Her Story 04

What kind of an age is sixteen? They say things about it. They say many things happen when you are sixteen. She tried to find out the changes if any. Was she becoming into a young lady? From a girl? May be she was…

The skin showed it, the face showed it, the heart showed it. There was this mellow feeling within her that arouse emotions, which demanded things she couldn’t afford. She realized she was growing up, no more that bony dark girl. She wouldn’t be let out alone? Our girl realized that women were always to be stared at.

And then again she thought, ‘when should she fall in love if not at sixteen?’

But where the hell was the time to fall in love? There were classes to be attended, tuitions to run to, and lab sessions to stand in for those never ending three hours and hurt her feet.

But whenever she could, she would dare those escapades, no matter how risky they were. Amidst a crowded Chemistry Lab, right under the nose of the never-smiling professor, she would let the flame of the Bunsen burner set afire her imagination. And then for the next five minutes, her mind would swirl in the land of her fantasies.

She felt if she wouldn’t clear those engineering exams then her life would end. There were times she had to overeat to de-stress herself. She gained weight and made herself ugly when a girl is supposed to be the most beautiful. But nothing of all that mattered, she was waiting for her seer of inner beauty.

And then there was a day when she regretted the way she was living her life. From a place far away , she saw Annie and Gaurav riding parallely on the road. Gaurav was supposed to be dropping Annie home and then heading home. They were far away, but she could heard them laugh, she could hear their hearts say that wait of the few hours after which they would again see each other was going to be painful. And so she pitied herself! Was she depriving herself of all that joy? Of all that love?

His Story 03

Excellent marks in tenth boards, had bought him a ticket to a nice city,where our guy lived now. Everyone had huge expectations out of him. He was in a nice college and a coaching institution. The teachers assure him,that two years in here would assure him admission into the best engineering colleges in country.

The first half goes pretty smooth. He attends his all classes. He has a fixed routine. He falls in love with his independent life, where all decisions are his, no boundaries and no conditions. Confidence radiates out of him. He starts enjoying good things in life. Meanwhile the studies are getting tougher everyday. Numbers did not interest him. Only things that caught his interest were with which he could relate or see a practical applications. Teachers gave really nice motivational lectures, which impressed him. He thought upon all that, and it seemed like great philosophies to him. And success sounded so damn easy.
" So true " He would say inside his head.

Time passed by slowly.
The " So true" still came in his head in classes.
" Wows" still came, impressed by the formula or approach taught by the teachers to solve toughest of problems of mathematics,physics and chemistry.
But ...the effect had started fading away.
It had got confined to the four walls of the classroom. The moment he was out with his friends, it would start fading away.

Some retreating thoughts would knock on the doors of his head. But he never opened it. He wanted to play with computers, and he was told that needed an engineering degree in computer science, and that needed play with complex theories and numbers.....equations....endless and mindless!


The head teacher would still show his charm with motivational talks during lectures. And the belief still remained inside him. And still days passed him by....!

And finally a day comes...He sits with his two friends in the class. He made few very close friends. The teacher starts off some motivational philosophy,and shortcut approaches to questions.

This time there were no " So true" and "Wows.."...but laughing and understanding eye contact with both if his friends sitting on his each side.

Then comes the mocking joke on the teacher's remark in his ear, and they laughed ....!

03 Her Story

Finally the days she had longed for all her life arrived. She was free for the afternoons, no more digging into books. She had all her time to listening to the birds sing on the tree beside her apartment. Time to respond to them. She watched TV day and night. Waited for colleges to take her in.

Though she got into the most sought after college, all that followed was such a pain…she found the girl back in school, who she had been encouraging all the way to work harder was in the same college and with a better percentage. Inferiority, insecurity gripped her, and she spent hours crying from within her heart, trying to figure out where things went wrong.

But besides the silent suffering, college gave her many other things. Classrooms as big as big could be, the company of the teeming hundreds who wander to the city in search of a better future…

It brought into her life, the sense of independence, and the spirit of driving into the world beyond her school boundary walls…where rules and discipline mattered less and living life with the values with she wanted to fueled her vigor for life.

