Some Dreams are Drafts

A loveable soundtrack

Summer, 2016
London

A gust of wind blew the locks of Jack's brown hair over his eyelids. He brought his left hand up to tuck them back as he looked at his friends busy scanning the café's menu to order food. He had already made up his mind about which coffee to order and was waiting for the others to decide.

This treat had been due since Hannah and Mark had launched their first website, together, four days ago. Jack smiled, fondly. Who knew that the two kids with whom he grew up playing hide and seek and basketball would make him proud by turning their dream of connecting people through their coding prowess!

It was a beautiful thought. And like most beautiful thoughts, it couldn't easily find impactful marketing. So far only a few posts had been put up on Facebook by independent journalists or technology experts praising the idea behind Mail-mates.com but big companies had been reluctant to sponsor the website. And so, his friends had chosen to approach local businesses and partner with them.

Jack had recommended a local coffee shop as a potential tie-up and after considering the benefits of collaborating with them, Hannah and Mark had set up a meeting with the owner.

After getting, “Liquid Love with Baked Affection” on board, a lot of people had started registering on the website which meant that the partnership was indeed a profitable one. To celebrate this, Hannah and Mark had insisted that Jack meet them in the same café to celebrate and thank him.

Jack felt that the gratitude was unnecessary.

Cricket had always excited him, ever since he was a child.

It had excited him to the extent that at one point in time he was obsessed with the sport. So much that he surrounded himself with it while keeping everything and everyone at bay. The two people sitting in front of him had been the ones who brought him to his senses.

The auditory memory of them trying to get some sense into him made him grin.
He closed his eyes to recall more statements. More voices, across the years.

Voices telling him about things he should or shouldn't do. Voices praising him unabashedly and wholeheartedly.
Voices critiquing him, keeping him grounded. Voices laughing with him and sometimes at him and his goofiness. Voices that if combined would make a good home, safe enough to rest and recover in.

And in all the voices he heard, Hannah’s animated chatter and Mark's calm baritone had been the soundtrack of his life. A soundtrack that he loved.

He sighed, silently. Ever since the website had launched, he was waiting to register. He wanted to congratulate the duo in person before registering. It felt weird doing it otherwise. As if it was just a site and not the site he had been hearing about since the past seven months.

In this manner of things, the three were quite similar. They liked connecting. Not in the superficial, formal ways but in the friendly, informal, in person ways. They preferred calls to texts. Emails to messages. And handwritten letters used to be a birthday ritual for them when they were young.

The waves of time had touched them and shaped the edges of their personalities a little. They'd had different experiences, studying in different colleges. Traveling to different places, one of them being a professional cricketer. But somewhere, they were still the Jack, Hannah and Mark who switched the lights of their houses on at random moments in the night to let the others know they were awake in case any of the three couldn't sleep and was wondering if the others were awake.

The only difference between their childhood days and adulthood days was the slow insertion of technology in their lives which couldn't change them completely even if it tried to.

“While we wait for the cheesecakes and coffees, I am going to register myself on the website.” Jack said, a slow smile spreading on his face.

“No way!” Hannah exclaimed, looking at Mark, excitement evident on her face.

“So that's why you weren't answering those texts about whether or not you were thinking about registering or not…” Mark said, shaking his head, thinking he should have seen this coming.

“Yes. Because I wanted to register after I had properly congratulated you both. And also because I knew how excited you were for this project. So I thought, why not double the excitement by having you two see who your website connects me with.”

Hannah sat up straight and leaned forward.

“Letssgoooo Jack!!” Jack chuckled as he hit the sign up button.

“It will ask you to log in using an email and then set up a password -”

“Shh, Mark, Jack can read.” Hannah interrupted him while adding, “I hope you're not logging in with your regular email id.”

To which Jack shook his head and said, “Well, I may have made a new email id just to log in on this website.”

Jack's grin widened as he saw his friend's eyes sparkle.

“It's called jackofalltrades03@gmail.com.”

“Love it, mate!” Mark said and Hannah shook her head, trying to look disappointed and pretend that Jack could have done better.

“Okay, I've logged in successfully! And now it's asking me if I would like to connect with someone from the same country or not. Ah. I didn't know you guys gave the choice of connecting across borders!” Jack exclaimed in surprise.

“That is certainly like having a pen pal! That's, wow. Would you believe if I told you that my heart is racing? I know we have Instagram these days that gives one the opportunity to connect with people from different countries but I don't know, emails are far more charming.”

Jack clicked on the option that allowed him to choose a Mail-mate from another country.

And just like that, the algorithm shared an address with him. An email address of someone across borders, sitting in a different country, and in fact, watching, Modern Family, as he stared at it.

“beingbhavika21@gmail.com.” Jack rubbed the end of his neck with his index finger, wondering whether Bhavika would have been notified of the connection. When he asked his friends they answered in positive.

At that moment, Bhavika Goradia, frowned a little and her heart throbbed as she received Jack Parsons’ email address and invitation to connect.