The Hesitant Attraction..

Chapter 1

I had finally driven one of the best roads of India which starts from Manali and goes on till Leh. After a long duration spent behind the wheels, to reach such a picturesque location is more than a treat just to one's eyes. It is the reason a soul lives in this mighty world, to travel the best places in the world. I could feel the joy of the cold winds blowing past my face. Just then I woke up, because of a cold feeling I had on my face. I felt cold indeed. But the reason being different, not the cold wind of the place, but the ice cold water which Ms. Sunil poured on my face for sleeping during her class even after her repeated warnings.

Well, have you heard of a guy who is sitting in class more than half his day and thinking about being out there in the world travelling it and exploring it? A guy who does not want to study science but he is still stuck within a four wall classroom doing it? Well, that is Aarush Kapoor, in other words me.

On my first day of eleventh grade, I did not really know anyone around here. I was separated from my friends in tenth and put in this school. My friends stayed in the other part of town because dad had to shift towards this part of town as he opened a new office here. To travel that far everyday didn't make sense so dad put me in a school nearer to home.

The quality of teaching here is phenomenal. Teachers are professionals in their subjects and students are the kinds who are aiming at ranks in the engineering exams. Girls come with oiled hair, wearing two plats and the guys with well groomed and short hair. Not the kind of place where I wanted to be.

Two weeks had gone by and I didn't notice anyone whom I could really be friends with other than my bench mate, Vedanth. He is an athlete and a basketball player. He got in here on his sports merit. Vedanth and I bonded a lot as we used to play a lot of basketball during our free times and used to discuss a lot about the current happenings in football, cricket and other sports that we had interest in. He didn't have the short and groomed hair or the nerd type looks. He had messed up hair and wore his pant low waist just the way I did.

We had our orientation in school three weeks after it started, by when more or less everybody had settled into the new place. I met a girl during the orientation, her name was Anjali. She was good in looks, but to me looks barely mattered. She didn't have the two plats at least. She mostly left her black hair open. She had black eyes and was five foot seven inches tall. She was in the commerce section. She finds this school as shitty as I do. So yes, our bonding was stronger. We used to talk a lot on texts and have a lot of video calls.

One day she asked me, "Aarush tell me about your past relationships."

"I never was in a relationship Anjali." I replied.

"Hello mister! Do I look like a fool to you?" She asked me angrily.

I was scared, but yet managed to ask her, "Why are you asking me that?"

"Cause, Aarush Kapoor you are six foot tall, you have a muscular body, your eyes are dark brown and you do not have an overgrown beard. Are you trying to tell me no girl craved for a guy who was the definition of perfection? You would be every girls dream." She said and gave me a big smile.

My cheeks went red, I tried not to smile so much and replied, "Anjali, not all girls are you. You need to understand that too."

And then we both laughed and walked to our respective classes.

Vedanth and I used to play a lot of basketball. Many a times our seniors used to come and used to fight with us for the ball and we used to always get into a verbal dual. This one time it got really serious and it was going to get physical just when Sam intervened and stopped it. Otherwise, we were definitely getting rusticated from here. Sam is a guy from the commerce section. His class is different from that of Anjalis. Slowly we got closer to him with basketball matches and practices. He was a part of us in no time. It felt great to have a guy like him as a part of our group.

We had another two girls who became a part of us by the end of the first month of school, first of them was Shreya. She was Sams friend and they both were in the same class and the other was Tasha. She was one of Vedanths old friends. They both were pretty close. She was in a different science section though. The six of us had started bonding really well. We used to do everything together, from lunch to reaching school late to bunking classes and taking part in events.

Since we were three boys and three girls, a lot of people took notice of us and there were a lot of rumors spreading about us. We didn't really care. We were busy making as many memories as we could in these two years that we have. We were a little family.