My First Crush (Part I): Memories of the long forgotten era

 Recently I celebrated my 19^th birthday, but my story does not start 19 years back. The person I am today has little to do with the mewling and puking that I did in first two years of my life. The time that followed, that of a blithe boy whose whole world revolved around the new Hercules cycle, playing with a cosco ball and waiting for 5^th grade so that he could start writing with pen also didn’t mould me much; infact that part of my life has been lost in oblivion in my mind. The part of life that is clearly etched in my memory makes my life. Have you ever thought that why we don’t tend to remember those years of our life? I think because that part is the most trifling part of our lives. The things we learn at that time are like names on sand, they are easily washed away by tides or wind. My mother has been asking me to wake up at 6 am since eons, somewhere in the past I used to wake up also but do I practice it now? Surely not.

The oldest incident that I can clearly remember with all its vivid details is that of how I came to know what a crush is. It was the pre facebook era and it was ruled by orkut. It was the time when internet used to be super slow, mostly found only in cafes but I was fortunate enough to have a working internet connection at home. Infact, it was a matter of pride, I used to boast about it in school. And yes, it was also a period when I used to boast about something else in school too. Ahem! That was something which I used to download and then hide and open only when I was alone or everyone else was asleep and immediately after that I used to go to bathroom. Even in classroom we used to talk about it in hushed voices so that our conversations remain inaudible even to the benches on which we sat and then the person who did the stunt would chuckle and others would look and praise him in awe. Yes, anything related to sex has been and even today remains a taboo. This is India.

While we boys have come a long way from being naughty and admiring America to admiring naughty America, girls have more or less remained unchanged. In that pre facebook era, they used to discuss the new Barbie pencil box they bought, now they discuss the new pink Gucci top that they recently saw on flipkart. Anyways, that is not the part of story. We were talking about the pre facebook era. So before facebook, there was this site orkut which was hugely popular. I even remember telling a guy at that time that facebook is crap and orkut is good so sign up on orkut. As I said, internet was not very popular those days, it used to be a matter of luxury rather than necessity, so everyone was not familiar with social networking. Having a account on orkut was enough to make you the talk of the class. And I was one of the few guys who enjoyed such attention. That was also the time when sms packs used to be the only way by which we communicated after class, as Brian Acton had till then not thought of whatsapp. Oh I forgot to tell you that this incident is of 2007 when I was in 7^th grade and we had just overcome that phase when boys were made to sit next to girls if they created too much nuisance and boys actually used to hate that punitive measure. But in 7^th grade it had started to dawn upon us that sitting next to a girl was not a thing to hate. I think, this much of framework is enough to comprehend my situation and in my next post I will write the complete story of how I realized what a crush is.