Love : She

Bittersweet First Love

I must be in seventh standard when first love hit me for real.
I have no idea how it started or what made it happen. I simply had no idea until one day I realised there's this guy whose house I can see from our house.

Everything was vague as it was supposed to be. No matter how hard I try, I still cannot remember how I came to know about his existence and how this 'love' came to exist.

It was like thrown to me out of nowhere.

A year went by after this so called realisation. His cousin sister and I used to go to tuitions together. Somehow she came to know something I did not. In a matter of weeks, she began pestering me with questions about what I felt about him.

I kept mum all the time until I needed to answer something. I was quiet and totally silent regarding this matter. All of a sudden, one day I felt that he should know. Maybe it was her pestering me everytime she was with me or I was getting too tired of having the burden of one-sided first love.

That day I waited for her to ask me the same question.
The moment came. I opened up my geometry set pencil box. There it was. His name. Secretly carved kept hidden under a neatly folded paper. I showed her that. She squealed and asked me, 'Since when?!'.
I didn't give her an answer immediately.
I just told her, 'I cannot recall.'
I was just being blunt and honest. I still am.

She rushed back home after the class. I had no idea what she told him. The next day she met me with much excitement. She was grinning from ear to ear telling me he was coming to meet me. I didn't know it was going to be that day!
After the class he was there indeed. He was on a two wheeler. I couldn't even look at him, leave aside smiling and talking. He kept following us (I was sitting behind a bicycle his cousin was riding).

He kept asking me questions about my family. I answered in monosyllables and that too when the question was asked at least three times.

I can remember that much about the first time we 'met' and actually talked, me not looking at him the entire time.
It's difficult for me to grasp how he looked like as I had never looked at him properly even once.

It was the only time we actually 'talked' face to face.
We never spoke much to each other.
After that. And ever since.
He was one year older to me. The worst part was that he was in the same school as my older brother and they were like enemies for some reason which I will never know of.

I realised I was his first love like he was mine.
What are the chances!

We did not talk for two years after that.
He kept following me everywhere. I was never alone when I went out. Either I was with one of my parents or with my brother.
He would wait for me as early as 3 a.m. in the mornings waiting for me. He would cough or say 'ahem!'. That was all.

I came to know he went to study abroad the next year following three years of knowing each other.
Somehow we started talking through the phone. Long distance call once in a while. And he would tell me he kept asking his aunts how I was. He was weird. And I was weirder. I was really quiet still.

I was so in love with him. But never said much to him.

Somehow things turned sour in the next two years. I cannot say if it was because of my brother or anyone else but things went really bitter. Rumours were spreading about me and him. But there was nothing much in the rumours. It died down but the magic of first love died and it died for good.

He kept stalking me. I knew his genuine feelings had changed by then. I was afraid of him. He used to keep pestering the kids at our school by asking them about me. Everyday he would wait at the roadside where the van would drop me or pick me up. Everyday he would be there at our school gate by the time our school got over.

Ultimately I came to realise the so called love was over. I really wish it didn't end like that. I was really disturbed and scared, traumatized for almost one year in the end before he actually stopped stalking me or spreading rumours.

I had to call up his family once. I asked his mother to give the phone to him. She asked who I was (even though she knew who I was) and what I wanted to talk about with him. I told her frankly that I was really disturbed by her son's behaviour. In the end she had no choice but give the phone to him.
He didn't say anything. I told him it was over. Actually it never started. Still it went on for almost 5 years.

Yes, my first love lasted for about 5 years.
What I loved the most about him was his voice. It's unique and crisp and deep.
I don't think I will recognise him if I see him now. Unless I happen to hear his voice...