So today, after work, I asked her if she wanted to catch a movie or dinner. She said that multiplexes reminded her of that bastard and the good times they had had together at various cinema halls all over Mumbai. So we decided that I would go over after work to her place with a movie and some pizza and we’d just chill and chat for a while.

She is still not particularly chatty, Diary. Sometimes she just randomly starts crying and I need to reach into the depths of my sensitivity not to slap some sense into her.

She told me to choose my movie carefully. ‘Nothing with romance or love stories, especially ones that end tragically. Also nothing with love stories that end happily. Basically no love, emotion or happiness whatsoever,’ were her words, approximately.

I went to the Bandra Crossword after work and picked up a three-hour documentary on the life of Adolf Hitler. She said it was perfect. Pizza from Domino’s as always.

A little into the night, just before the Germans invaded Czechoslovakia, Gouri told me how much my friendship meant to her. She said that most guys only hung out with an upset woman hoping to be snapped up in a rebound relationship and exploit the heartbroken woman. But, she said, I had proved to be perfectly harmless and completely trustworthy. She then put an arm around my shoulders and squeezed me.

I was, of course, quite pleased that she felt safe and secure around me. But I made a mental note to change my deodorant to something more masculine. Rexona for Men is not working. I am also going to leave my shirt’s top button undone whenever she’s around. I desperately need to up my sexual vibe and seductive lure around her before she decides I am the kind of friend—PUKE PUKE PUKE—who helped her shortlist potential boyfriends and shit like that.

I told her that a rebound relationship was the last thing on my mind. I was not here to exploit her moments of weakness but to help her tide over them. I wanted to show her that love was still possible, that it existed where she expected it the least. And then I emotionally pulled her towards me for a full frontal platonic hug.

At the very last moment she put up her palms in between and I ended up pressing MY chest into HER hands.

Fuck.

By the time Hitler committed suicide, and then Goebbels killed all his children with cyanide capsules before shooting himself, we were chatting and laughing quite casually. She wasn’t breaking down into tears any more and both of us ate quite well.

Just before leaving Gouri thanked me again for being there for her and said that she really hoped we could do something on the weekend. I promised that I’d keep myself free for her.

And then I came home.

I’d like to think that things are going well with her. But this ‘trusted friend’ vibe is unsettling me very much. I don’t know why she doesn’t see my intense need to make her mine. Maybe I should give her rebound feelers, incite her to have a fling with me and then trap her permanently in a relationship. It is slightly manipulative. Exploiting her currently tender nerves.