What a typical first crush story is like? A banal story of a
boy seeing a doe eyed beauty. Spending restless nights mulling over ways to
broach a conversation with her. Conferring the planned tactics with his friend.
Being teased by ogles and smiles by the peers whenever she passes by. Her instantly
being named bhabhi among the group. Then finally one day taking the
valiant step of approaching her and more often than not being reprimanded by
her or her well wishers. Being heartbroken. The end. But this is not my
anecdote.
There was this girl
in my class, her name was Chhaya. It still is. She was everything that you can
imagine a crush can’t be- a repulsive face with harry potter like spects and
fencing in her mouth to prevent her teeth from trespassing outside the
boundaries of lips and a vixen like attitude. There are people you don’t like,
then there are people you hate and there are those whom you want to clobber
down with mace, disembowel, shoot in the head and then feed the dead body to
the hungry wolf. She was the only person in my last list. It was not because
she was almost at par with me in studies and always tried thwarting my journey
to be numero uno in class, neither it was because of the fact that she always
performed better than me in co curricular activities, nor it was because she
always sat at the bench near window where I always wanted to sit. The only
reason why I hated her was because she was two faced, garrulous, gossip monger
girl with a rather cute but cunning face which she used to fool the teachers.
When the teachers used to be in the class, she would purport to be a perfect
student, jotting down notes, laughing on teacher’s silly jokes, always
completing home work on time and above all buttering the teacher. And just when
the teacher was gone, she was the agent of chaos. She would create the loudest
cacophony in the class, gossiped about anything and everything, stole people’s
lunch, especially mine, never gave her copies to others to complete the home
work; in short, she was a total bitch. And to make the conditions worse, she
had the most beautiful writing. Now there is this never ending animosity that I
have with people having good handwriting, and it started all because of her.
Whenever I scored less than her, teachers would blame my hand writing and
praise her. Yes, I use an illegible font to write.
I used to be so much obsessed by her, that the only purpose
I used to study for exam was to beat her. I wanted to score more than her, rest
all aspects of education were secondary. She used to be every teacher’s
darling, good in studies as well as in dance. For her age, she was an adroit
dancer, highly dexterous in bharatnatyam. Whereas I used to be an impish child
who was good in studies but was haughty and belligerent and almost every day in
the recess ended up picking up fight with someone or the other. More often than
not, the person with whom I dueled in recess used to be her. Every time she
used to start the brawl by snatching away my lunch. Now, food is something
which is very dear to me, and if someone messes with it, I become a bellicose
beast who didn’t care if the person in front is a boy or girl, a man or an alien
or even batman. So I would lose my rag and retaliated by pulling her ponytail
which was very dear to her, then she would ruffle up my hairs, then I would
untie her ponytail and tousle her hairs, then she would throw my bottle and
this would continue. During whole recess, she used to be like catwoman,
scratching, kicking, swearing, punching and as soon as the recess would get
over and the teacher would enter, big drops of tears would roll down her cheeks
and within seconds she would become the damsel in distress and I the cause of
apocalypse. This was a normal routine that we followed, after some time, even
teachers stopped paying heed to our street fights.
Then one day, she didn’t turn up in the class. I was elated
because I got my favorite window seat that day. The same happened the next day,
and continued for about a week. I was so much happy at first for obvious
reasons. Then after two or three days, it became boring. There was no fun in
sitting near the window without snatching it from her. The recess also became monotonous;
there was no one on whom I could practice my new WWE moves which I had recently
mastered. Earlier I used to be irritated by her presence and now she was
annoying me in her absence also. The classes also became lifeless; there was no
thrill in solving the mathematics problems without that adrenaline rush to give
answer before her.
I shared my feelings with Anish. He was the mr. know-it-all
of our class. Don’t know what his sources were, but he knew everything, why
undertaker always returned after death, which teacher was cavorting with whom,
what will happen if you masturbate a lot, when a girl starts having periods,
where can you get those blue films, cheat codes of road rash, how to complete
final level in super Mario, are there aliens on mars; this guy had the answer
for everything. “Dude, you miss her,” he said plainly without batting an eye as
if he had dealt with such a situation a million of times. “Huh….this isn’t possible,”
I snapped. How can I miss such a hell cat? I wanted her dead. There was no
pragmatic reason that why I would miss her? “You do. Believe me, I am always
right. I know everything about missing someone. Don’t you see bollywood movies,”
he said putting his hand on his chin like an old gipsy man.
I had missed things before- my old cricket bat when it got
broken, my first remote controlled racing car after it was dilapidated beyond
repair, my old house, old tees which my mother used to give to maid’s child- I had
a pretty good lore of missing things. But people!! Missing a person was El
Dorado for me. A lucrative place but an unfound one.
Checkout rest of the story in my next post.
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