EPISODE 1
‘u knw every1 keeps telin me dat nly aaliya cn control u’. I messaged her around 7 in the evening. We messaged each other after coming from the college everyday till the time we went to sleep.
‘Really! Who tld u dat?’ she messaged me back.
I had no clue what to say because no one had ever said such thing to me. I thought of a name. I didn’t know whose name I should take because all my friends were her friends as well, so I couldn’t lie. While I was thinking for a name, my cell beeped again. It read ‘1 new message from Aaliya Naqvi’
‘Kya hua? I knw no1 hs evr said such thng 2 u’
I thought how girls could be so intelligent. They are masters in reading minds and in quick succession came another message.
‘Tel me wat u want 2 say? I knw der is sumthng in ur mind’
Now how did she know that I want to tell her something? I had never shared it with anyone and neither had I given her any indications about it. By now I knew that she knows what I want to tell her.
‘wil u b my gf?’
I gathered all my guts and wrote it on my mobile screen. Although it was a five words sms but I checked it 10 times for any correction. I checked if my grammar is right. I saved the message in drafts and then viewed it several times to see how it will read to her when she opens the message. I checked for my spellings and I realized that I should write it in good English.
‘Will you be my girlfriend?’ I wrote, checked half a dozen of times and finally sent her.
‘Who won’t lik 2 b ur gf?’
‘Then you are my official girlfriend from today:D’
“Official girlfriend” now what the hell does that mean? I thought after sending her that message. People generally write ‘I love you’ or some romantic verse on such occasions, ‘what a crap did I do?’ I thought. I had made a total mess of the situation. Meanwhile my phone beeped yet again. It was Aaliya’s message.
‘I hav2 go out 4 dinr. I l cum late. U made my day sweetheart:-* Mmmmmmmmuuuuah!’
That last word made me feel better. I presumed that she didn’t get my “official” message. I was a kind of boy who was a common topic of discussion in our class among girls. In fact as Aaliya told me once, two girls even fought with each other on the very first day of the college, claiming me to be their father’s property. To act so stupidly on one of the most important occasions of life, where your real character is at test, was an utter shame for me.
*******
I had a very limited communication with everyone. Even boys talked about me since I didn’t mingle much with any of them. I spoke to everyone in the class but up to an extent and made a point of sharing a one-liner with every individual, at least once a day. I was also the only outsider, unlike other students from Bihar, UP and even my place-Delhi, who did not stay in college hostel but in a nearby Paying Guest. This earned me a distinct title of 'rahsyamai' in my class. Throughout the first and second semester in my engineering life, my friend circle was only restricted to Aaliya. She sat 3 benches behind me with her friend, Suchi, who had a short height and a joint eyebrow. But unconventionally on one ever linked us up-may be because she was a Muslim and I was a Hindu. An alliance was surely not possible. Until that day….
Aaliya was a simple girl who would never be found involved in gossip sessions with other girls although there was a mischievous side to her. But she very well knew the punctuation of life where to put commas and the full stops. Aaliya too never had a lot of friends but her level of congeniality was more than mine. She had a heart of a mother and she could heal anyone’s sorrow with her sweet words. I often teased her by calling Mother Teresa. She was from Ahmedabad, but stayed here in Anand with her father’s own sister.
I had seen Aaliya for the first time in our workshop lab, where all girls where throwing nets at the boys to finish their metal work pieces as it required rigorous filing to make it into a perfect shape. While other guys were doing the favor with a hope for girl’s heart in return, I had asked for a family pack of Kit-Kat from Aaliya in return when she approached me to finish her work piece. Since that day we walked together after the college. While she caught a chakra from a point about a kilometer from our college, I walked to my pg. We messaged each other all evening and then slept only to come to college and meet each other again. At times we bunked classes to go to Vidyanagar to eat or have coffee at CCD.
*******
Like after the delivery of a child, a female gets the ability to feed the milk to their infants, people in love become poets. We still messaged each other after coming home, but the theme of the message were romantic and “I love you” and “mmmmmmmuuuuuuah” filled half of our inboxes. She still sat with Suchi, 3 benches behind me but every 15 minutes she asked for my notebook in which she wrote somewhere in the middle pages-‘Missing you sweetu badly’. We even decided our kids’ name-Aaryan and Suhana-after all we were SRK fans.
But while all this was going on we never let anyone in our college knew that our friendship has transcend to the next level, not even to Suchi, because we presumed that people around us are not too matured and are orthodox to understand our love. In the past a friend of mine had warned me from walking with her after the after the college, as she was a Muslim. He feared that someone from her community will spot us and will cut me to pieces. Later on we came to know that he liked Aaliya and had a huge crush on her. Beside that Aaliya’s uncle was trustee of the college. We both had decided to play safe in our real lives, while we became more dangerous each day in our imaginary world.
*******
When people are in love they tend to forget the basic laws of nature. They jump in air without realizing that law of gravity will not let them be in air for a very long time, it will pull them down. Religion was never a consideration in our relationship. Neither of us were intellectual enough to give an extempo even for 30 seconds. We knew just one thing that if Shahrukh and Gauri can get married, so could we. If they can complete their love story, so could we. But as they say, some love stories have blood on them.
(To be continued....)
