It all started the morning when she went into the washroom, and could not find the toothpaste there!

In a fever of anxiety, she looked for it everywhere, but it was nowhere. Would she have to go for the interview without having brushed her teeth?

‘I am getting late, I am getting late’, she fumed.

‘Never heard of anyone going for an interview with unbrushed teeth’, she imagined her mom saying it - her mom , whom she had left behind in Pune along with her father,  and who was a stickler for punctuality and perfection. She sheepishly rummaged in the dustbin for the elusive treasure, after she had looked for it in the buckets, in the mugs and also groped for it behind the water closet.  

“You are such a scatterbrain, girls of your age do not suffer from amnesia.” This disembodied reprimand of her mother fell into her ears.

“Then, girls of what age do?” She had asked with a naughty grin, stuffing the last remnants of a sandwich in her mouth, after she had successfully hunted down her favorite pair of jeans from under the heap of clothes lying on the settee in her room.

“Oh come on, mom, how many times have I told you, not to mess with my mess – SO WHAT IF IT IS A MESS , IT IS MY MESS – NEVER MESS WITH MY MESS.  CREATE YOUR OWN MESS, IF YOU WANT, OKAY? It was because you tried to inject some order in my mess, that I could not find my jeans.” She said reproachfully, trying to smoothen away the wrinkles on her jeans.

 Forget it, she said, quickly shaking away this memory chunk and briskly shampooing her hair, while vigorously rubbing her teeth with a finger. I am sure, no one is going to ask me the brand of the toothpaste I use, or whether I have brushed my teeth. But, yes, they could ask me how to sell toothpaste to a toothless person, I am sure I can come up with an answer to that.           

 She chuckled at her own wisecrack, and dashed out of the washroom.

“So what if I am a PROCRASTINATOR, SO WHAT IF I AM A LAST –MINUTER, I AM ORIGINAL!” She heard the rumbling of something in the three bedroom apartment, and slivers of her father’s humongous guffaw almost hit her instantly.

She was going for an interview for the job of a sales officer in a newly launched toothpaste manufacturing company, armed with a fresh new MBA Degree from Symbiosis. Surely, she would not be rejected, just because she had not brushed her teeth? ‘But, anyway, who would know that she had landed for the interview with her teeth unbrushed ’, she said, popping a piece of chocolate in her mouth.

The chocolate would camouflage the bad odour, if any, and besides, it was even good for releasing tension, she said with a smile to herself.

And, she was tense. For once.

 “When will you take life seriously, beta?”

Contorting her facial muscles into an expression of seriousness, as dictated by the disembodied voice, this time of her dad, she jumped into a pair of faded jeans, and a T-shirt of equal degradation, and smiled triumphantly. Armed with her documents under her arm, and the mad bibliophile that she was, stretched one arm for Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s ‘Love in the Time of Cholera’, and stuffed it in her bag, and clutching the bag, raced towards the lift.

“Oh no!” For the second time during the day, she hit her forehead as the wall next to the lift said, OUT OF ORDER. She raced down six flights of stairs from her seventh floor Mayur Vihar apartment, loudly cursing under her breath. 

 Then stood rooted to the spot as she hit the basement, an aghast hand clamped to her forehead for the third time during the morning.

 “Oh no, my car has an EVEN number, and today is THIRTEENTH January!”

She had shifted to Delhi a couple of months back, and now stayed in the house which her parents had bought a few years back, in the hope that their daughter might someday work in Delhi .Her dad had asked her to move around only in the Swift Desire that he had bought for her, and not on the motorbike, which she was obsessed with.  They themselves had never been enamored of Delhi, as they loved Pune, and their work as bankers there.   

She called two taxi services, but both said, that no taxi was available till eleven. Usually, there used to be auto-rickshaws standing outside Shekhar apartments, but today there was none.  Would she have to hot- foot it to the interview? She started walking, in the hope of getting a cab from outside   Samachar Market, but no cab was around. With every passing minute, she started hyperventilating, frantically looking at her watch every now and then. The interview was at 11 and it was already 10. What if she missed the interview?

If I go by metro, will I be on time? Perched precariously on the horns of a dilemma, all sorts of thoughts were churning inside her mind, polluting it, some pollutants even threatened to spill out of her cluttered mind. Pollution was indeed creating havoc everywhere.

When she had almost dropped the idea of reaching the interview on time, a car stopped next to her, just outside the metro station, with a pleasant looking man sitting in the driver’s seat, who smiled in her direction, and then mimed a query. Probably, her pathetic condition had touched an empathetic chord somewhere.

“I have an interview at 11 at CP.” She said, throwing all caution to the winds, for the hundredth time in her twenty three year existence on this polluted earth.  

“Hop in. Make yourself comfortable.” The smile that suffixed the hopping suggestion was huge, so was the car. A Honda City.  Without a second thought, she hopped in, plonking down next to the stranger.  Only for a second did the magnitude of her impulsive step plague her.

