LOVE STORY 99- SCHOOL “LOVE” SELDOM IS FORGOTTEN- PART III

The water coolers were thoughtfully placed at different locations in the school- One at every floor. So when she walked to the end of the floor and almost stopped near the BLUESTAR machine at the end, my heart skipped a beat- She was indeed thirsty,wasn't she?

If Fiola had indeed stopped by and drunk from the glass there, that moment would have been long erased from my memory. But the turn of events suggested that while things appeared to happen within moments, this was one of the rare moments in my life. Something told me she was just going to give the cooler a miss. And she did! I just followed her, keeping safe distance so that no more Sister Nivys will get in between..

I followed her down the stairs and onto the lawn of the school- one that was lush green and just showed signs that all the fees money did not quite go down the drain. At the fag end of the lawn, just near the basketball court was another cooler. Only that this was cut off from the crowd. Not many who would have seen us from the school building would have been able to identify us- not with this distance! She took the glass in hand, moved to the bench put over there right under the shade and sat down. Her already short skit slid up a notch higher as she sat cross legged. Again, she placed her hand on her knees and looked at me straight in the eye as she took a sip from the glass.

"You don't wanna sit kya?" Fio asked, looking at me right in the eye.

"Uh..huh...sure..ya.." I sat down beside her,cautious not to sit too close.

"You have a girlfriend?"

I was shocked. You can't even blame me for that. Honestly, a boy's convent never allows you to interact with girls so comfortably. The only other interaction with girls were at inter school sports meets or with girls within your own colony. Alas, I never went out with girls so often, Cricket and Tennis taking up most of my time.
So I was shocked- to hear from a woman i met an hour ago- asking me if i had a girlfriend.

Trying my best to hide my emotions and the shock, I made an effort to be as casual in my reply as possible- "Um...No..none till date.."

And then as if i had to ask her back, I asked -

"Do you have a boyfriend?"

"YeSSSS"

My heart sank. She said that YESSS with a big smile. Hell! It's not even important how she said it- she had a boyfriend! Who am I in this picture then? Bhaiyya????I didn't want to entertain any more of such thoughts as my face would have betrayed me and exposed how i felt.

"Oh....Wow...great..."

"Naa..not really great and all...Actually I'm bored now. I want to dump him ya!"

"Dump him? You mean..just..aise hi..?"

"Noo..See, he's kind of...umm..possesive. And I don't really like that. In fact he won't even like me talking to you now like this."

What kind of guy would like that,I thought. But something struck me and then I asked,

"Can he see us now? I mean, is he here?"

"Yea,the Ohm's Disciples contest- He's a part of it."

I always hated Ohm's law. And now I hated it even more!

Thankfully, my mind didn't have to worry about Ohm Baba anymore. Fio's skirt had slid a notch higher, and for the first time in my life, I was talking to a girl even as she was turning me on. I didn't realize she had caught my gaze at her bare flesh.

"Four fingers above the knee..."

"What??"

"That's the rule for the length of the skirt;Four fingers above the knee." She said smilingly, knowing fully she had caught me. She knew it. And she didn't seem to mind.

"That's a sexy rule. Whatever be the logic behind it, I'm sure some people are more than happy." I said.

"Well, I don;t know about some people.." She said as she slowly slid her hands from her knee and up to sit with her hands folded right at her bosom. But as she did that, her fingers "accidentally" pulled the shirt a little higher showing ample skin now."...You sure are loving it" She continued with a grin.

We couldn't afford to sit there for long, as something sure would have gone wrong. At least the place and time were inappropriate.I took the glass she was still holding. My fingers brushed hers, and this time, I knew what I was doing. She always did.

We walked back to the school building. She turned quite a few heads even at that age- partly because most of the boys there were from a Co-ed school where generally skirts aren't that short. For 15 year old kids, at the time, this was simply a cherry on the cake!

