Soft Focus

"I'm interested in financial analysis", he is saying, "a credit-related role."

"We'll come to the profile in a bit", I respond, almost as if on autopilot.

It is stealing upon me, bit by obvious bit. An expectant little thrill, the sort you feel in the presence of your first love. I look out of the picture window again. I couldn't have felt the pull more strongly if I were a lodestone in an exceptionally strong magnetic field.

I shiver a little. It could be the airconditioning. It could be something else.

"...the ideal ratio, of course", he is saying again, "is 2:1. I'm a fresher", he adds with some pride, "but I do believe I can add value to the financial and accounting aspects of your organization."

"We're a bank", my colleague remarks, drily. "At the end of the day, finance and accounting is all we're about."

I look out of the window again. I feel the slight chill and that old pull once more, at the same time. I know that chill. I know that shade of twilight. I know how it feels. I have nothing if not those feelings.

"You know I know how much you miss it all."

"I've never pretended otherwise", I say aloud in my head, half awed, half defensive.

It laughs softly, raises an enticing arm. Invites a hug.

All I want to do is run into its embrace. This interview, the world, all be damned.

So I stare resolutely at the psychometric profile and begin a question. My brain slips into autopilot mode again. I pause for the briefest fraction of a second to make sure it's headed in the right direction, then hand over control before resuming my conversation with whatever it is outside the picture window, in the fast-falling darkness.

I know the room is virtually airtight right now, but it is getting progressively cooler. The chill is setting in with the self-assurance of someone who knows they're needed, even if you deny it to them till you are blue in the face, while your heart is pounding with terror at the thought that they will take you at your word and leave.

That isn't what surprises me. I'm shaken - alarmed and reassured in equal measure, all at once - by something else. That chill caressing my skin feels like the warmest, most familiar hug I've ever been in.

And then it hits me. It's been sitting in plain sight all this while, which is probably how it escaped notice in the first place. Typical.

It's the Delhi winter. It's home, and it's looking for me.