The Girl I Last Loved (8 page)

“Point taken,” I said with a salute.

However illogical I found that idea but I realised that the beauty of life never lay in logic.

Later that afternoon, I took her to a
mela
going on in town hall to cheer her up.

On the way I learned she always carried spare clothes in her bag just in case she decided to sneak out for a movie, shopping, etc. We stopped at a mall for her to change.

It’s not like I have never been to a
mela
or to a cyber café, but being at those places with her seemed like a raw experience. Everything seemed new, everything seemed beautiful.

So, there I was with a beautiful girl whose aura made everything around her as beautiful .

“Hey… Kasam.”

“Hii… Reena.”

“You know her?” I whispered to Kasam.

“Yeah!! She is in the evening shift in our school itself,” Kasam whispered back to me.

“You look beautiful, Reena. I have never seen you look any better; did you go shopping?” as Kasam said this, I did a full scan of Reena.

She was wearing a red T-shirt with shimmering black jacket paired up with light blue jeans. It was early October, so it was kind of cold in Lucknow.

Reena had braces and had let down her hair but they had streaks of white in them.

I shifted my gaze back on Kasam.

Black T-shit with red print, a netted long black sweater open from front, blue denim skirt ending a few inches above her knees, low-lying velvet boots, black bangles, silky hair flowing till her waist; to top it all her gorgeous looks.

How the hell did Kasam tell her she was looking beautiful?

“Ohh… really… you think so…!?” Reena was surprised and asked with hesitation in her voice.

“Yeah… you look awesome!” Kasam spoke with such assurance in her eyes that anyone would believe.

We passed an enchanted Reena held spellbound by Kasam word-spells.

“Why did you lie to her?”

“I didn’t.”

“If you call her beautiful, what would that make you? Beautiful to the power thousand?”

“If I am damn beautiful doesn’t mean others won’t be beautiful.”

“Do you know how beautiful you are?”

“Of course I do, and I never hesitate to find beauty in others.”

I raised my eyebrows.

“If you had seen Reena in school, then you would have known why I said so.

“She looked unkempt… disshevelled. But today she was so well dressed; maybe it was one of her best outfit. She was wearing eye-liner that’s like going on the extreme to look beautiful. When she would have left home, she must have expected a few comments.

“I gave her one.”

“Still it was a lie,” I contradicted her.

“You won’t give up. It wasn’t a lie. She was looking beautiful compared to her usual self and that’s important. Aishwarya Rai is damn beautiful; that doesn’t mean other girls won’t be. As rightly said by John Keats, ‘Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder’.”

I smiled to myself. Kasam had once told me ‘there’s more to me… more than my looks’. Now I realised what she meant.

She wasn’t just beautiful from the outside but even more beautiful from the inside. In fact there was so much beauty to her that my eyes were unable to behold.

As I immersed in her immense beauty, she wasn’t anywhere to be seen.

I searched for her and saw her in a stall, trying out bracelets. A few minutes earlier I was furious at how she could leave without looking whether I was following or not. What if she got lost? Okay that was bit silly, still, if in case… but seeing her so lost in those shiny little stuff, I decided that holding my tongue was best. So I followed her.

She asked, “Do you like it?”

“Don’t they have something better?”

Her face flushed. I understood she liked it enough to buy.

“It’s good.”

“Really, but you said…”

“I was just messing with you,” I cut her out.

“I should get it then,” her face lighted.

She kept on running from one shop to another and I followed her.

What if I didn’t like it? As long as she was happy, nothing else mattered.

“Forward me that scrunchy…”

“What??” I was bemused.

“Those bracelets where lots of stuffs hang from a single chain like that one…,” she pointed.

Here she was adding words to my girl encyclopaedia.

I saw a chain with the letter ‘K’ over it.

“Hey try this…”

Kasam’s smile broadened on seeing that chain.

She immediately tried it and uttered, “I am taking it.”

The shopkeeper extended his hand to pack it up.

“Oh… no thanks!! I will be wearing it.”

Now it was time for my smile to broaden.

I always thought these Disneyland sort of things were about rides and food. Today I came to know that for girls, it was all about shopping.

“Candy floss!” she jumped.

I rushed to bring one for her.

A little flake of candy floss stuck to her nose.

I indicated her to remove it. She wandered her finger along her lips till her nose, but still wasn’t able to get rid of it.

I advanced my hand to remove it. When I touched her skin, it felt like snow… her nose was extremely delicate. I wondered whether anyone had such a soft nose. I removed that speck of candy floss. I don’t know what got into me for as I turned back I grabbed her nose and shook it lightly.

Kasam smiled at me, then shook my nose and walked ahead.

I touched my nose – it almost hurt after the ‘bar of softness’ had been raised.

‘Pani puri!’
she screamed.

I watched her having that.

“Will you have one?”

“No, I am good.”

“Yeah… anyway, guys shouldn’t have
pani puri
,” she winked at me.

There was a little girl standing over there, asking for money. Kasam looked at her and asked the
pani-puriwala
to feed that girl as well.

“
Bhaiya… pure dus rupiye ke khilana
,” saying this, we walked from there.

“How terrible is it that these small girls are forced into being beggars. Just near her another girl was buying ice-cream dressed nicely, holding the hands of her parents.”

