A guide to hating Agastya Bakshi

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He had been four years old when his mother had told him that the most colourful insects were the most venomous ones. He was seven years old when he looked into her moss green eyes and realised how much truth that statement held.

There she stood in her neatly ironed uniform, a toothy smile, except that one of her canines was missing. Her light brown hair was tied up into two ponies on top of her head, resembling strikingly to that of two coconut trees. A Hershey's bar extended in his direction.

He recognised the chocolate instantly, it was the fancy one his Abhi Chachu had gotten from the States. It was what his sister and him had fought tooth and nail over. Any other kid his age would have jumped over the opportunity and grabbed the chocolate but, he didn't. He was peculiar like that. Concealing his gluttony, he wordlessly turned his head the other-side.

From the corner of his eye he could see her smile drop, quickly replaced by a frown. Nevertheless the girl put the chocolate down on his table and pulled at his sleeve.

"Naina Menon." She introduced herself, her voice laced thickly with a foreign accent. It was definitely not the same as his Chachu's when he had returned from the States.

"Agastya Bakshi" Reluctantly he introduced himself, still thoroughly fascinated by her, not that he let it show on his face.

"See you around, Agastya!" She smiled widely, as she trodded to the seat behind him and started chatting with the other girls.

Ags-t-ya

Her accent almost made him believe that his parents had been pronouncing his name wrong since birth.

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Her kindness didn't last long, in-fact it ended in barely weeks. He always gave her the impression that he didn't want to be her friend. His constant blank stares, nonchalant behaviour and rude responses, fuelled Naina's anger towards him. The last straw was when he scored the highest marks in almost all the subjects in their finals and behaved as if he hadn't worked for it at all. Like heck he didn't.

Naina had always excelled first in anything she did. She was a three time abacus winner, a pianist and always on top of her class. How had she landed second to him out of all people?

Her little mind intensified in anger that soon turned to hatred when she heard one of her classmate's whining about how Agastya had given the watchman of their school a bar of Hershey's chocolate on the first day of reopening. That little idiot! How dare he?

From then on there was only one thing on Naina's mind. She wouldn't let him win at all!

There the competition began, the both of them rivalling for marks. Influencing teachers to deduct the other person's marks, not playing fair most times as they tried their best to sabotage each other's efforts. Well, Agastya barely ever put in efforts at all. He was a little, scratch that, he was very much arrogantly smart. And that of course, got on Naina's nerves, because she religiously studied eight hours a day. Her head was always buried in books.

By now, the majority of the class disliked the two of them. They were now in 10th grade and were always isolated from the rest of the class. Naina was a teacher's pet and annoyed the other students whilst asking about due assignments and forgotten tests. She however did have one friend who was incredibly sweet to put up with her atrocious behaviour and a super gregarious cousin who kept her in loop with the outside world. Agastya on the other hand, was always disdainfully aloof, he refused to interact beyond needed, but unlike his foe, he was tolerated or even liked amongst the boys, a result from being their school football captain, while the girls adored him for his boyish charms.