Boring Engineer & Nautanki Lawyer

“I should be calling you Aunty, you are ‘82 born right? You are older than I am.” That is the very first thing she remembered about him and how they got talking. He was after all her Dad’s Sparrow, an officer of the Indian Army and she’d grown up with instructions from her OG Dad to always address an officer in uniform as “UNCLE” or the “Rank & Name”. She had very little practice with the later , so UNCLE came easy.

“Sorry, Dad’s asking for you” She said embarrassed now, and trying to hide the discomfiture behind her smile. “He is younger than me, I’d do good to remember that” she thought. It was a first for her. She’d never been this embarrassed ever. She did call her friends in the Army by their names, didn’t she? But that was a different thing altogether. 

Later that evening at the party they spoke again and this time it was “Rank & Name”. He smiled at her use of Rank & Name, she walked away. “This is it”, she thought. Her visit almost at the fag end and only a day or two before she heads home. “What’s your email? I’ll send across the pictures to you too.” “Are you on Orkut?” He asked. The next day while she packed to leave she checked her emails to find the pictures as promised. 

It was now a week since she’d been back, they had been talking often now. She’d tell him about her crazy office and laugh about the “UNCLE” episode. He’d tell her about the girl he loved and the next posting.

They had moved from embarrassment of addressing each other as UNCLE & AUNTY to being “Boring Engineer and the Nautanki Lawyer.”