There was high alert everywhere in the city due to the cyclone. She knows it is going to be difficult to convince her parents to let her out today. But no matter what happens, she needs to go today. This is one of those very rare events that matter to her. Generally, she does not prefer to go out, meet people. But this event! It is definitely a special one for her.

Though she knows that she will not be noticed and will be just one of those other fan-girls, still she thinks she needs to look good today. It takes her more than an hour to decide what would she wear for the event. Finally, she puts on her favorite dark pink Kurti with golden embroidery and beige trouser. She chose to put on a lighter shade from her collection of Matte lipsticks, puts on her kohl and blue mascara. It takes her another fifteen minutes to decide the earrings that would match her attire, she goes with a silver one with multicolored bids attached to it. She puts on a red ‘Bindi’ and then removes it. She has somehow managed to convince her parents that this event is important for her. She takes the car keys, take her cards and last but not the least she takes the novel from her book-shelf. She prefer her black flat over the high heels.

Carefully she keeps the novel in the back seat. It means a lot to her. She is hoping that today she gets to ask him everything that she had in her mind for long. She starts the car. She is still not that good with the clutch and gear thing, especially when it needs to release the clutch in first gear when the car takes the start. She always screws this up. “I should have called for a driver”, she tells herself. With a hope that she will not bump onto someone else’s car and would not end up getting herself admitted to a hospital, she manages to drive it. It takes her 45 minutes to reach her destination. Thankfully the mall offers valet parking, else she had to face a bit of challenge to park the car. She gives the key to the valet and heads towards the ‘Entry’ of the mall. She has noticed an Innova followed by a Bolero when she was handing over her car keys. The moment she reaches the entry gate, she spots him. With his black half sleeve shirt, black jeans and white sneaker, he looked strikingly hot and handsome. She makes way for him and his secretary and stands beside the big banner which had his picture and the caption: “Welcoming Devansh Biswas for the launch of his new book”. It is the same novel she is holding in her hand to get it signed. Everyone moves towards the lift and she still is standing at the same place. Devansh has noticed the novel in her hand so it does not take him much time to understand where is she heading towards. He holds the lift door and smiles at her and asks, “Stairs or elevator?”

She goes blank and keeps on standing when he removes his hand and the elevator door close. She gets back her sense and try to understand what has just happened. She takes stairs and reach the bookstore where the event will take place. She manages to get a seat. Everyone around her is way too excited when she remains calm. Few of the people from the crowd recognize her and request to take selfie with her. She agrees. It is then someone shouts from the crowd, “There he is!” Everyone’s eye point to a particular direction. Few of them manage to get a glance of him. He was being interviewed by one of members from a famous magazine team. One by one, everyone starts to go near him, take a picture of him from a distance and then come back blushing. She stays in her seat. It is not the first time she will see his show. She has attended his book launch events many times before. First time she was also the same excited as most of the crowd in front of her right now. Today she came cause she needs to ask him something very important. She waits from him to finish the interview and start the event.

After a good 20 minutes she hears everyone screams his name. She raise her head from one novel she has picked from the book store. She could only see heads of other people. Everyone is standing up to see him. She too stands up. With a round of applause everyone welcomes him, he takes his seat. With a brief discussion about his new novel he starts the event. Once done the question answer round starts. After two other girls she gets the microphone.
“Hi Devansh, this is Pauravi.”
“Hi”

Unlike every other stupid fan-girls, she is not smiling or blushing, she looks straight through his eyes with no expression on her face at all.

 

“Why all of your writings are so dark? Why don’t you ever write anything positive?”
“Umm..err..”

Lost in her dark eyes, he forgets  what to answer. His secretary passes him a bottle, he takes a sip.
“After I published my first book and I saw the audience grabbing it like anything, it is my publisher who made me believe this is my genre. So I continued with the same”
“Nothing personal?”
“Not really!”

This is not the answer she had expected. She let it go. After a while, when the ‘Question & Answer’ session gets over, it is now the time to sign the books and take selfies with the fans. The crowd forms a queue and she also stands in there. Few of them who recognized her, let her go ahead of them. It does not take much time for her turn to come. She could smell him now when he signs her novel.

“Your name, again?”
“Pauravi Mukherjee”
“There it is.”

She gives him her phone for a selfie and he clicks, till now her face has no expression yet he seems to be lost in her eyes.

He wants to talk to her but he knows he can not do it in a public forum. That is when she makes a weird request.

