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Unknown love story
Dear self, Raj the k k....
Happy Valentine’s Day. Yesterday, I shared Part 1 of an autobiographical first love story, the story of how two people met. Today, I share the conclusive Part 2, which tells how the two fell in love and how everything came together to bring the two together. The story is a 100% true story and is an attempt to capture the quintessential magic of first love. I’d love to hear from you if you find even a small part of this story relatable. Continuing from where I had left off in the last email:
~
X’s directness stumped me. I wasn’t used to women being so straightforward, even fearless. For the rest of the tour, I waited for her witty remark. Little did I know it is what is called flirting. The good boy me had never gaped beyond the books and despite that, I hadn’t learnt to read between the lines. When the two of them left the campus, X and I exchanged numbers. It was not that easy. I was too shy to ask, so she herself asked for mine: ‘Give me your phone number. I’ll add talk time in your account, and teach you how to talk to women,’ she had said and took my number. An hour later, an SMS arrived. ‘Hi! Welcome to How to Talk to Women 101.’ I had the most prized 10 digits in my contacts.
~
The course How to Talk to Women 101 began the very next day on the phone. It turned out to be How to Talk to a Woman 101 which soon became How to Talk to a Woman You’re Falling For 101 and soon enough to How to Not Stop Talking to the Woman You’re in Love With 24x7. The conversation just flowed.
X’s every word circled my mind through the day, like satellites orbiting a planet. She’d talk about the books she liked—how much she enjoyed Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters, how one could see shooting stars and constellations from the terrace of her ancestral house in a small town in Haryana, how her father—when he was posted at Corbett as a forest ranger—was attacked by a hungry tiger at night and somehow managed to escape with just a scratch on his neck. I relished her stories of wonder and curiosity. She encouraged me to share stories from my childhood, of the seven schools I went to and the friends I made and lost, about my fear of the English language which prevented me from being a talker. I told her how I’d grown up in a Hindi-speaking home and I would translate every sentence from Hindi to English in my head before speaking, which prevented me from being a good conversationalist. To this, her reaction was very constructive—she said it meant I had mostly read English but hadn’t heard English being spoken around enough to think in English. She helped me practise speaking in English with her besides mandating watching English sitcoms and movies. Within a couple of months, fluency in the English language—both during speech and in writing—naturally arrived. It turned me into a writer.
For the wimp who had barely hmm-ed to women on the phone or in person earlier, I was astounded to find my love for banter. With X, the words just spilled out of me. It was as if I was waiting to meet her to just share every little nugget of my life. Initially, I fell for her wit, but over time, I started falling for her kindness. She was the most interested listener I ever encountered. She made me feel so heard, so desired, and so worthy.
‘Silly, I feel duped! I wonder why the hell did I end up signing you up for this course on How to Talk to Women 101? Now that you have shed your shyness, I discover that you’ve always been a chatterbox. You just keep on and on.’
‘Turn me off, it’s in your hand,’ I said, rather pleased with myself. My comebacks had come back! I was not only conversing but also retorting.
‘Everything is in your hands, Silly. Given the sex ratio, engineers are known to use that so much more,’ she always had the comeback to my comebacks, the last laugh in our conversations. It was difficult to win against your guru after all.
Now when the professors in the lecture hall talked about thermodynamics and calculus, I’d be found texting her from the backseat. Over the next semester, my grades plummeted to five points something, but my heart fluttered with the thought that at least, I was with someone. We felt together. Five Point Someone, ha!
No, we weren’t together. We just felt together. Or rather, I felt I was together with her. We hadn’t yet confessed anything to each other. But it was not too difficult to connect the dots and figure out where it was headed. It was evident that our tireless phone conversations awaited a proposal. Everything led towards that—how our calls never ended, how our mornings began with her waking me up with her call and nights ended with me putting her to sleep on the phone. We had moved on to doing things that lovers do, such as coining nicknames for each other. Among her many demeaning inventions which included jerk, self-obsessed narcissist, jackass, dumbass, ass, X mostly, and thankfully so, referred to me as Silly. I liked it. Confirming early sparks of the shoddy poet in me, I chose to rhyme and addressed her Lily. Silly met Lily sounded no less than Harry met Sally.
X lived in a PG with strict restrictions with respect to going out and an early evening in-time of 6 pm (the time by which most of my classes ended), because of which the thought of us meeting in person never crossed our minds. Even when it did, we put it aside. We both were too young and fearful of our parents and since her PG needed prior permission from...