 “Crazy, crazy. I am crazy,” she mumbled, clutching her file close to her chest.  

“You have the knack of doing the craziest things. Someday this might land you into trouble”. She gave a shake to her long, black cascading hair, but actually she was shaking off this ominous maternal prophecy.

She looked at him from the corner of her eye, he had a pleasant smile plastered to his handsome face. She gave another shake to her luxuriant hair, but actually she was shaking off the bard’s words, “you can smile and smile and still be a villain.”

Was it every day that the roads were so over crowded, or had the people of Delhi deliberately converged on the roads today to make her miss her interview?

“The roads are hardly crowded today.” The stranger said, looking strangely at her.

“Huh?”

She whirled around in near hysteria.

“Do you think I will reach in time?”

“Of course, you will.”

“My mom will kill me if I ……Are you trying to kill me? “There was a screech of brakes, and she was flung against him. Was he doing it deliberately?

 “I was just trying to save a dog which tried to cross my path.”

She had no option but to believe him, because she glimpsed a skeletal little dog, slinking towards the pavement, throwing a grateful look in the direction of the driver before he turned right towards the main road.

“The ODD-EVEN experiment is proving quite successful.”

 “Huh?”

“It is so crowded, I do not understand why you cannot see the crowd. Delhi is sheer madness.”

“But I love madness. “He said, trying to pick up speed. “Where are you headed?”

“CP” .She said casting one look at the Akshardham Temple valiantly trying to pierce the cloud cover.  

“Great. I’m also going there.”

“Tell me when we reach CP.” She said brusquely, pulling out the book from her bag.

“I fail to understand the great brouhaha about this book.” He said casting one look at the book.

“It has been written by a Nobel laureate.” She said with a clench-lipped sneer.

“Yes, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, he got it in 1982.”

He looked at him, a trifle surprised, and remarked, “Yes and he is one of the literary greats.”

“By the way, I am Sumeet Bali, and you?” She noticed that the smile was really bewitching, but she refused to be bewitched.  

“I am Snighda Prasad. I have an interview in this newly launched toothpaste company, with such a ridiculous name. I mean, who would keep Dentopia as a brand name.  I mean, I have heard of Utopia, Dystopia, but DENTOPIA! What a preposterous name for a toothpaste!”   She threw back her head and laughed uproariously.

He turned in her direction, his forehead creased. She could not make out whether what flitted across his lips was a smile or a smirk.

Suddenly the sky was covered with ominous looking clouds, even the elements were conspiring to make her miss her interview. She thought, again looking at him from, by now, over- worked corner of her eye.

 No, he did not look like someone who could eat a crocodile raw. On the contrary, he looked pretty handsome with a mischievously twinkling pair of eyes. Under other circumstances, she could even fall for him hook, line and sinker. 

For some insane reason, she started hearing the thunder of the waves breaking against the cliffs.

Or were they her own riotous thoughts?

To avoid the rioting thoughts, she looked out of the window and saw school children queued up with placards saying, HELP US MAKE DELHI POLLUTION –FREE. This scene at Barakhamba road brought a smile to her lips.

After six forehead- bangings, a hundred curses, a thousand and one missed heart beats , CP no longer appeared like a never- to- be- realized dream .  

“Drop me near Regal.”

The moment she entered the room, she gasped visibly, her mouth a big O of surprise.

“Ms Snighda Prasad, kindly make yourself comfortable.” The pleasant man with the impish smile seated in front of her, said with something playing on his face, which, she believed, was a cross between a smile and a smirk.

“So, what do you think of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Love in the Time of cholera? Do you think it is better than Hundred years of Solitude?”

Before she could answer, he had fired another question at her, “What do you think of our brand name? Don’t tell us you find it ridiculous!”

For some time she was absolutely tongue tied, having no answer to the pointedly asked questions.

“Okay, tell me what do you think of this Odd- Even thing?”

 She shuddered in stupefaction, and then blurted out, “well, I find it pretty ODD that you are trying to get EVEN with me this way. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth will make the whole world blind. Are you keen to live in a visually challenged world? We need eyes to see, and MY eyes tell me that I have no use here, so I am going.”

From the corner of her eye, she noticed the sneer –smile morphing into a full- blown smile, which, in other circumstances would have made her heart do somersaults, and as she left the room a humongous guffaw hit her back.

 Any possibility of love in the time of ODD-EVEN had gone down the drain. The dental issue had given her mental anguish, proving detrimental to her future career prospects. She could not afford to be sentimental. Her mom would surely kill her.

She was mid-sigh when her phone rang.

From the absolutely exhausted corner of her eye she noticed that it was an unknown number.

True Caller identified it as the number of Sumeet Bali, the CEO of DENTOPIA.