Love Happens Only Once.... Rest is Just Life by Rochak Bhatnagar

Chapter 5: What a Beauty!

She stood two metres ahead of me in the school canteen. I checked her out from the corner of my eye, wondering what the big fuss over this girl was.

Her hair rippled as she took the steel plate from the canteen, containing rajma chawal and began to eat.

Lavanya has told me that all of my male friends had a crush on her and wanted to befriend her. But, no one had the guts to talk to her in person.

To tell you the truth even I had a crush on her. Even I wanted to talk to her, to befriend her and to take her out, but someone had warned me that these pretty girls were generally obnoxious and more so when they received excessive male attention in their life.

"Hey Rishi, want to have a bite?" asked Vinay, my friend, tapping on my shoulder from behind and thus jolting out of the dream I was engrossed in.

"No bro, you have it," said I, still looking or in proper words staring at her. How can one keep his eyes away from a girl of his dreams, especially when she is standing just two metres away from you.

"At whom are you staring? Oh, Ananya!"

"You know her?" I asked, totally surprised but pleased too.

"Of course, she is one of my best friends and we live in the same colony. Hey, come with me, I will introduce you to her," he replied.

It came to me as if someone was offering me to meet Aishwarya Rai. I couldn't believe my ears. In a minute or two I was going to meet the girl whom I wanted to meet from the very first day I had seen her (and that was one month before! At the time of auditioning. I didn't get time to talk to her).

"Yeah sure! Let's go," I said, highly excited.

So finally I was going to meet the girl I was smitten with, but, I felt self-conscious as I didn't know what I would say to her. Deep within I wanted to go up to her, embrace her tight in my arms and say, 'I love you Ananya,' even if I were to receive a tight slap on my face in return. Oh my God, I wanted the introductions to go well and neither did I want it be too formal. I just wanted it to be very casual, something that could serve as a first step friendship.

I took a deep breath and proceeded toward her with Vinay.

"Hey, Ananya. What's sup?" said Vinay.

"Hi! How are you, Vinay? How was your paper?"

Oh, I forgot to tell you, that day it was our last exam and in maths. My paper went well even though I was not prepared.

"It was pathetic. How was yours?" asked Vinay with a sad expression on his face.

"It was good. Expecting ninety-four or so," she said, smiling.

"Ninety-four? Cool!!" said Vinay with surprise writ large on his face.

Pretty girls look even prettier when they smile. The dimples on their cheeks look so amazing. So, this conversation between the two of them (yes I was not even introduced till now), gave me the chance to see she was intelligent and good in studies. So I decided to act a little studious in front of her in order to impress her. But all this would have happened if Vinay had introduced me to her and which he was not doing. The wait was killing my patience. I stood there as if someone has borrowed the invisibility cloak from Harry Potter and made me don it. 'Come on Vinay, at least introduce me to her,' I thought.

"Hey, Vinay, come here dude. Want to talk to you," came a female voice from somewhere behind the three of us.

We turned back a saw Snigdha walking towards us.

"Oh sorry Ananya, have to go. She would kill me if I don't and yeah, I have forgotten to introduce you to Rishi. Ananya this is Rishi and Rishi this is Ananya. You guys carry on; we will join you in a minute or two."

He said and left the place with Snigdha in tow, leaving the two of us alone.

So, I stood in front of her, totally numb. How dumb it was of me! To let such a golden chance to befriend her and to talk to her go waste. Why was I not talking, standing there all silent?

"So, Rishi, how did your paper go? You seem to me to be an intelligent guy. It should have gone well?" she started the conversation.

"Yeah, it was good but not as good as yours."

We became dumb again.

"They look great together, don't they?" she asked me.

"Who? Vinay and Snigdha?'

"Yeah," she said.

"Oh, yes. They are a 'made for each other' couple," I replied, smiling.

Great joke! Snigdha looked so pedestrian in front of Ananya, who was like a goddess from heaven.

"Do you think they are serious about this relationship?"

"Yeah, may be," I said.

"Hmmm..."

"Do you believe in true love, love at first sight, long relationships and commitment?" finally I asked her.

"Yes I do! You don't?"

"Yeah, even I do!!" I replied and we both started laughing without any reason.

"And we too!!" Vinay and Snigdha added, coming from behind us.

I wanted to spend more time with Ananya, but my bad luck was not allowing me to.

"Hey, we are planning to go to Elevates today. You want to come?" asked Vinay.

"Yeah, sure," I said excitedly.

I could go anywhere so far as Ananya was with me; even to hell!

I had received a golden opportunity to be with her one whole day, though a tough task ahead of me – how to convince my parents to allow me to go to Elevates. Definitely, I would have to lie to them, but the question was how?

To read the complete book, but it from here:

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