Happy Valentine’s Day. Yesterday, I shared Part 1 of an autobiographical first love story, the story of how two people met. Today, I share the conclusive Part 2, which tells how the two fell in love and how everything came together to bring the two together. The story is a 100% true story and is an attempt to capture the quintessential magic of first love. I’d love to hear from you if you find even a small part of this story relatable. Continuing from where I had left off in the last email:
~
X’s directness stumped me. I wasn’t used to women being so straightforward, even fearless. For the rest of the tour, I waited for her witty remark. Little did I know it is what is called flirting. The good boy me had never gaped beyond the books and despite that, I hadn’t learnt to read between the lines. When the two of them left the campus, X and I exchanged numbers. It was not that easy. I was too shy to ask, so she herself asked for mine: ‘Give me your phone number. I’ll add talk time in your account, and teach you how to talk to women,’ she had said and took my number. An hour later, an SMS arrived. ‘Hi! Welcome to How to Talk to Women 101.’ I had the most prized 10 digits in my contacts.
~
The course How to Talk to Women 101 began the very next day on the phone. It turned out to be How to Talk to a Woman 101 which soon became How to Talk to a Woman You’re Falling For 101 and soon enough to How to Not Stop Talking to the Woman You’re in Love With 24x7. The conversation just flowed.
X’s every word circled my mind through the day, like satellites orbiting a planet. She’d talk about the books she liked—how much she enjoyed Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters, how one could see shooting stars and constellations from the terrace of her ancestral house in a small town in Haryana, how her father—when he was posted at Corbett as a forest ranger—was attacked by a hungry tiger at night and somehow managed to escape with just a scratch on his neck. I relished her stories of wonder and curiosity. She encouraged me to share stories from my childhood, of the seven schools I went to and the friends I made and lost, about my fear of the English language which prevented me from being a talker. I told her how I’d grown up in a Hindi-speaking home and I would translate every sentence from Hindi to English in my head before speaking, which prevented me from being a good conversationalist. To this, her reaction was very constructive—she said it meant I had mostly read English but hadn’t heard English being spoken around enough to think in English. She helped me practise speaking in English with her besides mandating watching English sitcoms and movies. Within a couple of months, fluency in the English language—both during speech and in writing—naturally arrived. It turned me into a writer.
For the wimp who had barely hmm-ed to women on the phone or in person earlier, I was astounded to find my love for banter. With X, the words just spilled out of me. It was as if I was waiting to meet her to just share every little nugget of my life. Initially, I fell for her wit, but over time, I started falling for her kindness. She was the most interested listener I ever encountered. She made me feel so heard, so desired, and so worthy.
‘Silly, I feel duped! I wonder why the hell did I end up signing you up for this course on How to Talk to Women 101? Now that you have shed your shyness, I discover that you’ve always been a chatterbox. You just keep on and on.’
‘Turn me off, it’s in your hand,’ I said, rather pleased with myself. My comebacks had come back! I was not only conversing but also retorting.
‘Everything is in your hands, Silly. Given the sex ratio, engineers are known to use that so much more,’ she always had the comeback to my comebacks, the last laugh in our conversations. It was difficult to win against your guru after all.
Now when the professors in the lecture hall talked about thermodynamics and calculus, I’d be found texting her from the backseat. Over the next semester, my grades plummeted to five points something, but my heart fluttered with the thought that at least, I was with someone. We felt together. Five Point Someone, ha!
No, we weren’t together. We just felt together. Or rather, I felt I was together with her. We hadn’t yet confessed anything to each other. But it was not too difficult to connect the dots and figure out where it was headed. It was evident that our tireless phone conversations awaited a proposal. Everything led towards that—how our calls never ended, how our mornings began with her waking me up with her call and nights ended with me putting her to sleep on the phone. We had moved on to doing things that lovers do, such as coining nicknames for each other. Among her many demeaning inventions which included jerk, self-obsessed narcissist, jackass, dumbass, ass, X mostly, and thankfully so, referred to me as Silly. I liked it. Confirming early sparks of the shoddy poet in me, I chose to rhyme and addressed her Lily. Silly met Lily sounded no less than Harry met Sally.
X lived in a PG with strict restrictions with respect to going out and an early evening in-time of 6 pm (the time by which most of my classes ended), because of which the thought of us meeting in person never crossed our minds. Even when it did, we put it aside. We both were too young and fearful of our parents and since her PG needed prior permission from...
