If you work in Vismaya, you know the morning stress. It’s 8:58 AM, you’re stuck at the Kakkanad signal, and you know the elevator line is going to be a nightmare. Vismaya is basically just a giant stack of offices where you see the same faces every day, share a few seconds of awkward silence in the lift, and never actually learn anyone’s name.
I was on the 6th floor. She was on the 4th.
We didn’t meet because of some “destiny” moment. We met because of parking spot B4 in the basement. I have this 2012 Vespa that sounds like a tractor when it’s cold. She had a clean, grey Honda Dio. In that basement, people basically claim their territory. We just happened to end up as neighbors.
At first, it was just that tight-lipped nod people give when they’re both taking off their helmets. Then it was holding the heavy door open. Then it was standing in the lift together, staring at the floor numbers like they were the most interesting thing in the world.
She had this habit of tapping her ID card against her phone when she was annoyed. I noticed it the day the lift gave a nasty shake and stopped between the 2nd and 3rd floors. It was that dead silence you only get in a lift full of strangers. Out of nowhere, she said:
“If this thing drops, I’m haunting the guys in maintenance first.”
A few people snickered. I actually laughed. She looked over, and for a second, being stuck in a metal box didn’t feel so bad.
By the third month, I was timing my entire morning around her. If her Dio wasn’t in its spot, I’d take forever locking my helmet just to see if she’d pull in. Our “relationship” was basically four floors of small talk about how bad the traffic was or how the office AC was too cold.
One evening, it poured. We both got stuck at the ground floor food court waiting for the rain to let up. We ended up sharing some pretty average fries from one of the counters. I don’t even remember how it started, but we spent an hour arguing about Malayalam movies. I told her the recent theater re-releases were just a way for producers to make easy money. She completely shut me down, arguing that seeing those old “mass” scenes with a crowd was a totally different experience. Watching her get all worked up about it, I realized I was in trouble. I was looking for her every time I walked through the lobby.
It got to the point where I’d take the stairs just to walk past the 4th-floor glass doors, hoping to catch a glimpse of her at her desk. I knew I had to ask her out, but doing it in the middle of a workday felt cringey.
It finally happened on a Friday. Typical Kakkanad weather—sticky, humid, and looking like another downpour was coming. We were walking to our scooters. She was struggling with her helmet strap and looked like she’d had a brutal week.
“Rough one?” I asked, getting my keys out.
“The worst,” she said, finally getting the strap to click. “I’m going to sleep until Monday morning.”
I didn’t really think it through. It just came out. “I was going to see if you wanted to grab coffee somewhere outside the park,” I said. “But sleep sounds better.”
She stopped. Her hands dropped to her sides. The basement was loud—engines revving, security guards whistling—but she just stood there looking at me.
“Coffee,” she said. “Like… not in this building?”
“Yeah. Somewhere where we don’t have to watch elevator buttons.”
She bit her lip, looked at her bike keys, and then gave me a real smile. Not the polite one from the lift. “I was wondering how many movie arguments we’d have to go through before you actually asked.”
We didn’t have a big movie moment. We just drove our separate scooters straight into the mess of traffic heading towards Pallikkara. But sitting there behind a smoking KSRTC bus, watching her grey Dio a few cars ahead of me, I couldn’t stop grinning.
Sometimes things don’t need a “journey” or a “tapestry.” Sometimes they just start at Pillar B4.
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