bank wouldn’t be as exciting.