Truly Madly Deeply (8 page)

“Thanks,” she said.

“Doesn't sound good from you,” I said. By now, I was not in control of myself and I no longer cared what I said. Her fragrance had overtaken my senses—the result of walking with her for an entire fifteen minutes!

“Seriously,” she reiterated her thanks subtly.

“Seriously!” I maintained and she smiled. Ah, it almost pierced me somewhere in the chest. I turned to check the braking sound, only realising a tad second late that it was my own heart which had shouted ‘Time please'.

“Good luck, your boards are scheduled this coming year,”
she wished.

“Yeah, wish you the same for your ninth grade, not that you need it,” I joked.

I guess she took offence to my statement.

“I mean you surely do need it, especially from someone who scored ninety-two in the ninth grade,” I quickly rectified.

She laughed. Her pearly whites shone and dazzled me in the setting dusk. Her receding laughter sounded so comforting, so appealing, so alluring to my senses that I could hardly control myself from reaching out to her and telling her what I felt there and then!

“Hope to see you sometime soon,” I made my deepest
desire known.

“Let's see,” she said. “I'll get going for now, Ma will be annoyed with me if I don't.”

“Ok, take care. Congrats, once again,.” I said, not wanting her to go anymore.

“Wish you the same,” she smiled before turning to walk towards her colony. I stood there watching her walk back. She stopped mid-way and I was awakened by my senses. She turned and slowly walked back to me and stopped besides me with her gaze held low. I gasped when she pushed her heels up to whisper in my ear; “I like Mars more than Five-star” and almost ran back to her colony.

I could almost hear her giggling inside. My ears turned tomatoes and I still stood transfixed, watching the glowing beauty fade out into the darkness of the greenery that surrounded her colony. I was delirious, on cloud nine (why limit it to just number nine? I toured heaven in that one moment!), and somewhere I really felt today that if it has to be someone, it has to be only her.

“If she has anything for you Mr. Rahul Kapoor, she will turn back,” my heart forecasted its belief from the charts of a popular movie while I was still in a dreamy state.

“Palat…Palat…Palat…” I kept murmuring to myself while clenching my fists and hoping that my heart would be right as she quickly neared her building. They say that the heart is never wrong and today I realised it. Before disappearing she turned around to look at me with her enchanting gaze that further pierced my heart; a look I would never forget and I would retain till perpetuity; and think of it always whenever she comes to my mind, and that's not going to be a few times, if my heart is to have its way!'

***

Rahul softly closed the diary between his fingers and laid down his head on the hardbound book, the scenes replaying in his head. He did not enjoy them because he wanted to relive them, yet he appreciated them because they were all he had. It was like watching a movie being played on the blank screen of his mind; the only difference was that he did not get bored, no matter how many times he watched it.

***

THAT THING WHICH HE NEVER SAID!

The lack of gentle wind in the atmosphere made the students almost suffocate within the walls of the classroom. Rahul tried to pay attention to what Mr. Broom was teaching them, but a
heart-broken lover and geometric circles usually do not get along so well. The circle on the board seemed to be growing bigger and bigger and right in its centre Rahul could sense some movement. Once again, he was back in familiar territories, to a day he could never forget, a day when she confronted him with what he had in his heart.

“Speak—though this soft warm heart, once free to hold

A thousand tender pleasures, thine and mine,

Be left more desolate, more dreary cold

Than a forsaken bird's nest filled with snow

‘Mid its own bush of leafless eglantine—

Speak, that my torturing doubts, their end may know!”

Speak, William Wordsworth.

The March air was soggy and the ventilation in the exam hall not worthy of praise, a result of which Rahul felt discerningly uncomfortable when he suddenly came out in the open after submitting his paper. He was climbing down the staircase after the last of his unit exams that signalled the countdown to the board exams. They would be having holidays for almost half a week due to the occurrence of a Sunday and some public holidays that fell in the later part of the week. He decided to go home and spend an evening with his guitar composing soft music to enliven the images in his heart, as he would not be able to see them in live mode for some time.

Somehow he enjoyed the sleepless nights and the act of studying gave him another reason to think about her in the dark. He would sift through the memories of their encounters every night without fail. He would smile shyly and hit himself playfully on the head whenever his mind started conjuring pictures of Seema and him together. He was plagued by the ifs and buts of their relation, and he knew she had something for him but she was still not confident enough to admit it. Raj would say that his fears were non-existent and she was totally floored by him but he doubted. He had heard somewhere that you cannot be sure with girls but wasn't she different even at this age? He wondered whether she would let what was simmering between them to grow into something more.

He stopped near the school-gate, sensing her before seeing her. A crackle of energy passed between them, raw and bursting. His body tingled with awareness of her presence. As soon as she saw him, her face changed. She was waiting for him alongwith Jess near the cobbler's stall to the right of the school-gate. She was standing with her hands crossed beneath her bosom, expressionless, a posture he would learn to associate with her as the time went by. Rahul stopped for a second to collect his paused thoughts and then continued his walk a little faster than necessary in their direction and slowed down when he neared them.

“Hi,” he called out to both of them, looking at one of them.

“Hi!” both replied back, one looking at him and the other looking down at his feet.

“I wonder what's it about my shoes that makes them look more interesting than their owner or are you seriously squint eyed?,” Rahul tried to lighten up the exam tension.

Jess and Seema looked into each other's eyes knowingly and Rahul distinctly saw Seema nod. Evidently, there was no room for jokes in such an atmosphere.

“Seema wanted to ask you something,” Jess said before Rahul could crack a joke about their extended eye contact.

