“Oh, she was
chilling out as usual.”
“Good for her,” I
said, and adding a breezy, “you take care,” I turned around and
started walking again. Hope and joy had filled my mind. If she were
fine and having a nice time till a couple of weeks ago, everything
must be all right. I saw the green mangoes in the trees and heard
the birdsong. But I had hardly returned to the main road when the
old, depressing ideas again gripped me. Why would she out her
shameful secret to a mere friend? Or, maybe she had come to know
about it only now? I thought of going back and asking for her phone
number but that would have raised suspicion all around, and maybe
she had gone back inside her cousin’s house, in which case I
couldn’t ring the doorbell and ask for her.
I staggered back
home, hurting as though somebody had hit me in the stomach.
***
Why should I be
in this soup when she was the one to ask for it? It was she who
made eyes at me. What did I tell her when she slipped a red
heart-shaped card into my bag on Valentine’s Day last year? Thanks,
but no thanks. Yes, that’s what I said, loud and clear. You can ask
students in my class, it is not a secret. I was minding the class
that day, and every time I passed by her seat she looked up
straight into my eyes. At first I got uneasy, even annoyed, until
it struck me that she was flirting with me. It was unheard of in
our class till then. I felt shy then, returned to my seat and
pretended to dig through my bag for a book, but I knew she was
looking at me slyly.
I was so
absent-minded I didn’t notice the teacher arrive, and got pulled up
in front of everyone. When I pulled out my textbook, there was this
thick card stuck between the cover and the front page. My heart
almost popped into my mouth and when I cast a quick glance at her,
she averted her gaze. I held the book under the table, slid the
card swiftly out of its envelope and saw the glowing red heart.
With trembling hands I opened it, but there was no name inside. She
had been careful not to leave a clue. I was furious, nobody in my
class dared to mess with me, and this new girl—she had joined us at
the start of that year from an army school—thought she could get
away with it.
I was furious but
also puffed up with pride, and thrilled, for I knew no other boy in
my class had ever got a proposal, forget having a girlfriend. But
it was just as it should be. I was the best, and she had only done
what any other girl would do. However, I was interested in only the
best, and the best was another girl in my class. This one, she
wasn’t bad but she was small and her face was so plain and round,
and her nose slightly flared, and she still plaited her hair the
plain way with ribbons.
When the class got
over, I walked with the card to her and asked, “Yours?”. I had
planned to sound very firm and loud, and angry, but my voice didn’t
sound loud enough and felt shaky. She nodded looking into my eyes.
I kept it on her desk, right in front of her crossed arms and said
for all to hear: “Thanks, but no thanks”. Some of the students
turned to look at us but since the card was sheathed again they
didn’t know what we were talking about and went back to their books
and games and gossip again. She turned very red and I did a
flawless about-turn on my heel and walked away with crisp steps. I
was very impressive, I am sure, and that day after school she came
up to me to say sorry, and asked me to be her friend at least. I
didn’t mind that, because I believe a real man should always be
surrounded by girls, like James Bond, but he shouldn’t show
interest in them. You should have seen me lean back in the bench
and wave expansively as I told her, “You are a very nice girl but
my heart is tied up elsewhere”.
***
My heart
couldn’t remain tied up for long because the other girl, the one I
liked, was romancing a boy one year our senior. I couldn’t see what
she liked so much about him. He was dark, gangly and curly-haired,
and laughed stupidly all the time, pumping his shoulders up and
down as though his breathing depended on it. He could sketch and
was learning to play the guitar but was a loser otherwise. Most of
the time I saw him standing outside class in punishment. Everybody
knew he was a weak student and as for sports, he was no match for
me.
My opinion of that
girl crashed after I learned of her choice. I congratulated myself
for not wasting time on her. Her front teeth, I don’t know how I
hadn’t noticed them earlier, were uneven and one of them was
slightly discoloured.
So my heart was
free but I still wanted a girlfriend, anyone tolerably good looking
would do because I wasn’t going to marry and spend the rest of my
life with her. I just wanted to get started before the other boys
in my class. And so I wanted a secret affair, a short-term affair,
maybe for a few months or at most a year. I couldn’t see it
stretching all the way to the end of our time in school. But it was
not like asking a girl to let me copy her exam paper. Girls in my
class still squealed to teachers about boys who grabbed pencils and
toffees, it was hard to imagine them keeping quiet about a
proposal.
Then, I thought of
her. It was the obvious thing to do. The only hitch was that eight
months ago, on Valentine’s Day, I had spurned her. I had no clue
whether she had found another boy since then, whether she held a
grudge against me, and whether she still liked me enough. She might
say no, but since she had made the first move, she didn’t seem like
a girl who would tell on me.
So I decided to
get her in a crafty way. Instead of jumping her with a proposal, I
tried being friends with her. I laughed at her jokes and didn’t
laugh when the others laughed at her mistakes. I agreed with her in
everything, and she had my ear all the time to pour her anxieties
into. I gave her plenty of attention, I helped her solve
trigonometry problems and algebraic equations. I let her tell me
about her parents, who were always quarrelling and seemed on the
point of divorce, but I kept mum about my own folks because I
didn’t want her to have any business with them, neither then nor
later. And so a few days passed in testing the ground and then her
birthday came. She was a Libran. I know it because she told me. She
was always reading Linda Goodman’s Star Signs.
She came to school
in an over-the-top dress that day, all frills and ribbons and
flounces. A star-tipped wand would have completed the effect. I
wanted to laugh but reminded myself what I was after. That dress
was worse than the school uniform because it reached down to her
ankles while the school skirt ended above her bony knees.
“Happy birthday,”
I wished her.
“Thank you,” she
said.
