It was March 2012, I got results of my 10th grade and fortunately I got good grades. All my family members were overjoyed and my mom started calling all my relatives to share my result with them. Like most of the Indian fathers, my dad told me, “Don’t be overjoyed with your result. You have scored less in English which is your weak subject. I have told you multiple times to practice English and you kept ignoring me which has effected your result.”. I was sitting on the sofa listening to all the conversation of my dad and mom. I was not replying to any one in my home as I was stunned looking at my result. I was expecting my result to be somewhere near the pass mark, but it overtook all the grades and got settled at the top grade. I came out of it very soon and started enjoying that little more freedom that Indian kids get for a limited period of time when they score high in exams.
Two Months later, the stipulated time period for that “little freedom” was completed and it was time to join a college. After some research, I joined a college 10 kilometers away from my home. Since I’m good at Maths, I had chosen MPC stream, which means we had only maths, physics and chemistry subjects. My father admitted me in a section where only students who got top grades in their 10th were present.
After 10 days, my college started. I reached my classroom and opened the door. I thought that I was early to class. But I was wrong. Almost all the students reached to the class before me and I saw them reading textbooks. I went and sat on a bench and beside me was sitting a student. He was reading a 1 kg chemistry textbook with high concentration that all his brain cells were focused on the textbook. I didn’t even dare to say “hi” to him. Everyone around me were reading some or the other textbooks whereas I had an empty white note book where only book company logo was printed. To pretend that I’m studying, I opened my white note book and started writing my name in slow motion.
The classroom was nothing but a high pressure environment where all the students are forced to make their goal to join into IIT. I didn’t like the class at the first instance, but as days passed on, I got habituated to the rat race going on and I was one of them. I got all types of stress at that time, and it is at that time where I learnt to cope up with stress to some extent. I got below par grades in all the exams due to which I had been made to participate in one-sided verbal kungfu with the teachers. Couple of months passed, I had not even touched book even once and started to turn the one-sided verbal kungfu to two-sided. My teachers submitted a detailed analysis report card of my behaviour to my father. My father didn’t care about all this, he took me aside and asked me, “Why aren’t you studying anything? What happened to you? What is the problem you are facing? Why are you getting so less in exams?.”. He kept on asking questions and never gave me a chance to reply. I tried a couple of times to reply to him but I couldn’t. So I gave up and let him scream at me until he finishes. One of the teacher standing there suggested for a home tuition and that he would be the tutor. I understood his intention to loot money from my dad but my dad was in no mood to think. He immediately accepted the home tuition and from that day, after the college, I had an extra hour of class and my teacher got an extra hour to clear his frustration.
One month passed since my home tuition started and I was getting frustrated day by day. There was only academics in my life and no outdoor activities. I was not knowing what I was doing and I didn’t know what I must do. When everything was going with the flow, the day, which changed my life arrived. That day, exactly at 12 noon, a boring chemistry class was going on. It was also my pre-lunch sleeping time. I was about to sleep. As I was closing my eyes, I heard someone knocking the classroom door. My chemistry teacher opened the door to see who it was. As usually, he opened the door till 20 degrees so that his face fits in the gap. I didn’t pay much attention to the situation and continued my sleep. Approximately 2 minutes later, my sir shouted, “Students!!”. He was about to announce something. This woke me up, but I didn’t pay attention to him and slept again. About 20 seconds later, my sleep got disturbed again due to applause of all the students in the classroom. I thought it was because someone got first rank in exams. I was so frustrated that my sleep got disturbed. I was not able to sleep as the noise generated from applause of my fellow classmates exceeded the threshold. I had taken out my brand new noise blocking ear plugs, put them in my ears and slept.
I woke up at lunch, removed my ear plugs and had taken my lunch box out of my bag. While I was eating, I normally used to hear words like Covalent bond, ionic bond, coulomb’s law, wave motion etc in the classroom. But that day, I had also heard a “Hello” for the first time in 2 months in college. I didn’t believe it though, and continued my lunch. But as I was eating, multiple “Hello” sound waves were reaching my ear and my brain began getting excited.
I saw a group of students forming a circle around a reference point as centre. It was from that point from where “hello” sound was formed. Since many students were around, I couldn’t see the centre clearly. I started going towards the centre by pushing one by one aside. As soon as I reached there, I saw a girl giving hand shakes to everyone. I couldn’t see her face as she was facing the other side. I was very happy that a person from this college is going to say “hello” to me. I was just waiting for her hand, which is moving in clockwise direction, to reach me. My focus was on her hand and as soon as it reached me, I had connected my hand to her hand and slowly lifted my head up.
As I saw her face, I stood still and everything in the background was dark. I could see only her face in the dark background. It was like a beautiful sunrise after the dark mid-night. She was so beautiful that each and every part of my body stopped working due to the signals sent by my brain. I stood like a statue. My brain was dead for a couple of seconds. My heart started feeling some sort of pressure for the first time in my life. There was a bit of added pressure on my heart due to the electric signals sent by my hand in contact with her hand. Especially, her eyes. They were as pretty as lotus petal, as deep as an ocean, as mesmerising as sunrise. In fact, one could miss a thousand sunsets just to look at her eyes. A million terrorists can leave terrorism just by seeing her eyes. One could imagine his whole life in those eyes.
She told “hello” for a couple of times, but my brain couldn’t parse the signal and I couldn’t respond to her. My brain got reactivated at the third “hello” of her and I replied, “Hello.”. “My name is Anjali. I have joined today. What’s your name?”, she replied. “My name is Atharv.”, I replied. I was stammering to speak with her. She then removed her hand from my hand. But, my hand stood still in the same position for a couple of seconds before returning to normal. I had not seen a girl as beautiful as her till then. I had asked one of my classmate if she was in our class and he replied positive. I felt so happy that I could see her daily and somehow get close to her.
Though, I’m weak in dealing with girls, I thought to do anything to impress her and gain her attention without talking to her. I had designed a plan to know her interests, likes and dislikes and behave according to that. I had then planned to create a situation which makes her talk to me so that I could become comfortable with her in communication and initiate the conversation from next time.
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