We teamed up again with Jag and Binaifer and Aryan and Bhakti. I could Jag and Binaifer still continuing their highly intelligent conversations (read boring) about paleontology and existence of fossilized creatures. Yawn, the very thought makes me yawn! We sat down for lunch in the fairly big hall for assembly for lunch. We got ourselves a corner seat, far from the commotion of the other schools. Shilpa too joined us with a guy for lunch. I saw Aryan and he knew what i felt- a bit insecure. This guy was perhaps a woman's dream when it came to looks- Taller than most of us and fair; He possessed sharp features typical of a north Indian- Punjabi i guessed!
Suddenly, Fio got up from beside me and crossed to stood next to this dude and drew our attention with those killing words: "Hi, Please meet Tarun Arora, my boyfriend!"

"WTF!!!" I felt like shouting that aloud! I didn't have to...My expression did the job. Aryan got my message and put his hand on my shoulder as if to offer condolence. But he wasn't the only one who noticed- Tarun and Fio could read my mind as well, it seemed. Tarun whispered something in her ear, and she had but a question mark on her face.He whisked her away out of the dining hall. I was eager to follow, but i didn't want to make it so evident before Bhakti and Binaifer. Fio and Tarun did not return till we had finished lunch. And with every piece of sandwich I was biting into, I was biting into anger building up within me. Why did she have to leave me just like that?

A couple of hours passed by, and I still saw no signs of her. Finally she walked into our room all alone. Thankfully! It was as if the question I had to ask was written all over my face. She actually tip toed in front of with hands folded,stood in front me shrugging her shoulders. Her eyes conveyed what she wanted to say, but i wanted an explanation- honestly, I was not entitled to any of it, but i took my chances. I was beginning to get a bit possessive too early-perhaps that's what distinguishes our love then and love now.

"Sorry...I was away for quite a while. But.."

"An hour!!"

"ya, but he's my boyfriend for Christ's sake!"

"Oh...Ya..right...I forgot....my mistake.."

I just turned back to my project. I was the only one guarding it. Well, it was more so because I was the only one without anyone to chat with.I pretended to do something with the wires, but perhaps I was not the best at acting. I could feel Fio's hands on my shoulders just then as she said, "Ramm, sorry...Actually, Tarun was jealous that I spent time with you near the cooler, chatting with you all alone. One of his ass***e friends saw us, and tipped the "boss". SO he was no doubt infuriated. He whisked me away to lecture me on all this!!"

"So..what did he eventually have to say?"

"What do you insecure guys generally say" She said with a rather sarcastic tone. "i'm sorry, it's him I am pissed of with."

"No Problem...And what did you have to say?" I asked, almost anticipating the answer in my favour.

"well, he said- Dare you talk to him again! I showed him the finger..and here I am...with you.."

"What!!!You.." As I said, I expected it, but it still shocked me. Se hardly knows me for a few hours...

"Look, he anyways was a jerk! A loser! I just got the opportune moment to tell him that!"

I smiled. She smiled back playfully. The rest of the afternoon was lost in conversation about our families,friends, Likes...I had never till date talked so much about my life or bothered to take interest in anyone's life to this extent. Two hours flew by in a jiffy. And it was time to pack up for the day.

The six of us- Me,Fio,Aryan,Bhakti,Jag and Binaifer walked down the stairs of the school together. We spoke very little though. As we reached the gate, we grouped again into pairs. I turned towards Fio- I wished time zapped by soon and I'll see her tomorrow again. We said good byes and the girls were ready to walk past the gate when i suddenly remembered...

"Fio...Wait...." I called out and walked towards her. She stopped and turned around.

"May I have your phone number please?" I had to gather guts to ask her that. She knew what it meant. We all know what it means.

"I normally don't give out my number you know..." She said.

"Oh.." The disappointment was evident in my voice.

"No No..please don't misunderstand..." '5690407'..she wrote on my palm. She came close enough to write her number on my hand. I simply loved her smell.

