Falling in love!!I think we all fall in love for the first time around that age, the age when we suddenly start noticing the other gender. Before that we know everybody only as friends. My THAT age happened when I was 15. Now being 15 and a girl in the 80’s was not easy. Somehow the convent going girls back then were not supposed to fall in love or romance or have a crush; it was even less acceptable than plague. But everybody did it nonetheless.
So here I was totally smitten by a boy who lived in the same colony as ours. He was few years older and I thought rather nice looking and grown up. My friends somehow never found him good looking but I always gave him the benefit of doubt. After all crush too is blind and options were limited. Everybody called him Bhaiya and I was also supposed to do the same but I didn’t; rather couldn’t.
Sometimes I felt he also took special interest in me, on other occasions I felt perhaps he did not. But I loved to admire him and simply be around. There was nothing more I could do in any case than listen to romantic songs on the tape recorder at night and write letters half of which could never be posted.
It was New Year time and the Officers club used to have the annual fete. It was an event to look forward to. I would always put up a stall of some games like lucky dip, shoot the bottles or throw the ring around a gift to win. This time I and few of my friends had put up a stall of throw the ring and generally it was lot of fun. Out stall was as busy as it could get and suddenly I saw this guy Mr. Crush standing right there asking for a chance at the game. The functioning of my heart went totally haywire, I could hardly breathe. I handed him over the rings.
I don’t know why but I was hoping that he would win the teddy bear. He did not win anything and was not bothered but I felt a deep disappointment. And then something remarkable happened. He played a song for me at the request stall , no he did not take my name , it was not permitted, he just said for the girl in the throw the ring stall and once again I gave him the benefit of doubt and assumed it was me . I felt like a love sick calf who was falling in love and it was an amazing feeling.
Only later I realised it was indeed for me when he sneaked a flower to me through his friend. He cared, he cared!!! Our romance started in the earnest.
He would buy the greeting cards at Archies in Janpath market and leave it there for me to collect. No there was no way he could personally give them to me. After all our parents knew each other well and we could not risk ‘chopping the nose of either family.’ …………………. to be continued #love
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