“Why didn’t you
tell me it was your birthday today, I would have brought you a
gift. I have had something special in mind for a while.”
“What?” she said
surprised.
“Oh, what you
asked me for, remember?” I thought it was rather clever of me to
turn it around that way, make it sound as though she were still
proposing to me. She blushed up to the roots of her hair.
“You can bring it
whenever you like,” she said boldly and looked away, but not so
much that I couldn’t see her smile.
***
Sitting with
her in class was out of the question. It would have been a dead
giveaway. I didn’t want our affair to become a talking point. But
there wasn’t much point being a couple if we were going to behave
like strangers. We rarely spoke to each other, and made sure we
were never seen alone together.
I had to find some
privacy, and find it in school. But how? The idea came to me after
a few days.
She and I used to
cycle to school. One afternoon, it must have been late November, I
hurriedly told her to meet me in our classroom 15 minutes after
school closed. She looked scared, so I said, “It’s just for a
minute”.
“But... my
friends?”
“Tell them you
forgot something in class and rush back from the cycle stand.”
She looked unsure
but I knew she would do it. After school I went to the loo and
stayed there till no more steps and shrieks and laughs could be
heard. Then I hurried back to the classroom, looking out for the
sweepers. They hadn’t started arriving yet. The room was empty but
the windows were open and the curtains drawn just the way we had
left them. I bent backwards and hurriedly checked the corridor once
again, and then crouching, went and spread out some of the
curtains. Through a gap between them I saw the cycle stand. It was
empty but for a few cycles. Hers was among them but she wasn’t. Any
minute now, I thought and tried to remain calm, but it was
futile.
I heard a light
step, unmistakably a girl’s shoes. She looked in at the door
nervously, expecting to find god knows what demons. Seeing me
alone, she relaxed, her shoulders drooped. “What? Why did you call
me?” she said in mock anger.
I stood
speechless. What was there to say? “I thought you might want to
speak to me,” I said.
She said she
did.
Then I said it was
a shame we spent even less time together than earlier and she
agreed.
We finally
gossiped about class for some minutes, and then she turned to go
saying her mother would worry if she didn’t call her from home.
We couldn’t do
that after-class thing very often because someone might have
observed a pattern, so we started coming to school early to chat
before the assembly. Mom observed the change and complained that I
had started leaving half-eaten parathas and sandwiches in my plate
and would choke on milk some day if I continued gulping it down in
one breath. “What’s the matter,” she asked.
“Nothing, mom, we
discuss maths before class.” Maths is always a good bet to win
parents’ approval.
***
Then, it was
time for the annual sports day and we started coming to school in
the evening to practise for our races. We talked more than we ran
and we were cool being seen together because only a few of the
athletes were from our class. It was like being on a picnic. She
used to run in long red shorts and a white vest and her legs and
arms showed smooth and bony through them, not thick with puppy
fat.
One of those days
we came inside the school building together to fill our bottles
with water. We were alone in the silent corridor and that made me
very self-conscious. Suddenly she splashed water on my face like
little kids do and started giggling. It was an opening, but I
refrained from splashing her because the air was cold. She thought
I was annoyed and said sorry. I played along and acted hurt. So she
suggested we sit inside a classroom and talk.
She sat on the
first desk by the door and swung her legs, leaving space for me
beside her, but I went and sat on the last desk by the windows.
There were two aisles and one row of class furniture between us.
Then she playfully moved to the middle row and with pleading eyes
signalled me to sit beside her. I shook my head to refuse. Then she
came and sat right beside me, thinking she was teasing me, when I
suddenly turned around and planted our first kiss.
She was so red
after that. I thought she would cry or run out and complain, but
thankfully she did nothing of the sort. Still, her confused silence
scared me. We continued practising together in the evenings till
sports day but tensed up if we were alone together.
***
We got through
sports day with a couple of medals each and then it was time for
exams. There was no more evening practice and we both realized what
fools we had been by acting so uptight when we had a chance.
The exams passed,
we moved to a new class, and then evening practice started again,
but we had lost more than a month in between. It was summer now and
the corridors were never really empty till the time we were around.
Dance classes and karate classes and gymnastics classes went on in
different ground-floor rooms till late in the evening. We could
fill water together, we could even splash each other with water, we
could run in the corridor and talk and laugh, but we could not
kiss. And though neither she nor I said it, we both knew we would
kiss at the first opportunity we had.
April was passing
and the summer vacation was hardly a fortnight away. One day we
stayed on in school till it was almost dark. Dance and karate
teachers had packed up and left. She was helping me gather all the
balls and bats and rackets the other students had left lying around
the field. When the work was done, we came inside to wash hands and
drink water. And all the way to the taps we behaved properly, not
even letting our hands brush although our hearts were beating hard.
We bent over the taps to drink, and then two pairs of mischievous
eyes met. The drops of water hit them simultaneously. And then we
embraced so hard and I kissed her lips. She looked pleased and I
was on cloud nine, not realizing the mess we had got into. I doubt
she has an inking of what’s happening inside her even now.
***
(A week
later...)
It’s all right,
she isn’t pregnant, I found out today. A friend from school came
home yesterday and told me evening practice has started again. “And
who all are coming? Anyone from our class,” I asked him, hoping to
hear her name. But I was disappointed. Then he surprised me with
the most unexpected question. He asked me if I had her phone
number. “No, why?” I said imagining all my worst fears coming true
that moment. Had he come home to warn me about the crisis? Had the
news travelled to school already?
“I have her
state-level certificate for the 800-metre race with me. She didn’t
come to the award ceremony and coach asked me to give it to her.
But I am not going to her house. Can’t stand her, you know.”
“Yes, of course,
neither can I,” I said.