“Can I touch your dimple?”
“No! No! No! That will be so embarassing!” He would die to get one touch from her though.
“Please, please, please!” And for the first time, he sees her expression. She makes a puppy face which was too cute to refuse.
“Okay!” He gives in. “But make it quick”

And she touch his dimple. Everyone in the crowd screams! She has done it. She wants to dance. She leaves the podium. He wanted her to stay, he wanted her to keep on touching him. Obviously, he could not say it.

 

Once the event is finished, as soon as he reaches back to the hotel, the first thing that Devansh does is, he starts checking his Instagram account. This is his regular routine, but today, he has a particular purpose. He needs to find out one particular post, by one particular person. He is not even sure if she would post it if she is even using Instagram, but he starts scrolling through the notifications. Thousands of posts are there where he is tagged, most of them are from the recent event and few of them are from old events. He scrolls down further, his search is still going on and on. After a little bit of hassle, he finally spots the post he was looking for.

Yes, she has tagged him. He opens the picture, likes it first and then he opens the account of her. It is a business account like his one. Though not as much as he does, but the profile also has a good number of followers. He finds out a YouTube link in the bio. He clicks on it. There she is, in front of him. Her face covers his phone screen. She is a vlogger. She vlogs about the voiceless, she speaks for the voiceless. She runs an NGO to help the animals in need. Most of them are strays, few of them are pets as well. He plays the video. He notices that she speaks without any expression on the face, but her eyes have all the expression that one needs. She feels for those animals, she not only helps them, but she also shares their pain and makes others feel the same. Devansh is amazed to see how deep her eyes are, how they have tears hiding inside and could drop down any moment if one voiceless gives up. She saves them all with her small team. She raises funds in order to get medicines and healthy food for them, she arranges campaign and writes posters to attract people.

The name of her YouTube page says, “Help the Voiceless” and it has a link through which one could make a donation to the NGO. He goes back to her Instagram page. Most of her pictures are with stray dogs or some other animal, feeding them, cleaning their wounds, injecting them, embracing them. A few of her pictures are with other social workers, donors, of her campaigns. And then he finds out, five of her pictures with him and one picture that has all the 19 novels that he has written. All her pictures with him are from different book launch events. She has not visited him once, but so many times. He wonders, how could he miss it! Immediately he goes back to the link for making a donation, he clicks on it and makes a donation of Rs. 50,000/-. He then reposts a picture of her on his profile asking his fans to help the voiceless and awaits her reply.

Within 5 minutes hundreds of notifications pop up on her phone. She checks them one by one. Her page has gained a lot of followers within a blink. She has received few messages from her bank as well. Her NGO account has received many donations in last few minutes. Then she finds out that someone has made a donation of Rs. 50k to her organization. She immediately launches the bank’s application to find out the donor. The application reads the name, “Devansh Biswas.”

She can not believe whatever was happening. He has posted her picture and asked his fans to donate for her NGO. He has liked most of her pictures and commented on all the 5 images that she had with him. She gathers courage and DM him.

“Thank you so much, Devansh!”
“Anytime.”
“I can not believe what you have just done! I can not thank you enough! Really!”
“My pleasure”

She can not decide what else she should talk about or ask him about. She is thinking of framing something but feels too nervous to send them. Her thought interrupts with a beep on her phone. It’s a DM, it’s him.

“I think your NGO welcomes guests too and not only the voiceless one?” He has added a wink emoji to it.
“OMG! Am I dreaming?”
“Not really! I will be in town tomorrow and no events as well. Mind me visiting your office?”

How could she mind him visiting! They fix a meet at sharp at 1 pm. She knows it is going to be a sleepless night for her. She has to decide so many things. What will she wear tomorrow, how will she welcome him? Will he like it here? Will he be comfortable in front of her fellow colleagues? It is going to be a big day tomorrow!

As soon as she reaches her office, she informs her colleagues that they are expecting a big guest who has made a big donation for them. Everyone noticed that she is a little overdressed but they stay put. She was in her blue Kurti with white palazzo, she is wearing a matching silver and blue combined earrings. Her poker-straight hair is wide open, she has put on a blue matching bindi and her coral share matte lipstick is complimenting her little mole beside her lower lip. She is blushing all the while. She has ordered lunch from Zomato for all the staff as well. She has brought a huge cake for him to cut on this special day. She is getting restless as the time is getting close for him to arrive.

Sharp at 12.58 pm, he arrives. She was expecting him with protections but to her surprise, he has taken an Uber and has come without any guard or even without a secretary. He gets down from the cab and smiles at her. He is wearing a white shirt, the sleeves are perfectly rolled, blue jeans complimenting his firm look more and white sneakers. Pauravi would die to touch his dimple once again. She comes towards him and says “Hiiiiiieeeeeeeeeee”

Unlike other times, she seems to be pretty excited and her face has all the expressions in the world. Her kohled eyes are twinkling in excitement. Devansh says ‘Hello’ to her, amazed by her beauty. The sun rays on her face making it more obvious for him to control the desire of kissing her cheeks. She shows him the way towards the office room, they take a seat.

