To Be Continued...

Once upon a time, there was a girl, who wanted all the love in the world. Only to realize that too much love could kill.

I found it on the road. The perfect friendship. After that day, I knew how to gauge a friendship. A long walk round the park. If you are left wanting for more, after finishing a couple of rounds at a leisurely pace, there is hope for an ‘us’ somewhere down the lane.

I had always thought of myself as someone who could befriend anyone. I was friends with the elite and I was friends with the outcasts.But I made sure befriending me was no easy ride.People have to bear with the tears and the laughter.With the compassion and the smirks.With the love and the hatred.

I saw him in the Physics class drinking Pepsi. I had just finished a packet of chips and felt thirsty. God-sent incentive to start a conversation. I ran down a few rows of desks, when the professor has his back to us and occupied the empty place beside him. I see that he was reading Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban."Sirius Black is a good guy," I blurt out not able to contain my excitement. He then looks at me, with a half-amused-half-irritated look and I see his face properly for the first time. His had all the features I didn’t like in guy. Curly, unruly hair.Tiny, small eyes. Parched, dry lips. One thing I liked though. He was round like a teddy bear.

"Give some of the Pepsi or I will tell you the twist,"I blackmail him." You have already done that," he retorts." There are more," I lie. That’s the thing with me. I start every relationship with a lie. Makes me feel like I have the upper hand, the fool that I am.

"You both in the sixth row get out of the class now," yells the professor, which somehow we manage not to hear, being the ultimate optimists. "You, the one drinking the Pepsi and the fat boy, GET OUT."Can’t ignore this now. I was the first to get up, having done this many a times. He followed without any protest. We walk out of the class and I wait for the cribbing and blaming. "You drink coffee?" he asks. "Only if you smoke," comes pat the reply. I get the first of those awesome smiles and I notice the tobacco stained teeth for the first time. Another thing I don’t like in a guy. We get two coffees and sit under a tree.I thought whether I should ask for his name and then left it at that,coz I had already christened him Squeezy. "Let’s go for a walk. The weather’s amazing," I say. "I don’t like walking,"he says. O shit!!


I took me 1 month, 4 threats, 3 cajolements and a very long pleading to get him to go on a walk. At the end of the walk, I had a convert, coz at the end of the first round; he went on talking about something called "the feel of Calcutta". And he set the record that day of 5 and half rounds. And I felt happy that this walk has put a seal on the idea of "us". I also felt powerful for I assumed that I was changing the course of his life, in however small a way, by introducing him to the pleasure of long walks, especially with me. That’s another thing with me. Calvin might live in denial but I…I live in delusion. I not only deny the real thing but also make up my own stuff .Happy and deluded as I was in assuming that I was changing the course of his life, foolish I was in not noticing that he was equally changing the course of my life.