Arnab was beginning to wonder if he would get a chance to talk to Mishti again. That was till Mishti said, 'Arnab, why didn't you call me even once?' Arnab was tongue-tied, not knowing quite what to say, so he was grateful when Mishti put him out of his misery by saying, 'Don't worry, it's not as if I called before today. Let's stay in touch, ok?'
The next day, Arnab kept wondering if he should call Mishti or not and finally decided to do it. His heart in his mouth, he was about to hang up after the first few rings when Mishti's voice greeted him with an effusive 'Hello'. Somehow hearing her made all his nervousness melt away, and to his utter surprise, he found himself chatting freely with her.
The almost daily calls continued, creating a ritual that soon became an integral part of Arnab's day. He would spend the day forgetting the pressures at work, forgetting the aches and pains from the previous night's mission, forgetting any tension about the upcoming mission that night-all of them crumbling before the anticipation of talking to Mishti again.
Arnab couldn't put a word to what he was feeling. Was it just friendship, or was it beginning to become something a bit more than that? Ultimately, when something made you feel so good, did it really matter what name you labelled it with?
A couple of days later, when they were chatting, Mishti had a request for Arnab.
'Arnab, Jayantada's birthday is coming up in three days and I'm surprising him by sending him a gift. I'll courier it in your name and can you please pass it on to him? I don't want him to get it from an anonymous courier guy. Also, I need to travel to Singapore on work for a few days, so it may not be as easy to chat, but I'll SMS, please do the same.'
As he hung up, Arnab's excitement at chatting with Mishti was replaced by something else-an idea on how he could reach out to people who needed his help.
That evening, his mission was to patrol the back alleys of Kailash Colony, where for the past week, a gang of carjackers had been in operation. When he came across the gang, a group of four men trying to force their way into a car at gunpoint, he realized that all the publicity he had got had its fringe benefits. His powers had been exaggerated to a point where they bore little resemblance to reality; for example, it was widely believed that he was bulletproof. That, and the reputation for speed and strength that he had built up meant that the four criminals turned tail and ran the moment he stepped in front of them. What followed was a very short chase and an even shorter fight. As had become almost routine, Arnab found himself dispatching his opponents with ease. However, there was an important difference this time. Instead of zooming off immediately, Arnab searched through the pockets of one of the criminals, and extracted a mobile phone. He quickly took out the SIM card and ran home. Yes, technically it was stealing, but Arnab figured that using the mobile number of such a criminal to help him bring to justice other criminals was poetic justice.
That night, Arnab began a new chapter in his role as the so-called Guardian Angel. No longer would he scour areas hoping to bump into the criminals and no longer would his radius of action be limited by what he read in the papers or picked up by way of neighbourhood gossip. Now, anyone who needed his help could reach out to him. All they had to do was to send an SMS. Arnab knew that more than a half dozen fan communities had sprung up on Orkut and Facebook devoted to the Guardian Angel, so he logged in under a new id, and left a simple and terse message in the message boards of each of the communities. It read:
'If you live in Delhi and need my help, SMS me at the following number'. He left the number of the SIM card he had picked up, and simply signed off as 'GA'.
He then posted that same message on Youtube, where the video of his first mission in Gurgaon had by now attracted more than two million views. By the time Arnab woke up the next morning, he had already received 54 messages. Four of them were marriage proposals from women, and 8 were abusive messages, but the rest seemed to be genuine appeals for help, ranging from someone being harassed by a moneylender's thugs to someone whose daughter was being abused for not being able to meet her in-laws' demands for dowry and one young boy who was being forced to appear for Engineering entrance exams by his parents while he really wanted to study Fashion Designing. Arnab was stunned. He had not really thought through what he was unleashing, and he realized that people were looking to him to do more than fight robbers and thugs. They saw him as someone they could trust and turn to in times of need. It was a scary thought for him. Arnab had been barely able to manage his own life, and had been, by most conventional standards, an underachiever for most of his life. He found fighting criminals much easier than dealing with this new responsibility. He decided to focus on what he had set out to do, and spent the bus trip to college going through all the appeals for help and writing down in a diary what he would do and when.
The next couple of weeks went by in a blur. What made it easier for Arnab was a combination of three factors. First, the small party he threw for Jayantada on his birthday along with the gift from Mishti meant that the old man was in good spirits and turned a blind eye to Arnab's coming in a bit late to work every day. Second, with the onset of winter and the Delhi fog, Arnab could start his missions earlier, setting out as early as 7, and staying out till 2 or 3. Finally, with college about to close for a few days for the winter break, Arnab looked forward to catching up on some sleep during the day. He would notch up three or four missions each night, and not all of them were of the crime-fighting variety. He did pay a visit to the abusive in-laws, who shrieked in fright as they opened their front door at midnight to see a tall, hooded figure standing there, and promised never to touch their daughter in-law again, and he did exercise some gentle persuasion on a drunken husband who beat his wife every day. The man was drunk and abusive when Arnab confronted him and threatened Arnab with a knife, but when Arnab lifted him a meter off the ground with one hand, the man wept like a baby and begged forgiveness.
Other than leaving Arnab totally exhausted, this sudden spurt in his activities sparked a fresh media circus, including a claim by a woman that the 'Guardian Angel' visited her at night to make love to her. Arnab was mortified at the report and glad when it disappeared from the papers soon. The other peculiar aspect of his newfound celebrity status was how much of a female fan following he had picked up. The 'Guardian Angel' was voted the 'Sexiest Man alive' in a poll run by a national magazine, something that amused Arnab no end.
One Saturday, Arnab was looking forward to a day of sleep and rest, when he was reminded of the unfinished business he had. He inserted his own SIM card into his phone after days and saw to his surprise that there were 5 messages from Mishti. As he checked them one by one, he felt like kicking himself.
'Hi Arnab, just checking on how you are. Write soon.'
'Hey there, just got a promotion at work! Drinks on me when we meet. What's up with you?'
'Are you ok? Haven't heard anything for days. Take care.'
'Arnab Bannerjee, where are you?'