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…..

FOREWORD

" I always wanted to be (fill it what you want) Doctor/Engineer/Social worker..yeah whatever! ...And I did..!"

Now this is the truth of life that not many...or I would say a very close to none of us become what we always wanted to become right from our childhood.
Your mind is defying this..I know. Let me tell you its the subconcious mind of yours. Too much Movies.or novels or Inpirational stories of great men who always knew what they had to do in their life. Or is this that TV commercials... " Main alag thi..Main udna chahti thi...( I was different..I wanted to fly..)
Well I wanted to be A rockstar...you wanted to be a Hippie,or an Astronomer...so did any institute make you one...or you did it all by yourself??( I am not talkin to you .00001% people).

So lets face it friends we do not know what life has for us in the box. We want to become something,Some of us are very determined and work hard, but alas..life lands you somewhere else.

I know you would be thinking and saying it loud in you brains -" Oh cut the crap and say what you want!"

So here I go- This is story of a Lad and a Lass who had dreams,who wanted to become something,got into entirely different majors in college and again different post graduation Majors and Yet again a totally different Career field...!

Now I see a smile on your face..thats like You and some friends...you and me..You ...He...and She!

Its time we say bye to those " I always knew..." stories and listen up to some real Story...Her Story...His Story..Which eventually becomes THEIR story!