Chapter - 7 (Jishnu Presents Himself At The Sisters'!) 

Jishnu, as one of the school prefects, waited near the staircase and helped the Junior students of VII and VIII walk across the corridor out on the enclosed lobby. School was over and parents of many students, were waiting near the gate. Madanda, one of the Security Personnel, was barricading them from stepping into the compound. Jishnu found Mrs. Chakroborty, their Computer Teacher, coming out of the office. She stopped near the staircase, smiled at Jishnu and a few other prefects before walking along the long corridor to Principal's Office. 

Jishnu looked at her receding figure and on turning his head back up at the queue of Standard VII students climbing down the stairs, found Anushka coming down. She had the red, checked House shirt on. She looked like the cute heroin of a movie, starring against Ranbir Kapoor, with those round specs of hers. With her school bag firmly tied across her shoulders, Anushka was carrying some books in her hands pressed against her chest. She had her eyes fixed on the boy a few steps ahead of her near the collapsible gate. 

Jishnu turned his head to see who the boy was. He was Vishal of VIII. As Jishnu glanced back up the line of students streaming down, Anushka suddenly quickened her steps and collided in the process, with the girl on the step below. One of the books flew out of her hands and fell face down near Jishnu's feet. He bent down and picked the book up. A slip of a paper, kept between the pages, got blown away down the corridor by the southerly wind. Jishnu was thinking of asking the prefect of XI to go get it, when Anushka cried out :

"Thank you, bro. Don't worry about the paper. It's nothing important."

Afterwards, Jishnu ran up the stairs chasing Ankur and Siddharth to fetch the banners for the Science Exibition from the classroom. Madam Principal wanted to have a look at them. He asked his friends to go down and wait outside Principal's Room for him as he had to lock the room first. While speeding down the steps along the corridor sometime later,Jishnu saw the slip of paper stuck against the maroon border line of the grilled wall on the left. Something rang a bell somewhere. Looking back and front, he found no one coming his way. He quickly swooped down on the paper and turned it over. There was a ten digit number scrawled across the paper - 9819610205. He looked at the number, crushed the paper into a ball and was about to dump it, when he changed his mind. He straightened the paper back and put it into his shirt pocket. 

No sooner had Anushka come back home from College Street after her Physics Tuition than her mobile started playing the popular tune.

Dil kho gaya kisika… . 

Rista naya, rabba, dil chhu raha hain,

Khinche mujhe koi dor teri our… 

(Someone's heart got lost….. A recent relationship touches my heart, pulling me closer to you.) 

"Hello, Anushka speaking," Her charming voice pored into the phone.

There was a pause at the other end before the line went dead. Anushka stood up before the large sized wall mirror on the wall in front of their bed, threw her hair back, pulling a streak behind her ear. She smiled at her reflection in the mirror. Life, she told herself, went on the expected lines, more often than not. 

Jishnu had his finger still trembling as he snatched the mobile back from her sister's hand.  He didn't know why he had been so shaken by the voice. He should have talked to her but couldn't tell his sister what had come over him. Why he had handed the phone to her when Anushka called back. 

He had been acting queer since he picked up the slip of paper. The truth about him, unknown to most of his close mates, was that despite being a Science student of the seniormost standard, he was a very superstitious boy. He felt after he had seen the paper being blown away that it carried a message for him from the girl. That the paper contained something that would let him know more about her. For reasons not very clear, he felt drawn to that chit of a seventh grader. It was something difficult to explain even to himself. Jishnu Mitra, the heartthrob of CPS. The boy that most of the girls would cut their little fingers off to possess! The boy who had already been proposed twice by two of the most desirable girls of CPS. He had a feeling when he looked at the easy-to-remember number for the second time that the paper was a gateway to a world he was soon to explore. A world of unbelievable Friendship and untold Promises! 

He simply couldn't resist the temtation of dialling the number on reaching home, from his room. He had even played in his mind what he was going to tell in case it was answered by someone else. But the moment he heard the familiar "Hello", an inexplicable feeling of guilt, something alien to his nature, shot through him. He couldn't but put the receiver down hurriedly. 

Anushka just wanted to make sure if her guess was correct or not. She called back the number from her mobile. It rang for a long time at the other end, and as she was about to disconnect the call, a girl's voice informed her from the other end that the number she had called, was  wrong number. 

Akanksha was late getting back home from the soul-killing tuitions, after what proved to be a very long day. There was a knock on the door. She flung her bag on the couch and scampered over to open it thinking that Anu might be in the kitchen helping Ma with the cooking. As she loosened the door chain, Anushka in their room upstairs, had barely time to put Akanksha's Diary back in the gap in the rack..

"A near escape again! " She muttered to herself. She was outraged for not having found the juicy staff that she expected from her sister's diary.

Anushka came out of her room. Looking down from above the railings of the staircase, she let out an "OMG" just like her sister might have done at the door. 

The sisters were extremely surprised to see Jishnu, standing at the door, looking uncertain yet more handsome than any other boy they had ever come across in life!