"Please don't call after 08:00pm. My dad wouldn't like it! See you....byeeeeee"

Me,Aryan and Jag walked towards our bikes. I was not too sure about Aryan and Jag, but I remember whistling my way home as I pedaled slowly, every pedal push reminding me of Fio! I couldn't pretty much focus on anything else once home. I took care not to wash my hands as it had her number. The worst mistake a guy could ever do is
take a girl's number and not call her.

With no one in the house at the time, I secretly dialed the number..but then cut the phone before the call could go through. My heart beat a million beats as I dialed her number again.

"Hello.." I guessed it must have been Fio.

"Uhh..Hi..Is..Fiola."

"Ramm!!" She identified me, interrupting the question. "Glad you called...dear"

PART IV Soon..

LOVE STORY 99- SCHOOL “LOVE” SELDOM IS FORGOTTEN- PART II

It was Diwali vacation in school, but we were determined to win our project this year. So we three musketeers met up every morning in school and started work on our project. Jag did a lot of fact finding on the technical aspects of the disease- The HIV virus, how it first spread to humans…blah blah blah.Aryan and I always thought on similar lines. So we started conceptualizing how to model the project and how to showcase our message as crisp as we can. The most interesting part was when we had to sketch or cut paste nude women to be shown as prostitutes- one of the channels of the virus transmission. Little boy sure made his presence felt all the time! And of course, we gave ourselves the frequent intermittent breaks- watching movies at my place- And by movies I don’t mean the ones by Yash Chopra or Steven Spielberg.


Venue: Our Lady of Good Hope High School Day 1

If anything, most of our peers were jealous of one big mistake they made this year- not taking part in any of the projects. For the venue was decided as ‘Our Lady of Good Hope High School’- the only girls’ convent in the vicinity of our school and the only oasis for students of Auxilium. Entry to this school on any other day would be out of question. We three were among the lucky few Auxilites to get a chance to spend three whole days with the girls of Good Hope. Yes- three days; with the final day being the D-Day!For the first time, Jag, Aryan and I weren’t worrying about how our project would turn out. We were too busy imagining ourselves spending gala time with one of the Hope girls. As we walked past the gates of Our Lady of Good Hope High School, our eyes followed all the beautiful girls around. We were so lost in ogling at the women…err…girls...that we forgot to check on which floor the AIDS awareness project was scheduled to happen.

“Pyaason ko kuaan mil gaya yaar!” commented Aryan.

True, we were like the desert people who hit upon a pond of fresh water after years of roaming in the desert. Finally, we managed to climb up and reach Room 210 on the second floor. Of Course, there were Hope girls at every end of the floor with batches that read “HAPPY TO HELP” with their school Insignia in the background. And we guys were more than happy to seek help from every girl at every corner.

A note about these Hope School girls- They never walked with their feet on the ground, thanks to all the admiration and love showered by every guy – school going or not! The black and white checked short skirts above the knee and white blouses practically drove any man crazy beyond limits! And here we just were helping them walk with their feet a notch higher in the sky.




“I give a sh** to the project now!” Said Jag.

“If AIDS Awareness was so beautiful, I would have done a MA in that subject by now” I said.

As we entered the room 210, we saw all the schools in our ward readying their models to be prepared for exhibition. Thankfully, we designed a model that could be put together within minutes. But we ha what most of these schools did not- Enough lighting effects for the models, mechanical devices that made the stuff in the models work, voice effects wherein we recorded our own voices to give an extra effect to the entire presentation! Talking of lighting effects, our hearts lit up when we saw our neighbors for the project- Our Lady of Good Hope!!!!

Four very pretty girls were seated near the table area labeled ‘Our Lady…’ Me and Aryan straight away walked towards the lovely girls and extended our hands with a smile. (we had seen enough English soaps and movies to understand how teenagers approach girls their age) They just smiled and one of them said:

“Hi…Don’t you guys want to first set up something for your project? I mean- you have nothing ready!”

We withdrew our hands even as Jag was controlling his laughter- In vain! We just huffed back to our table and started putting things in place. ‘Wait till they see our project model’ we thought! Indeed, they were impressed to say the least- a life size structure with some dark rooms, many charts, a few buttons on the left to operate the various mechanisms that governed our project model.

“Wow! That is something….” One of them blurted out!

“Hey… Sorry if we were rude, We didn’t mean anything” the other one spoke up now.
There was silence for a moment, and from their looks we understood they signaled us to go over to them for friendship. This time, all of us stepped forward, but didn’t extend our hands to save our noses.

“Hi, I am Ramm- This is my friend Aryan and this is Jagmit”

“Call me Jag” Jag always thought Jag was cooler- Jagmit somehow didn’t go down well with him.

“My name is Shilpa”

“Bhakti”

“Fiola”

“Binaifer”

We exchanged smiles. But had no idead what to start off a discussion with. Suddenly Shilpa got up saying “See you people...Bye” and she left. We had a question mark on our face that was very obvious. We were trying to figure if we did anything to offend her.

“Dun worry, she anyways was here for a while. She’s not in the project anyways”

Fiola said. God! Could she read my mind? Or did I blurt out my thoughts aloud?

We got some conversation started at least! We moved onto discussing about the project, about how hard we worked for it (exaggerated of course!) etc. Fortunately, Auxilium was one of the finest schools in the area, if not the city. So our school name spoke volumes about our personality. Else these Hope girls would trample upon the hopes of many and not even bother to exchange polite words- leave alone sit together and chat.

“So you like Bio, Fio?” By now the discussions had moved to one on one. I tried hard not to stare at Fiola’s shapely soft legs as she sat cross legged with her fingers just on her right knee.

“Fio…??” She remarked with a weird look on her face. I couldn’t make out if she liked that or not. Fortunately she continued,” I like that name…my friends normally call me FILA or Fee you know?”

“FILA..wel..I think Fio is cute, just like you.” Oops! Too much too soon!

She didn’t react, but she wore a special smile for the rest of the conversation. Fio was a perfect example of what you would rate as petite. She had dark brownish hair cutely pinned up way above her head. Her eyes were big, black and perfectly shaped. A gifted sharp nose that went well with the thin lip line she had. She didn’t quite have a gifted voice, but nonetheless, her pretty face more than made up for that.
We talked about our families and talked about our life in school till now. I felt as if I have known this angel for ages, and hoped she felt no differently. We just looked around suddenly and saw that we had been sitting too close- I recollected as every instance I asked her to come closer as I wanted to tell her something more private, we lost track of the fact that we were in a school- her school for that matter- and were here for a project. Sister Nivedita didn’t quite like this, and of course why would she! We were so engrossed in our chat that we couldn’t hear her till Bhakti came and literally pushed poor Fio out of the chair.

“FILA…Go…Nivy is calling…”

The looks Sister Nivy was giving me sure confirmed any doubts that I might have had about what her feelings for me would be. The discussion seemed a bit serious between Fio and Nivy. Fio came back in a while and pulled her chair closer to her school’s table even as Bhakti was waiting for her there. I saw Aryan back to our model, pretending to check the lighting. Jag was gone, so was Binaifer!

I just trudged back to our table. I developed a strong dislike for Sister Nivedita from that moment, and the feeling was just mutual. But just then, As Sister Nivy left the room, Fio signaled with her hand to me as if to say- “LATER…” Her ‘Later’ came sooner than I thought. Not sure why she was the one making the moves and not I. She got up and asked,

” Anyone coming with me to drink some water?”

Aryan and Bhakti were looking in my direction. It was amply clearly that the question was for me. Rather, it wasn’t even a question! I saw a small bottle of water in one of the bags that belonged to these pretty girls. She wasn’t thirsty for water at all!

I just followed Fio a moment after she left the room. I felt all students in the room looking at me, or maybe it was just me thinking so. I didn’t know what to expect, and what not to.

PART III underway…