Day 01 (27 December 2006)

Love at 2nd Sight

When you start reading or watching a love story, you almost expect the protagonist to fall head over heels in love with a girl as soon as he lays eyes on her. This is not one of those stories. I fell in love months after I had seen her.

There's nothing significant you need to know about me at this point. I was a typical class 11 student at that time, a part of a generation fascinated by the concept of being in a relationship without truly understanding its meaning and consequences.

It began as a normal day during our winter vacations. I was hanging out with my cousin in our neighbourhood, enjoying the winter breeze, leaned against my bike while he chatted with a friend. This is where the melodramatic part begins.

A girl walked by us and for some inexplicable reason I could not help but stare at her as she walked away and disappeared into the doors of the neighbourhood temple. I tried hard to recall where I had seen her before. A while later, I found my eyes follow her out of the temple, back past us and into an alley. I still did not know why I was staring at her and couldn't remember who she was.

Then it struck me like a brick on the head, it was Khushi! We had been studying in the same class for months. How could I not notice her all these months? She was so serene and beautiful!

Before I could recover from my thoughts, I saw another familiar face come out of the same alley. I immediately recognised him as Anurag, my middle school buddy. He seemed to recognise me too. We started talking about the old days, recalling childhood memories and laughing uncontrollably. Before I knew it, I was at his place having Maggi his mother was kind enough to make for us.

We carried on talking for a while. As I was preparing to leave and turned around, I had a "mere saamne waali khidki mei" moment, which is an essential part of many love stories. Right accross the street from Anurag's house was Khushi, standing at her window, staring into empty space. My first reaction was to ask Anurag if he knew her. Turned out he did.

I now knew that I had a reason to renew my friendship with Anurag.

At that point I did not realise that I would:

• be visiting Anurag almost every day for many days to come.
• become religious enough to stand in front of the temple for ages, just to catch a glimpse of her.
• start couting down the days for the holidays to end.
• become a hopeless romantic, with "mai ise apne banakar rahunga" echoing through my head all day.