From Then To Now - The Change

It was her first day to work. She never thought that she will get placed in such a big company. Everything seemed new to her.

She somehow could find a hostel near her office. She had never stayed in a hostel in her life. That also happened to be a new experience. 

By the way, she didn't introduce herself to you all, right? Most of the people didn't know her then. Probably you may not even know her name. She was a very reserved and quiet girl from childhood. She rarely spoke. The only people who might have heard of her voice would be her family members. Hence no one knew what kind of girl she was. It's only her books which were a close part of her life so far. She didn't even have a close friend due to her nature. She just wanted to study well and get a good job so that she can help her family financially. Her dream had come true!

She was around 700 KM away from her family for joining the work. That was the first time she was staying apart from her family, which had made her scared about how she was going to handle everything alone. After all, unless we have real good friends, no one else apart from our own family and our teachers would know about us, especially if we are like this girl by nature.

Let us come back to her office. Joining formalities were done and she started her training too, when we had gone on a tour to know about her. Not sure if it's her fortune or not, not even one person from her team was co-located to her, they were all working from different parts of the country. She felt somewhat comfortable with it, you know why!

Days ran by. It was not a big deal for her to learn the work and work with the strangers. After all she was working neither personally nor physically close to them. She would come to office on time, finish her work, leave to hostel. This was how her days at office were going on. All the efforts of her hostel room mates to make her speak went in vain. She just smiled at them without any interest to mingle with them. She was deeply enjoying the loneliness at hostel and office. She didn't even show interest to know who was sitting next to her at office. Whenever she heard her room mates or office mates cracking jokes or laughing out loud together, it just sounded like noise to her.

That's when one day the person who was sitting beside her at office tried to start a conversation with her, when she needed help to fix her troubling computer. 

"Hi, I'm Vedha, what happened to the computer? Shall I look at it?"

"Yeah, please" - This was she.

He voluntarily offered help taking her to the support desk, where everyone in the support team waved hands to him and talked to him like longtime friends. It was a bit surprising to her because those people treated her also in the same manner. She got the issue resolved and went to Vedha's desk to thank him.

"You are welcome! By the way..I'm just glad to see you a smile on your face for the first time. I know your team is not working from this location. Everyday you are going for lunch alone, rite? Why don't you join with me today for lunch?"

When he asked like this, she couldn't refuse it. She started to taste the friendship fruit. Yes, it's really delicious, you know!

Not only that he had a big gang of friends at office, she saw that even the security staff and the canteen staff greeted him everyday. If he was on leave on any day, they started asking her about his absence. That's when she realized that by being alone, she would not be able to see the beautiful sides of the people around her. She slowly started to mingle with the people around her at office and also at hostel. She learned to interact with people wholeheartedly with a warm smile on the face and started gaining the love back. Everyone came into her friendzone. People started feeling her absence too. It was a drastic change she herself enjoyed much.

By the way, everyone knows her name now. It's "Uma"!