Knock Knock! - A Semi Love Story

in The Ink Well2 years ago

Mishu learns Spanish in Duolingo. Yesterday, he wrote a comment on a Facebook page named 'Duolingo español' seeking for a native Spanish speaker.

Ten hours later:

Facebook Messenger beeped while he was in light sleep. It's in the other box of the Messenger. It's a girl named Raquel from Colombia.

Raquel:
"¡Hola! ¿Quieres hablar español? (Hello! Do you want to speak Spanish?) I have seen your comment on Facebook that you are looking for a native Spanish speaker. If you want to practice Spanish I can help you."

Mishu:
(Whoa! That was fast!) And with the help of Google translators, he wrote the following sentences.
"¡hola! Sí, yo quiero hablar español. Gracias por su respuesta. ¿Cómo estás?" (Hello! Yes, I want to speak Spanish. Thanks for your reply. How are you?)

Raquel:
Estoy bien (I'm fine). Do you want to continue the conversation in Spanish?

Mishu: I'm not that good in Spanish, but I can manage by the help of Translators lol..

Raquel sent a voice message. Obviously Mishu didn’t understand a syllable. She kept sending voice messages over and over. Mishu also sent a voice message in Bengali. Raquel stopped sending messages. After a brief pause, she replied his message in Bengali! Mishu's jaw dropped three inches down to his upper chest. "What the heck is going on? How did she know what I'm talking about?" It's clearly visible that Raquel is no way a Bangladeshi. And her posts on Facebook are written in Spanish with lots of interactions.

Mishu sent another voice message with his dialectical accent. The accent is from the south-eastern part of Bangladesh named Chittagong. He grew up in there. This time, no Bengali reply is coming from Raquel. She sent him some 'thoughtful' emojis meaning that she is trying to figure out what he said. After an hour, she gave up and asked him what he said in his message.

Mishu's damn sure now that she is not someone Bangladeshi who is messing with him. He wanted to know how she find out what he said in his message. She said that she is chatting with him through a computer and she used google translator's voice recognizing feature on her phone that can recognize voice messages and can translate into her language. You get the picture now.

They became very good friends. The conversation was in Spanish most of the time. Mishu started to watch Spanish language movies. He even tried to read one of his favorite books, 'One Hundred Years of Solitude' in it's original text i.e. Spanish. He couldn’t make it though.

This went on for almost a year. No, they didn’t fall in love. But they missed each other a lot. In spite of eleven hours' time difference, they found their 'time' to talk. Mishu told her that she can consider him as her 'Self' to whom she can tell everything she wants. Raquel thought, 'To hell with it! He lives on the other side of the world. What difference is it gonna make if I told him everything?' So, they shared almost every secret of their life. I don't want to go into the details what they talked about if you are wondering. A young man of 25 and a young woman of 22, both were good looking who loves each other's company. It was a perfect combination to fall in love with. But it didn’t happen. Why?

Mishu practices 'Stoicism', he is a die-hard fan of Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Seneca. So, he knows how to deal with the disappointing aspects of life. On her part, she is ambitious. She doesn’t want to make a mess with her life. She wants to be a scientist. She just wanted a good friend with whom she can share her everything as she didn’t have a boyfriend. And, you know, boyfriends aren’t really friends.

After one year, they both lost interest in each other. They are still friends in Facebook, but they hardly talk nowadays. Maybe in a month they just say 'Hello'. They are both aware that there's nothing serious between them. Sometimes they share some memes and major events of their life to each other, that's all.

And... Life goes on.

IMG_20221021_101547.jpg

IMG_20221021_101744.jpg

Source: https://www.quora.com/What-does-a-normal-WhatsApp-conversation-with-you-look-like

NB: They shared their phone numbers at the very first conversation. From then on, most of their conversations took place in WhatsApp.

Sort: