Fourteen Years Later...

I met her 14 years ago. I used to be a wide-eyed optimistic pre-teen back then. My grandfather was driving me to her place. I was supposed to borrow notes from her. Being 11, I had never had a girlfriend. So I kind of psyched myself up to believe that "I'll make her my girl". Positive visualization, I guess. And this was even before we actually met.

Then we did.

She was a girl. Looked a little older for her age, she had curly hair like mine and I'd noticed none of that back then. Because she was a girl and I was too busy trying to turn my "charm" on. God, it's been so long. Now I don't even remember where that "charm" lies. Anyway, my trick must have worked. We clicked. Even before her giggling friends inadvertently let me know that she was into me, we were spending quite a bit of time with each other. I had chalked it up to the fact that we had a lot in common in terms of background and habits.

Then I found out that she liked me. Being the eager 11 year old that I was, I acted pro-actively and professed my affection for her, even before I was sure of it. She took it well, obviously. And we started strong. Getting to know someone is an amazing process. People always surprise you. And she was no ordinary girl. Quite like my own little life, hers had also been an unstable and rocky ride until then. And that served as the glue that started binding us together. That and our mutual love for books and good food.

We understood each other. It was sweet, pure and exciting. I have often thought back to that time and even though I'm positive that I didn't really know the profound meaning of the word "love", I can still say that I was in love with her. As love is all about how a person makes you feel. 

But all was not well. 

Like in any love story, there were ups and there were downs. For all intents and purposes, we were kids. And that did affect the scheme of things. Small issues looked large to my eyes back then. I made new friends and all of a sudden, their opinion of my girlfriend started mattering to me. It bothered me that they didn't approve. They had just one reason. She was "fat" according to them. While until this point of time, her looks had never held much importance in my eyes, their disapproval started getting on my nerves. 

Add to this the fact that her mum started intervening by not letting her use the landline to call me, and you spell trouble. (It was way back in 2001 and cell phones had not really taken over in a big way in our neighborhood.) Miscommunication made us drift apart for some time. Neither of us really understood why. We did see each other in school almost everyday but didn't have the common sense to sit down and sort it out.

Then after a year and half, we re-connected. And just like that, it became a roller-coaster ride. We were in our teens now and both of us were eerily like-minded back then. It was a volatile mixture of love, passion and hormones. We were wild and crazy and so much in love. We met on all weekdays, spent hours with each other, marinated in each other's essence and still never got tired of it. We were so attached to each other that we would feel separation anxiety on Friday evenings and would end up starting a fight to help us get through the weekend.

Eventually, she became more important to me than anyone else. She was one person I felt completely at home with. We could be together for hours without uttering a single word to each other and still not get bored. (And this was before we had smartphones and tablets.) She came to mean the world to me. She was my best friend, my confidant, my lover. 

I can't believe that more than a decade has passed ever since. We broke up about seven years ago. It was a bad break up. Yet, we stayed in touch on and off for a few more years after that. Even though we parted in bad terms, she became the scale by which I measured every partner I had after her. I still miss her at times. Not so much as a girlfriend but because of the fact that she knew the child inside me and cared for it. I'd like to believe that she would understand what I mean by that last sentence, even though I haven't spoken to her in years.

Fourteen years later, I can safely say that  even though she happened to me about half a lifetime ago, she changed my life, for the better and sometimes for the worse. Wonder what she's doing right now!