“Wanted to? Means she no longer does?” Rahul asked looking at Seema, still maintaining his jovial mood.

“I mean yes, she does want to ask you something and something very important,” Jess said in her own matter-of-fact tone.

At that, Rahul's gestures froze in their tracks. A strong, heavy heartbeat thumped against his chest and he gulped down a large mouthful of oxygen inside. Surely, he had not expected her to be the first one to confess her feelings for him but he hoped desperately, that it was what he thought it to be.

“What did you tell Asif?” Seema asked looking him in the eye till the words lasted in her speech.

“What did I… what?” Rahul sounded confused. This was not the question he was expecting. It took a moment for him to clear his befuddled mind and he shook his head vigorously.

“Tell Asif,” Jess completed for Seema.

Rahul scratched the skin of his temple; he wondered what Asif had to do between issues concerning him and her.

“In what sense are we talking?” Rahul tried to clear it out.

“About Seema,” Jess answered again for her friend.

“You mean to say…”

“That you told Asif something about Seema and we want to know it too,” Jess said in her unfaltering voice.

“Now let's see, what all did I tell Asif? Hmm… how much I love…” For a second Seema's ears cocked open.

“…My mother's handmade Biryani; the Swatch , my papa gifted me on my last birthday; the quality of the latest Nike pair I bought; the kind of essays expected in the answer sheet; the tentative dates of the coming house meet… yeah, that's pretty much it,” Rahul said looking dazed and trying to remember anything that he had left out.

“Rahul, we are not interested in knowing that, but something about Seema,” Jess repeated.

“I never told anything about Seema to Asif,” Rahul said going through it all over again.

“Don't lie,” Seema said in a low tone, looking the other way.

“Oh, I swear. Why would I tell Asif about Seema? If I have to tell her anything, I would personally do so, be it a prospect or a proposal,” Rahul finished.

Seema looked at him, her senses alert at the last word.

“Ok fine then, see you later,” Seema said before dragging along a bewildered looking Jess.

Rahul sensed her disappointment and unsatisfied curiosity. He
could see that Jess wanted her to clear it out but his answer
was more than enough for her inquisitiveness. A hot wave of
shame, unexpected, unwanted, washed over him as he looked at her turn away.

“What did I tell Asif? What was it that they are so worried about?” Rahul asked himself repeatedly as he sauntered off towards the back area of the school compound. He knew he would find the subject of the topic practicing his football skills there, alongwith some of his house-mates.

Asif, the Green house captain, very fair in colour, was his classmate and friend since the primary. Since the last couple of grades they had drifted apart in separate divisions but now they were reunited in the same division for their tenth. On seeing him, Asif greeted him with his trademark ear-to-ear smile.

“Hey, anything new from the staffroom on the head boy's post?” Asif questioned coming near.

“What did you tell Seema and Jess?” Rahul questioned, almost pushing him.

“Oh, she came and told you?” he asked.

“I should've guessed as much,” he said to none in particular before Rahul could answer.

“What did you tell them both?” Rahul said with his hands wide open at his sides.

“Not Jess, only Seema but I guess Jess was standing too close to eavesdrop,” Asif surmised.

“Dude, they were on top of my head. I wonder what you would have told them that I did not tell you,” Rahul said, frantically waving his hands.

“Relax. I personally met Seema after our house-meet, two days back. Jessilda was waiting for Seema near the door as she is from your house and wasn't allowed in the meet. Seema started to leave as soon as I called it off, I ran after her and managed to stop her at the door and we started talking,” Asif paused to take a sip from his water flask.

“And what exactly did you talk to her about?” Rahul prodded.

“Nothing much of consequence buddy, I just told her that you like her very much and she asked me how I knew. I told her you personally admitted to me that ever since you saw her, you have fallen for her, especially after that Scientists' event,” Asif narrated, watching the expression change on Rahul's face.

“Shucks! You have screwed me big time. I will kill you for this, why did you do this? I never told you anything like this,” Rahul tore his own hair.

“Such things are not to be told, I can see it on your face buddy. It is evident in the way you look at her and keep turning your head to look diagonally while in the class and that's where her class is situated. She sits in the middle and you have a good chance of ogling at her. Even during the Scientists' event, you kept making excuses to hang around with her,” Asif explained.

“You… I curse you. What kind of revenge are you taking on me?” Rahul started.

“Hold on for one minute buddy and then you can kick or kill me, don't you want to hear her reaction to what I told her?” Asif said, a sly smile playing on his lips.

Rahul stiffened and dropped his rising shoulders. His tacit eyes pleaded for an answer.

“The house meeting was not that great and everyone was irritated with the outcome. She seemed tense and the irritation added to her temper. I don't know why I told her that but I did, maybe to test the power of your attraction.

“At first, she was shockingly surprised but she blushed deeply when I said that you were the one I heard it from. I could see that she refused to look at me after I told her that. She asked me whether I was sure and I told her that I was, because I neither drink alcohol to hear it wrong nor do I actually have a hearing problem. She probed on about whether you told me anything more. I wanted to tell her more but I could not, after seeing her reaction. I said no, and she ran off smiling towards Jessilda, who was looking at us wide-eyed,” Asif narrated.

Rahul looked stunned.

“To be honest with you buddy, once upon a time I too liked her and we were close friends. When I proposed to her, she rejected me straight and now on seeing your growing proximity to her, I decided to spoil the party due to sheer jealousy, but I could not. I ended up making the dish for you, you only have to put it on the table and enjoy it. If you have denied her confrontation then I guess she'll believe that you don't like her or something along those lines but she was perfectly convinced by my natural acting.