(Diary did you see how I expressed her entire feelings in that email in two lines? She took … one second … 780 words. Fucking nonsense. I think inside every woman there is a Vikram Seth.)

And then in the end she says that she has a feeling that things are going to fall apart. And if so then she wants to celebrate this birthday of mine properly, because ‘god only knows if we will ever be able to celebrate anything ever again as a couple in love’.

I want to take a printout of her email and then set it on fire.

And now she wants me to give her a call—‘No excuses Robin! No excuses!’—today itself. Whatever time, however late, irrespective of the quality of the telephone connection, she wants me to call.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.

I’ll call her after I finish with Sugandh.

God only how today’s session will go. Anyway I don’t think he is quite ready for the mock interview approach yet. There is no point in doing that till he actually faces one or two interviewers himself.

So today I think we will finalize his biodata and then browse through the Dufresne website for openings.

Besides I have truckloads of work to do today. Since we now need to rejig the entire Dufresne project team, Dominic wants us to email all our project documents, status reports and roadmaps and do a consolidation.

So many documents to finish and emails to send.

9.02 p.m.

Somehow Sugandh has this capacity to make every five minutes with him seem like three hours of pain.

He now has a biodata, mostly false, and we’ve identified three or four positions in Dufresne’s IT team for him to apply for. I’ve told him that I’ll have a word with the HR folk. At best I can arrange interviews, but after that it is all up to Sugandh. He seemed somewhat happy.

Now I have to call Gouri.

I will pray a little bit first.

10.05 p.m.

Very odd conversation!

She seemed perfectly normal on the phone. She asked me if I read the email? I told her that I thought she was making a big deal out of nothing. I closed my eyes and prepared for a voracious attack. But she said nothing. Then she asked me if I would be home for my birthday on the 5th. I asked her why. She wants to get a small gift and a bouquet of flowers hand-delivered to my apartment here.

There is this tremendously sweet side to Gouri. It is not always easy to see this side. Sometimes this side does not appear for two or three weeks. But when it appears it is very nice. Even when we are having occasional fights and I feel like killing one or both of us, the only thing that gives me peace is knowing that she actually is most loving and very caring.