Tridha smiled and adjusted the mike, and took a sip of water, watching the audience getting impatient. But it was a long journey, and she knew she would need a lot of courage to speak it in a go.

" So, the story starts in Manali, 2005. Are you ready to go back in time?", She asked once more, and the audience gave positive replies, hooting and cheered her. She signalled to dim the lights, and took a deep breath before beginning the past! 

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"It was a pleasant Saturday morning, in the hills of Manali, and most people were sleeping owing to a lovely weekend ahewd. But the clock was ticking faster for her and even though she ran around crazily, she still felt she won't be able to make it that day. Cursing herself for snoozing all her alarms, she rolled her sandwich in silver foil and picked up her handbag, roughly dumping her clutch and phone in it, and rushed out of her room, down the stairs, pulled open the main gate and boom!

The world stopped around her as two muscular arms held her steady, and her own night like dark eyes got bewitched with a weird pair of chocolate brown ones. A completely stupid smile appeared on her face but as The cab honked outside, Nandini rushed out, mumbling a thank you on her way. She couldn't afford to loose her job anyway at the children day care center, could she?

Now some people in life, are differently familiar, because they know very well how to mingle in the crowds. They don't want to stand out, they are the kind who walk looking down, the ones who smile at you if your eyes meet, but just a shy, formal smile. They are the girl-next-door/boy-next-door kind of people, and yet there is something peculiarly distinct about most of them which differentiate them from the other seven billion people in this world.

For Nandini Murthy, it was her innate ability to day-dream.

Nandini was a daydreamer, but unlike most of us, she was an avid day-dreamer. The one who attended every class and listened none, because her heart and mind was busy soemwhere afar. She was empathetic to her bone, and her biggest dream that she often day-dreamed about was to be someone's healer. She had been so obsessed with tragic stories all her life, that she had a world of her own, where she would be that one ray of hope for someone who had lost all his zeal, the princess in shining armor for a knight in distress, and she would be the medicine for him, his shining star.

To be honest, deep down all that was a facade and all she truly wanted was to belong to someone, to be important to someone and then live happily ever after. She had been a second option to so many people, her friends and family, and now all she desperately wanted was to be someone's first and foremost priority.

She had never thought though, that her this weird dream would come true in a twisted way, when she would bump into a stranger at her door step one morning, but then, she had been so lost in his eyes, she forgot that life, has it's own unique ways to twist the plots, without a single warning.

Tired to her bone running around the small children of the care home she worked as an intern on weekends, Nandini took a deep breath as she sat on her favorite bench in her favorite park near the house she lived as a paying guest in. It was almost dusk but the breeze was cool and it played with her locks that had broken free of the rubber band that held her long, dark hair in place. Sipping her delightful cold coffee, she took out her favorite novel from her handbag, titled Gunahon ke devta ( the deity of sins) and opened her favorite page of the book. She had read it over a hundred times, but yet, everytime she felt stressed or low, she would open a random page from it and somehow it would calm down the chaos in her heart and answer the questions bugging her mind. How, she had no answer, but she believed it was the love of her late mother who had handed her this tattered copy of the novel with love and blessings.

Nandini took a deep breath as her eyes fell on the paragraph down, and a frown settled between her well arched eyebrows.

" You don't always need smiles to calm your heart and feel good. Tears do it for you, at times and faster so".

How anopologetically correct. She smiled as Chander, the protagonist sat lost in the memories of his beloved, Sudha, and Nandini was fighting the blush that threatened to spread on her chubby cheeks when she looked up accidentally, stupified.

Right opposite to her, a few feet apart, on the bench, lay a man in his early twenties, his hands folded to rest his head, as he stared at the sky. Nandini had to really squeeze her eyes to see if he even blinked amidst the sky staring session. There were a few stars starting to twinkle here and there in the otherwise clear sky and he was looking at them, almost like talking to them. His face had a calmness etched all over it, his lips curved upward very slightly. Nandini stared at him, trying to remember if she had seen him here before, when on a reflex the guy looked at his side. Obviously he would have felt a creepy girl staring at him, from his peripheral vision. Nandini immediately wanted to lower her eyes, but she couldn't. It was almost like a magnetic pull, that locked their gazes, with a force that it took more than five minutes for the guy to tear apart his eyes and look back at the sky again.

As the eye contact ended, Nandini  too lowered her eyes to finally have two weird realizations together. First, his eyes didn't put up to the calmness his face was portraying, they had this set of unfathomable chaos in them, laced with so many emotions that Nandini could not put a finger on. And secondly, he was the same guy who had helped her to not fall on her face in the morning. She smiled at the realizations, for to be honest, 'The Sky Guy' as she called him in her heart, was her saviour, and somehow it rang a tiny bell in the deep most chamber of her otherwise silent heart, making her smile wider.

She looked up again, but to her utter dismay, he wasn't there on the bench anymore. He had left.

Dejected, she walked back home, holding the book in her hand, and supporting the  heavy bag on her shoulders. The sky guy seemed to have occupied all her thoughts but She had to do her own cooking, in the small induction gas she had in her room. And hence the groceries and some fruits she was carrying were heavy.

Nandini styaed as paying guest with an old couple, whose son was probably settled abroad. She had been given the room on the  otherwise open terrace of the small home, which have her a full right to have her favorite night talks with the moon sitting on the swing and she was happy about it. The terrace was beautiful, with two rooms on either corners, and a swing in between. She had to cook for herself, but otherwise it was comfortable and affordable to her, and the old couple was always nice to her too. But today, when she walked in, the old lady, Mrs. Sharma, stopped her.

" Nandini, I had been waiting for you", she smiled at her and Nandini reciproctaed, keeping her bags aside.

" Yes aunty. Any issue?", She queried.

" No, just that, the room opposite to yours on the terrace, which was always locked? My son's best friend will be living there for some days, with us here. So, I hope you don't have a problem?", She smiled again, looking skeptical but Nandini assured she was fine with it.

" Alright then, his name is Manik. He was my son's best friend. I will introduce you to each other", Mrs Sharma spoke, as she called out to the guy, Manik.

"Was? They aren't friends anymore?", Nandini asked, shifting on her feet. The lady turned to face her, with a grim expression before sighing deeply.

" My son, Dhruv, left all of us a year ago in a road accident. Manik was his best friend, almost a brother to him and he will always be", she replied painfully but before Nandini could apologize she was cut off with a manly voice.

"Maa, I told you not to be sad, didn't I? But see you never listen to me", Manik came and wrapped his arm around the lady, pouting, and the lady laughed hitting him playfully, making him chuckle too. His laughter was no doubt, infectious, and soothing.

" Meet her, this is Nandini, our paying guest", Manik raised his eyes to greet her, but Nandini stood rooted to her spot.

And why not? Her sky guy was going to share a home with her!