Chapter 51

After the shower I said “go and dress up in something conservative, we are going out”. Uma asked “where are we going”? I said “I want to enrol you in a local English learning center to help you get a faster grasp at the language”.

She was very excited hearing this and left to her room. I got ready in my usual jeans and t-shirt. I was expecting her to come down in her Punjabi suit that Rizwan had stitched for her.

Instead Uma came down wearing a blue jean with a deep red chiffon blouse top. I was in awe of her beauty and how how hot and desirable she was looking at the same time.

Coming to my senses, I asked “are you comfortable in going out in this”? She confidently said “yes, you asked me to wear something conservative so I wore this otherwise I had planned to wear something a lot shorter. See I only have the top button open instead of more like you prefer”.

I was dumbfounded by her confident justification. To tease her I asked “what if someone flirts with you seeing you dress”? Uma calmly replied “well that would be really nice. That would make learning even more exciting”.

I said “well if you are comfortable then I have no problem”. She said “well you could have told me this before naa, anyway I am too lazy to go and change again. Let’s go quickly now”.

I was still getting used to these surprise shocks from Uma but went with it. I was happy to see her confidence at a new level. I took out my car and we drove down to the place.

Uma said “Krishna this is less than a kilometre from home, we could have walked down”. With an even more surprised undertone, I asked “you want to walk down dressed up like this also wearing heels”?

She calmly answered “yes, so what”? I said “I thought you were the one who wanted to keep low profile”? She said “Ah yes, but are you going to drop and pick me up everyday”?

I said “for now that is what it looks like”. She smiled and then we went inside. This place was referred to me by Suresh and I was told to ask for Charles who is the senior faculty here.

I asked for him at the reception, he came out of the adjoining cabin to meet us. He looked like a mid-forty year old man with a sophisticated official look.

He welcomed us nicely (guess Suresh had told him to expect us). Then we followed him on a brief tour of the facility before settling in his cabin. All this while he had been checking Uma out randomly stealing glances on some pretext or another.

Once in his cabin, he gave a brief objective questionnaire to Uma asking her to fill it. While she was busy at it, he asked “so Mr. Krishna, what are your expectations from us, what do you want us to help you with”?

I cooked up a story, I said “you see Uma was sent here from my village so I can help her with higher education and if things work out then to settle in a good job. Now she has been struggling with English. So we are here”.

He took the paper from Uma and went thru it, he said “Sir I would have blindly told you to go for a one-month crash course but I am sorry to say” looking at Uma “don’t take me wrong. She has a lot to learn”.

I asked “so what do you suggest”? He said “depending on how much effort she puts in, I think three months should be fine”. I looked at Uma, she gave me an uneasy smile.

I asked “so what level of proficiency are we talking about here”? Charles said “Sir I am targeting fluent grammatically perfect English”. I said “fine then. What are the timings”?