Chapter 3 Love

 

 

 

It is with utmost valor or stumbling stupidity that one usually manages to impress a girl. I was no different. The first time I saw her holding her mother’s hand and walking into school, I knew that this was not going to be easy.

Opportunity is a gift from the Gods. I received plenty of such gifts that day; I decided to unpack one of them. She was quietly sitting under the big neem tree in the school yard with a book in hand. Girls and books. I simply don’t get the attachment. Venturing bravely where no chicken-hearted school kid had ever gone before, I walk up to her trying to make some small talk.

“You’ve already started on the homework?” I ask, with quite a bit of charm I recall.

She looks at me with those big brown eyes of hers. I expect sparks to fly, magic to transpire. Miracles have a weird way of happening at moments when you least expect them. This was not one of them. She bends her head and gets back to her book.

I never realized the latent powers of invisibility bestowed upon me. She can’t see me. As I walk away from her, I realize my invisibility is not real after all. For a bunch of my friends are standing by the park, giggling and motioning towards me. I’d just been spotted approaching a girl trying to make small talk. This evidently small, stupid act of mine led to weeks of name calling and howling for both of us.

 

Like I said, miracles have a weird way of happening at moments when you least expect them. One day, several months after my seemingly innocuous act of small talk about homework, Maya walks up to me with her math book.

“Could you help me with factorization problems? I can’t seem to get any of them right.”

I could never forget those words. Heck, I was no math whiz myself, but when Maya Dev approaches you for help, you don’t say ‘No’.

“Sure”.

 

Just that one word; and a bond was formed. After several such small talk sessions about study topics that never really mattered, we had gotten really close to each other. I recall days when I would talk to her in our school bus all the way till her home, and then run home to call her to talk for a few more hours. Innocent love. Who really ever thinks of consequences from such trivialities?

Evidently, Dads do. As I soon found out, phone calls are really expensive. Not only do you get a earful, you end up in a financial crisis of your own, with critical pocket money being cut off as well.

Endurance is the quality of the strong hearted. We were evidently among the blessed few with a really strong heart. For we endured years of cut backs and grounding, to establish a relationship that lasted nearly 8 years. It therefore, isn’t really a surprise that when Maya decided to ‘move on with our lives’, ‘examine our options’ or in simple words, when she decided to break up with me, it wasn’t really something I took very well.

 

I look back on some of those years and ask myself questions like- what would I change about my high school? Given another chance, will I let myself fall in love again? Or would I be the kind of student I was expected to be?

No question really has an answer that lasts for long. None of these questions had any lasting, lucid answers as well. As I now tear the photo, the silence of the basement room is broken only by the resonating crisp sounds of a memory that was.

 

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