“Coffee or tea or anything else?”
“Tea!”

She is more impressed now. She asks for tea for both of them. Devansh can not take his eyes off her! What is happening with me! He thinks. Her face has gone blank again, no expression at all, once again. He starts the conversation.

“You really are doing a wonderful job!”
“Haha! Not as great as yours though!”
“I am not helping anyone, you are!”
“Point!”
“So only animals? You don’t feel like helping people?” He winks!
“People are useless and selfish.”

She is right, people are so selfish. Who else knows this better than he does!

“So, is it really the publishers who has decided that darkness is your genre?” She is still not convinced about what he has said in the event. Today, Devansh feels a strong urge to share his life with this beautiful lady, he wants to tell her everything that life has put him through. Should he?

He starts-

Devansh was only 3 years old when his parents started fighting every single day. Cornering him, they would fight all the time, they will hit each other. He used to spend most of his time with the housekeepers, he used to paint, he painted all that he saw every day. A bleeding woman, that is none but his mother, a drunk man, that is none but his father. He would paint his father beating his mom, he would paint his mom crying. He grew up to be an introvert, a shy kid who was mocked by everyone in the school. Other students would hit him, make fun of him, throw stones at him, he would come back home crying to his mom. One fine day, he came back from school bleeding from the head and started looking for his mom. Nobody has seen her for the last few hours. Everyone starts to search her only when he found out his mom hanging from the ceiling fan in her room. He was only seven years old, too young to realize that he would never see her again. His father remarried, his new mom hated him. And one fine day he was sent to his grandparents as his new mom was expecting her own baby. He never met his father again, his life was going with only down and down till he fell in love with Kritika.

Devansh was in his final year of college when he met Kritika. They became friends when she asked him notes of the previous two years. She was junior to him. By then, Devansh has already published his first two books and they were doing well in the market. Slowly slowly, Kritika started being demanding, she would ask him to take her out for shopping, for lunch, for a movie every single day. He was not getting enough time for his next book. He was struggling but he did not tell anything to Kritika. She was the only one he has ever been close to, he would fulfill all her demands, he would do anything she would ask. He attended all the parties with her, stayed awake nights after nights, been to all the pubs and found out all of them knew her. Kritika was way too sexy to control to hit on for every guy. But Devansh had never stopped her from meeting anyone or he never restricted her from going anywhere.

One night, he fell sick, he was not able to even get up from his bed. The fever had him half dead. He asked her to stay back home with him. But she refused. She wanted to go to a party and she left. After a while, he started feeling a little better, the fever became a little less. He drove his car to the pub where she told her she would be. He did not find her there. He tried calling her, but her phone was switched off. ‘She must be home’ he thought and drove to her flat. To his own disbelief, he found her there, sleeping with someone else whom she once claimed to be her cousin. With tears in eyes, he left the place. After that, she tried contacting him but he was done with her.

“Now tell me, what else you expect me to write if not darkness?” Devansh asks Pauravi with a smile on his face. By then, Pauravi has already seen the tears in his eyes. She gets up and walks towards him. She holds his hand and takes him to the lawn, where at least ten dogs were playing around. The moment she enters there, they come running to her. She tell him, “They will never leave you till their last breathe. They don’t know what is cheating, they don’t know how to break someone’s heart.” He nods his head and start playing with them.

After spending a good time with those voiceless, they cut the cake together and have lunch along with the other colleagues. Once done, they go for a walk.

“I am going to Mumbai tomorrow, for my next event. I guess I will not be back to Kolkata till the next book launch, that will probably be next year.”
“I think I know that!”
“Will you see me sometime? I feel good with you, Pauravi!”
“Only if you promise that you will never let me go!”
“I do.”

Their eyes meet, she hugs him.”You will be fine, Devansh. I promise.”

Today is exactly one year later from the day Devansh has visited Pauravi in her NGO. He is in Kolkata and it’s his new book’s launch. He has to pick her up on his way to the event. She has put a lot of effort in the last year. She has given all her time to him. She has managed to travel to places where he has been along with her work. He checks his pocket, the ring is there. He will propose to her today in front of all his fans. He will ask her to marry him. He knows her answer though. 

He picks her up and they reach the venue. The banner says, “Welcoming Devansh Biswas for launch of The Girl who touched his Dimple.”