She was so much into her new found identity, when the school called for a felicitation ceremony. It was well past three months in college by then. After it was all over, she heard someone call her name aloud from a corner, “XYZ”.

She turned around; to find someone toweringly tall…it was the first crush guy. They shook hands, congratulated each other about the board results.

On the way back, she kissed the hand he had shaken…told herself that it was nice coming across him. Melancholy that she lost him forever wrapped her, but was soon followed by a strong sense of realization. Did he matter as much to her now? She found the answer…NO!

He was just like another log of wood for her now. She had outgrown the first person she loved so passionately…

And that added to the sense of independence she had acquired…and life rolled into the fast track…pressure mounted on our girl to live up to the dreams she knit…and she ran and ran…till she ran outta her resources!

02 His Story

He was looking at his teacher with a concentration, as she was explaining about the natural vegetation. He felt a gaze hit him. He ignored it. Back to the geographical knowledge being imparted. Then again he feels a prick of stare at him. This time he looks to his right.
There was she, looking at him with a bright twinkle in her eyes.
His eyes get locked with hers....Suddenly he hears a whisper in his ear. A joke being cracked by his bench mate. The lock breaks, as he chuckles! He and his mate both are chucked out of the class.

He is flipping through a new thriller novel. He is all gripped into the characters,the alleys, the guns and the chases..when the phone rings....Tringgggggg..
"Hello..."
It was some other girl from his class calling. She asks things about the homework.And then, " So what else? " She asks.
" Nothing I will see you tomorrow" As he puts the phone down,Irritated for she broke his flow.

He is coming back from a basketball game. Talking with his friends.She passes him by. She gives him a beautiful smile, and that sparkling twinkle in her eyes. For the first time in his life he actually felt what " being swept away from his feet" meant.He looks at her as long as he could. He gets a pat on his head from a talking friend,and he walks away with them.

He is sitting in his room between his CD's and novels. He thinks and imagines that smile, that twinkle..............
And then he remembers about the NBA playoff game replay is on ESPN. He switches on his television.

A very few people believed he would top in his boards, for he played,roamed and hung out whole day.
And those very few weren't surprised when he did!

Time for high school. He decided to go to some other city.

A month passes by. One day he meets one old classmate of his.He is told how two girls from class had a serious crush on him and waited for him to come up someday.

" Oh ya?" He exclaimed. He still could imagine the twinkle when he saw the star shining that night.

02 Her Story

She kept staring at the guy. He wall tall, spectacled, had his hair short cropped. She observed him minutely, kicking the ball in the field. It would be good to become his, forever, she thought.

From that moment she wanted him more than anything else in life. And by the end of the day, she was sure; this was the right guy for her. And that she was in love, for the first and last time in life. Only if he could know, and respond. This was the person who topped the class, the only one who would beat her every time to grab the first position. And you know what? She liked losing to him.

The guy however did not get to know of our young lady’s love for their remaining days in school. So she tried to get her out of this hullabaloo. She asked god to help her stop thinking about him. But to no avail. The mere sight of him, and her heart would loose a beat.

She didn’t even have those long tresses. She was plump because her mother made her gorge till she would vomit. Nothing that lady-like was actually visible on that face of hers. But from within, she could feel a young female, peek her head out. Gradually, the way she looked at thing changed. She happened to read a poem in her English Reader, ‘Child Or Adult’ about the many confusions of an adolescent. She could so well relate her feelings to this piece that this furthered her love affair with the written word.

Be it anywhere, the library, the laboratory, she would cherish the seat next to her love. She was so afraid people would know, more scared about him getting to know of her sentiments. So was scared of the world, so scared of the people around her, her parents, so scared of him. And this was when she began relating love with fearing the person she loved…

A girl from her school topped the board exams. Their lady-dragon principal brought her to make a speech. Besides that, they were also shown a book of poems published by the brilliant girl. Now, she became an inspiration for our girl. With pressure from parents, mounting on her weak shoulders, she studied harder. And she did beat the topper guy in one of the exams, finally. But this only heightened her love for him. Hopeless, is not she?

