My Birthday Promise (Editing)

A walk down the memory lane

CHAPTER-1

When I logged into my Facebook account during my office break, two notifications in particular caught my attention. One was the friend request from Alisha Pareekh. And another one was the message from her saying:

'Remember me! :)'

I hadn't thought of her in the past many years. I checked her profile picture. She looked the same-breathtakingly gorgeous- as she did when we first met. I gawked at her profile picture unblinkingly. To think of anything else was impossible now. Just impossible.

It seemed like yesterday but I met her 10 years ago in Delhi. The year was 2004. I was very excited to kick-start my first day of 9th std in school after summer vacation. Not because I had completed my summer homework and others have not, but because I had to receive a trophy from our principal for my rare feat of topping my school for three consecutive years.

As I walked to my class with the shining trophy in hand, feeling proud and overwhelmed, all my teachers and class mates congratulated me on my big achievement.

Little did I know then that it was not the best part of my day.

Mrs. Dobhal, our class teacher, introduced us to Alisha Pareek. To be honest I had never seen a face as beautiful as her before. Her face shone brighter than my trophy. Mrs. Dobhal had made her sit next to me. We hit off very well and soon became best of friends. Alisha was a tall, slim and fair and half-Indian and half-British girl. Alisha grew up in London. Her admission to our class was the result of her family moving back to India. Her father, a big businessman, once went to London for expanding his business but rather came back expanding the family with a British wife. After his next visit to London he returned back with his wife and newly-born Alisha.

Alisha had an outstanding academic record. She was especially brilliant in mathematics and had never scored less than 100% in the subject in her entire academics so far. No wonder she dreamed to be a mathematician. Given her immense talent for numerals she was considered child prodigy by many of our teachers. Mr. Mathur, our Mathematics teacher, even hinted me to watch out for her this year.

By the end of mid-term, I stood first in class. Alisha scored a perfect 100 in mathematics, five more than me. And even though she secured 2nd place she didn't look so happy. She knew her only weakness was Hindi language and, thus, she decided to improve on it.

"Do you smoke?" Alisha asked me as she lit a cigarette. We were just hanging out on a Sunday evening.

"No," I replied, shaking my head.

"Any girl friend?"

"No."

"Dude, your favourite word is NO or what?" she asked, before bursting into laughter.

I forced a smile as I watched her through the cloud of smoke. She seemed to enjoy the cigarette which was turning smaller and smaller with every drag. I never pictured her to be a smoker. I kind of knew she was bold and frank but smoker. Never.

"Do you have a boyfriend?" I asked, shying.

"I kinda have one in London. But I don't think this long distance shit is working."

"OH-MY-GOD!" Alisha suddenly shouted and passed on the cigarette to me. She whispered her second cousin Nina was walking towards us.

"W-Who? Where?" I said as I look around.

Nina gave such me dirty looks as if I was holding a porn magazine or something. I played along and took a drag. The smoke escaped out of my mouth as I coughed a few times. I couldn't get over how bad it tasted. They talked for a minute before Nina decided to leave. She gave me bad look again before leaving.