She confided in me, her infatuations, her sadness, even some amount of girlie gossip, and with me not being a very fluent speaker I turned out to be a very good listener. Although I admit that I didn’t pay deep heed to her, or tried to remember what she had said, I often offered her suggestions which she did take into considerations. Be it a spat with a friend or anything of life in general.
She used to surprise me, with the questions she asked me during class, ranging to the downright earthly to the forwardly whimsical, but I liked to bear the brunt of her trivial pursuit.
Our school had a fund raising fun-fair each year which was not fun and hardly fair with the overpriced food stalls. She asked me what would be the reason for coming to the fete, this time she supplied me the motive behind the question as her friends had simply said that the fete would interesting. She wanted to ask me what exactly people mean when they go to a fete and their excuse of going there is that it would be interesting. I had no explanation to offer for this basic human tendency.
‘Sleight of hand and twist of fate
On a bed of nails she makes me wait
And I wait without you’
There is also the presence of the prodder, the poker or the pusher in these stories. The role with the above occupation is played by the closest friends to the principal character. He constantly reminds the person about to fall in love his exact reasons for doing so. In my case they were my friends Shubhankar and Sanshit, the former in particular was quick to point out incidences where he thought he saw signs from her that were possibly directed towards me. The latter suggested that I was already in love with her and that I should convey my feelings to her in ASAP. Although I tried to push away the thoughts that were put inside my mind by the prodders, the thought mechanism is more complex than I thought. The thoughts that you try to push away are the ones that return without remorse etc. These thoughts are the most uncontrolled of all and are almost impossible to banish from the mind.
I said to myself that one friend may be wrong, but two would find it hard to be wrong at the same time and at the same place and on the same topic. So my mind dwelled on her and soon perfected an image I found hard to replace. She was nice, and she would be great. As of now she didn’t officially have a boy friend or any such hanger on, and we were close as friends, though not too close.
Still, there is always the left and the right part of the brain, so there was still a part of the brain which believed that it was just a crazy infatuation and that reality had nothing at all to do with it. And it blamed the prodders for all the prodding that they were doing. The right way was not this, and there was infinite risk.
The prodders (God Bless them) continued with their prodding and (I wouldn’t put all the blame on the prodders) I really did began to think that I was truly attracted to her. The only thing I was waiting for was a proper moment of realization when all the truth would come pouring out.
School continued, but with the approaching exams classes became less frequent and time spent with her became lesser. I had her number, but that was a time before mobile phones, and there was always the possibility that the landline phone would be picked up by an angry ladki ka baap. I did call her up once or twice, and listened to the ‘hullo, hullo’ from the other side, however I never conversed with her on the phone. And there was no school before the pre-boards. So it was after quite some time when I saw her again during the school fete, held in the last week of December.
And here I would make no excuses that on the day of fete I saw an inner light coming from her which lit up my life and that I saw her beauty in the deep sense. Nothing of that sort happened, it was pure physical attraction towards her that day as I was used to seeing her in a mundane pale khaki colored school dress, and that day she was wearing some sort of outfit that would have made any guy love her.
Sanshit rallied around and said that this was a ‘festive’ environment and that I could easily go up to her and tell her that I like her and that it will ‘suit’ the surroundings. Nothing could go wrong, he said, you can always say you were joking later because of the ‘festive’ atmosphere. For a few seconds I considered his idea, then I immediately considered it to be suicidal and instead just went up to her and complimented her on her looks. She thanked me; I turned around and walked back to where I was.
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