And somewhere in the midst of this pandemonium she wrote her first story, the first after a numerous tit-bit poems written on the cover pages of history and geography books. It was about a teenager, who was away to the mountains in the summer holidays, and looked out for a ghost one night.

Plus, Newton’s Third Law was a good consolation for her. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Though, ‘he’ didn’t love her today, never mind, he would realize her undying love for him, some day…later…and love her back, exactly the way she had imagined…

01 His Story

He had just got into Sixth grade. This year marked importance for him. For his mom told him that he would be a grown up matured student. He won't be asked about his studies, home works or test preparations anymore. He would handle them all on his own and only seek help when needed.
It suited him well. He liked it. He kept performing well as ever in academics!

Friends and Fun were inseparable part of his life. He spent hours playing with them. All type of sports. He didn't have time for anything else.

Mind - he loved thinking, wondering and imagining. He would imagine things very well. That was the reason, may be he loved all those creative essays and questions asked in English examination.

For people he was a boy of few words. Someone who spoke rarely (Did he smile?). They took him for some serious guy.
For his friends he was energy, he talked and laughed. When together, they would laugh on just anything -rotten jokes, on people, situations just anything!
It was then only that he read his first book- Hardy boys. After completing the first one, he started getting all of them. He moved onto Perry Mason and James Hadley chase, which he would find in his old cupboards, and his friend's junk room.
He really got into reading and loved it. For every line he read, the pictures would run into his mind all the time.

And out of all the things - He was very Confident. He always made his decisions. He was never scared of anything. Whatever he did, He was always sure. If ever, things wouldn't go right, he would still be very - Confident and felt they would go right soon!

So our guy was all into his life. School, Studies, Friends, Sports and Books! The days came and passed.
What did he want to in his life?
What was his ambition?
Well He was too busy to provide us with any answers.....!

01 Her Story

She looked like any other thirteen year old. But there were those tiny nothings inside her that made her the female lead of our story. If ever she differed from the crowd, she would try her best to hide the differences. She was afraid she would stand out. She was invisible. Yeah, indeed a part of the walls...May be this could have something to do with her childhood. Let's flash back!

She spent most of her time as a kid, in an obscure village, where she had never seen these vehicles whiz past. And this is why, the smoke in the city made her nauseous. She had lived under a canopy of perennial green. She had no friends of her age, and her parents liked her caged in their ancestral home. “What have we not given you at home? That you would need friends?” they would say. So she played with the flowers. They had a garden, a huge one, in her village. She missed it here in the city, life was a little too crammed up in the tiny two bed-room apartment. As a child, she talked to imaginary characters.

She feared the dead, she feared darkness, she feared venturing out alone, she feared god. She was afraid of loosing the things she had…things she couldn’t even value—like her mother…

And then life moved on, they moved out into the city, in search of better opportunities. And it was this sudden alteration of cultures that left a scar on her. And scars meted out in childhood are a tough thing to heal. She felt out of place, in her class, in the locality in which she stayed. The only place where she found solace was inside her self. In quest peace, she sank deeper into herself. She continued talking to those imaginary characters.

She had parents who always wanted her to make it big. So they put her in a good school. Under their constant coaxing, she began to muck up her books, copies, more books and more copies. Her life was all about it now. She studied, a lot, and didn’t know where to stop. Her ambition should have been to get home truck loads of money.

But in the midst of all this, she wrote at times. Often, torn old diaries would comfort her. She filled them up with her ink pen stains, (she was threatened to use one in school by her teacher, another creature she feared like death).

And one rainy day, she found herself her first novel, an age old one, with its edges torn…its yellowed pages would live afresh in her mind till she grows old. It was then that her immortal love affair with the written word began…..