‘We’re not. Do you have any more questions?’ Yudi looked at me in slight exasperation.

‘Yes,’ I went on bravely. ‘What about all those midnight Delhi trips? The buzz on the grapevine is that you have a love interest back in Delhi…’

‘Fuck the grapevine!’ Yudi snapped suddenly, his eyes growing hard. He turned his face away from me and looked out at the sea in silence. I gazed at his stony profile, wishing I had had the good sense to shut up. I was racking my brains to think of a suitable opening line when I felt Yudi take my hand.

‘Megha…’ he said, smiling, ‘do you know you have this uncanny ability to be unbearably infuriating and unbearably cute all at the same time? Do you remember the first time we met?’

‘When I yelled at you for being all urban and stuffy and making fun of people from small towns?’

‘No, we’d met before that. You were giving the earlier creative team on Bright Biscuits a pep talk, all blazing fire and sparks. That was the first time I saw you—my first day at GF.’

I blushed as I had a sudden flash of memory—it was the first time I had seen Yudi too, except I hadn’t known who he was at the time. There had been a bunch of us having chai at the Beans Coffee Hut, back in the days when the old creative team had still been handling Bright Biscuits. We had just finished another disastrous presentation and had gathered to ruminate over what we were doing wrong. I had had a sudden flash of inspiration, Bollywood style, and had given the guys a pep talk on passion for work. Apparently I had gone a bit over the top with the enthusiasm because when I ended there were loud cheers and catcalls from a thoroughly entertained audience, including the Dinky Chips team who were also having coffee there. Yudi had been among them and I remembered thinking that the Dinky Chips team quotient had just shot up a few notches in the looks department. I had seen Yudi on and off after that in office but we had never really spoken until the day I had heard him narrating the Dinky Chips script.

I looked up again into Yudi’s faraway, smiling eyes. He caught me staring at him and levelled his gaze with mine. ‘Megha, Priyanka and I go back a long way. Priyanka is from Almora too, although her folks have been in Delhi for a while now. Her parents and mine have been friends for years. When I first moved to Mumbai, Priyanka’s dad had asked me to check on her now and then, make sure she was okay. She’s living away from home for the first time and they worry about her. After I started working on the GF account we got a chance to catch up more often. Also, Shiv had offered Priyanka a role on the Dinky Chips team and she wasn’t sure if she wanted to take up the offer. We’ve spent a lot of time discussing that too, since I am a part of the Dinky team and could tell her what she needed to know about the kind of work we do.’