“Yeah, my Daddy also does the same. He never gives money to them; instead gives them something to eat.”

Next, before I knew, we were in a haunted house. It was kind of fun as Kasam went to make jokes about everything we were supposed to be scared of. There was a couple watching ahead of us… cuddling… holding hands…

“Watch this,” Kasam winked at me.

She moved closer to them and patted on their shoulders. As they turned, she yelled at the top of her voice.

“Aaaahhh…”

The couple got scared and busted out, yelling back, “Aaaahhhh….”

Kasam came running to me, grabbed my hand and we got out as soon as possible. We laughed our hearts out on recalling that couple’s faces.

After three hours of doing what she wanted, she wanted to leave.

“Won’t we go over rides?”

“I am not very good with them.”

“This time it will be different.”

She hesitantly nodded her head in ‘yes’.

We got into the flying wheel and sat at the farthest end. It slowly reached the highest so that the others could hop in the remaining seats.

Then it progressed downwards slowly.

I heard a soft murmur: it was coming from Kasam. I wasn’t able to make out what it was. I concentrated. “
Anjani putra pawan sut nama.”

She was reciting the
Hanuman-chalisa
.

In my weirdest of dreams even I never thought she might know the
Hanuman-chalisa
. I knew some of it because Dad recited it every other day.

The ride was now moving faster. Kasam got restless. She closed her eyes and clutched her hands to the edge of the seat and started reciting
Hanuman-chalisa
all aloud.

People in the nearby seats started laughing on looking at her.

As I couldn’t say anything to her, I mocked the others to stop them. They didn’t shut up.

Kasam opened her eyes. I took her hand in mine.

“You won’t fall…,” as I uttered this, she looked into my eyes.

“As I will never let you fall…,” I finished.

During the whole ride, I held her hand with her eyes gripped to mine.

“Ahh!! Finally it’s over!” she uttered.

‘Shit! It’s over,’ I thought.

“Hey…,” she went ahead and grabbed a big balloon.

“Don’t tell me you are going to buy that?” I asked.

“I am not going to buy it… I am definitely buying it!”

There we were sitting on a corner bench with a big yellow balloon.

She sneaked in her bag and grabbed a marker and started scribbling something on that balloon.

“Hey… what are you doing?”

She rotated the written part towards me and smiled.

‘Amul chocolate…
jeene ke ishare mil gaye
… a Smiley face… lilies… blue… some random words and few pictures were drawn…’

“What’s it?” I asked, still unclear.

“I always buy a balloon like this one, then write all those things on to it which comes in my mind at that time and the things I like. Then I hang it on the ceiling of my room and whenever I see it, I feel nice…”

She took around fifteen more minutes to complete before we headed home – carrying her balloon which was once struck by a car and flew to the opposite end of the road. She made me run all the way round to get it back.

Though monsoon was gone, its remnants were still there – it started drizzling.

I was about to drag the umbrella out of my bag when I saw Kasam walking in front of me with her pink umbrella. I pushed mine back in and rushed to catch up with her.

She spotted me walking next to her without an umbrella.

She looked forward, then threw a glance at me.

“Don’t you have an umbrella?”

“No.”

“Are you fine?”

“Yes.”

A few minutes passed.

“Come on in, otherwise you’ll catch a cold.”

Those words felt like rose petals raining over my ears.

I promptly slid in beside her, took the umbrella from her and held it high to accommodate me as well, though I offered Kasam most side of it. For me it wasn’t about protection from rain.

We walked with rain trickling over the umbrella and the cold wind gushing in… chilling our bones… in silence… till I broke it.

“So when did you learn the
Hanuman-chalisa
?”

“Last to last year, when I was preparing for tenth Board. I used to stay awake at night. I used to get scared, so I learned just this much ‘
bhoot pisach nikat nai awae
…’ Later I learned whole of it.”

As a new chapter unfolded, I felt like I was reading a whole new book.

“You came very late today,” Dad said.

“Went out with friends,” I answered.

“Who are these friends of yours whom I don’t know about?”

“They are my new friends,” I said with a little irritation in my voice.

“Come, have a seat,” Dad said with unexpected calmness in his voice.

“Nowadays parents need to remain more concerned about their boy than their girls. Everyone is concerned when their daughter is leaving home and when she is returning, what she’s wearing; not only the parents, even the neighbours keep a watch over her activities. However, people forget about their lads. In due course of time, nobody notices when he is going or when he is returning. Yet with the rage of smoking, drinking, drugs, etc., it becomes more important to keep a track on your boy’s life – whether he is having the right friends or what his company is, adding to his habits. That’s why I asked.”

It was unbelievable how he put these complicated conversations into such simple words.

Probably the experience of raising four kids with me being the youngest.

I looked in his eyes.

“Dad, there isn’t anything going around about which you should be worried. I will try not to be late from now on.”

“Go to your room. I will go ask your Mom to give you
haldi dudh.”

A few minutes later Mom came into my room.

“Mom, come here,” I shook her nose.

“Nah, it’s not that soft,” the response automatically came out of my mouth.

“What?” Mom asked.

Nothing. I hid my face in the pillow to avoid any questions.