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?