Part 1

Trying in vain to comb back her wavy hair, Chitra looked at her reflection in the mirror. A petite school girl with short hair and cheerful face smiled at her.
"Who will believe that I hold a masters' degree and am working full time?” Chitra wondered.

She had always looked younger than her age. When she was in college, people mistook her to be studying in 8th standard. It used to irritate her then, for she was in a hurry like girls of her age, to grow up fast. But nowadays she enjoyed the fact that her child-like face deducted at least a couple of years from her looks.
"Have a great day sweetheart!" she wished herself and rushed to catch her bus to office. During the 45 mins daily bus ride, if she felt like having a good talk with someone, there were a bunch of regulars who had become her friends. But on days like today, when she was "happy from within", according to her, she chose to keep quiet and just talk to herself.
"TGIF!! Don't know how the week flew by!" Her inaudible monologue went on till she reached her office.

When she reached her floor, she could hear greetings from all around. Since her first day in the office, the ever smiling Chitra used to greet every one on the floor before settling in her cube. This simple action had made her quite popular with people who now were used to her enthusiastic “Good mornings”.

Just as she was filling her water bottle for the day she caught a glimpse of Rohan. The tall, easy-to-smile-at Ron (as he was called by everyone) was 2 years senior to Chitra. For some weird reason which she didn’t remember, Chitra didn’t like Ron's smile. In fact she didn't like this character at all.
"Hi Chi" (Chi as in China) said Rohan.
"Hi ROHAN" Chitra said without a smile and stressing on saying "Rohan" to display her dislike for hearing her name being shortened. That was one more thing Chitra didn’t like about Rohan. "Why does he have to behave friendly with everybody? Why is he trying so hard to be the good guy? Why can’t he just say Chitra? Chitra is already a short name."

Chitra was determined to not let that brief encounter with Rohan to spoil her mood and got back to her work. But the harder she tried to get him out of her thoughts, the more miserably she failed.
They had first met during a training session 8 months ago which Rohan had coordinated for the new joinees. On the first day itself something had gone wrong. Nothing extraordinarily wrong but still strong enough reason for Chitra to become hostile towards Rohan. "MBAs are arrogant, I agree, but more importantly they are technically useless. They don’t spend 2 years to learn but to unlearn what they have learnt." Rohan was giving some of his trademrk gyan to a new joinee after the training session. Chitra was in earshot and thought that Rohan had said that intentionally to insult her as she was the only MBA in her training batch. Rohan had later apologized for his stupid generalization. But the impression was formed. And Chitra, inspite of being a self-confessed bad judge of people and a religious “jumping-to-conclusions" type, decided that Rohan was an absolute moron. Period.

Disclaimer: Any resemblance to real people or real incidents or real places is purely unintentional and is figment of your truly’s real rich imagination :-D.