ON VALENTINES DAY___BRUSHES WITH ROMANTICISM
It all
started in 1957 when I joined St Mary’s Convent, Allahabad in my kindergartens.
Back then, the school was co-educational in the nursery classes. There was this
girl in my class, Kusum Bhatnagar, whom I had the uncanny knack of calling
Kusum Bhattacharya, I do not know for what reason. The relevant fact is that I
was then infinitely fond of that girl, and she probably likewise, for we always
sat next to each other in class. We always had our tiffin together in the lunch
break, and loved to share the food. We always helped each other with the
classwork. That time it was customary for the class teacher to reward good work
with scrap pictures often with glazes, and we always compared and admired our ‘scraps’.
We always chose to partner each other when we were required to team up for
craft work. At the end of the school, we invariably went out of the class and
school, holding hands together and chatting along. Then, one day, my elder
cousin brother saw us, and started teasing me. He laughed and joked about my
‘girlfriend’ all the way home, and for the first time in my life of seven
years, I felt I had done something wrong. This small incident had a strong
effect on me then, and in subsequent years as well, but for then, I stopped
talking to Kusum. She would often look askance at me as to what had happened,
but I neither explained nor talked to her ever again. Shortly after, we
relocated to Delhi and I lost her forever, but the one thing which has bothered me
always is not telling her why I ‘broke off’. I think I owed her an apology, and
still do.
The year was 1961. It was a Sunday,
12th February. The occasion was the 5th Test Match
between India and Pakistan at the Ferozeshah Kotla ground in New Delhi. I had
gone to see the fourth days play with one of my relatives. We were seated in
the general stands. My relative got chatting with a girl sitting next to him.
She was a student of Convent of Jesus and Mary, and that got him excited for I
was studying in St Columba’s, the school almost conjoined to it . As it turned
out, we were just a class apart, so he took it upon himself to strike up a
friendship between us. The girl seemed quite inclined, but I was plagued with
that sense of guilt about talking to girls. All through that day, he kept
oscillating between her and me to get us to converse. He even managed to
extract one of those score cards from her, which she was bold enough to
inscribe “To Rakesh, with love, from Anita”. The days play, and ours, ended
without decision and we both headed home.I held on to that score card till I completed school and left Delhi. It turned out that she lived across
the block, from our house, we in Roop Nagar and she in Kamla Nagar. I was even
passed on her address. Soon after, one day I ventured up to her flat on the
first floor in D block, but couldn’t muster enough courage to knock on the
door. Thus the door remained close, but I often wish I was atleast able to tell
her why and wherefore I had thwarted her ‘advances’, to atleast say sorry.
Love on the rebound can be very
sudden, swift and intense. She was a postgraduate in the department of
Sociology, Rajasthan University, and I was introduced to her by a mutual
acquaintance, on the rebound. The fondness seemed so intense that I was rushing
to her hostel every so often, even when I was within the throes of my
professional exams. I wanted to take her for a visit home. The next I heard was
my mutual friend informing me that this had been interpreted as an effort to
make her meet my parents, and that we were on course for a marriage. I could
feel the ground slip from beneath me. Now, there is nothing more jolting, no
greater dampener in a relationship, than the sudden emergence of a marriage
proposal when you are least prepared or inclined. It burns out the relationship
like the flash in the pan. The worst thing was that I didn’t and couldn’t feel
upto telling her the truth. So I did the most dastardly thing possible, of
persuading our mutual friend to do the 'honours'. I did realize that it was
despicable to have my reluctance conveyed in this manner by a person who was a
mutual friend, but then I didn’t have an iota of courage more, and so the
relationship ended with the bitterest tastes. The lasting regret is that I did
not have the courage or moral turpitude to say sorry face to face. I wish I
had, or could.
My voyeurisms did not
end there. There was one last indulgence. Fortunately or unfortunately, I have
never had any occasion to regret that rendezvous, for it culminated in
marriage, and it is holding on for more than 38 years now, with a daughter and
son as the resultant offshoots, our progeny.
You know how it is with some girls.they seem to take stuffing right out of u.I mean there is something about there personality that paralyzed the vocal cords and reduces the brain to a cauliflower(P.G.Wodehouse).
ReplyDeleteVery well written sir
Thank you and I know
DeleteThese girls are referred to as Amazon