LOVE STORY.. PART ONE TITLE>( mehul and best friend) Mehul and I were best friends since nursery. I knew her from the first day of my school life when the tap of my nose and eyes were flowing with equal fervor, punctuated with loud cries of mourning. My teacher held on to my arm and led me to sit beside a small, quiet-looking girl. While the rest of the class resembled a battle-field-in-mourning with a symphony of cries in different scales and tempo – she was the odd one out. She was quiet but there was a welcoming grin taped to her lips. But what immensely attracted me to her was her earrings – that had a tiny golden ball dangling from each. I was amused. I took possession of her ear-lobes and began playing with the tiny ball of her ear-rings. She grimaced a little, having her earlobes being in control of a total stranger, but did not let go of her smile nevertheless. And from that moment onwards we became inseparable. It was in our second standard that we realized that we were not just best friends in school but we also lived two lanes apart. That only helped us bond with each other better. We made total use of our vacations in the small attic room of our house, pouring over film-magazines that were ‘strictly forbidden for young people’ and drooling over the likes of Govinda and Rishi Kapoor. The fact that they were aging heroes and were gradually resembling oil-barrels over time didn’t disturb us one bit till one Akshay Kumar caught our attention. We were also crazy fans of Pete Sampras and though “Love All” was the only sane tennis related word to us, his cute boyish grin just made our hearts skip a beat. The attic-room was also our store-house of stolen items – grandma’s green mango-pickle, Mehul’s Aunt’s home-made Chawanprash and variety of biscuits and chocolates….When we were in eleventh class a stolen cigarette too made its way to our treasure-trove. We spent seventeen minutes trying to light it up with a matchstick and when it did light up it let out such a horrible fume that we spent the rest of our time trying to ‘ shoo away ’ the smell. I adored and loved Mehul, more than any of my cousins or sisters but there was one thing that always bothered me – her beauty ! Mehul was not fair – more on the wheatish side but she had a strange kind of beauty that made people turn around and take a second look. She was perhaps one of the most beautiful girls in our peer group though she hardly ever bothered to take special care of herself. And though I was proud to have her as my friend I was secretly jealous of her. I hate to admit it but it is the truth that her looks were an annoying twitch that my heart faced every now and then. And that was one reason why I took special care of myself –taking time to match myself to the level of her beauty. But irrespective of the buried feeling in my heart I loved her too much to let go of her. But it was not to be. We had just completed our twelfth class board exams when she brought in the news that her father was getting a transfer to Raniganj. It was the saddest day of my seventeen year old life. There were still two weeks remaining for the transfer and we spent almost all of those fourteen days crying in each other’s arms. We promised eternal friendship to each other, vowed to write a letter every alternate day and call each other every alternate week. Though secretly we were not quite sure about the telephone call part because in those days when Pagers were the only modern gadgets and mobile phones were a luxury item even for the industrialists, phone calls were definitely expensive and way beyond the reach of teenagers like us. The final moment came and we sobbed like children, not willing to let go of each other. Just before the Taxi zoomed away I pushed in a few jasmine flowers from our garden into her palm. “Keep these safely Mehul. Our friendship is like the fragrance of these flowers – eternal! Whenever you see these you would remember me.”, I told her. Two crystals of warm tears streamed down her cheeks…..
Posted on: Sat, 10 May 2014 15:11:54 +0000
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