The Girl in Metro and My First Crush

The girl snapped at me, as if I was drooling into something yummy, which was not mine, and the owner wanted me to shoo-away. She adjusted her dupatta and then tried to cover her bare shoulders by pulling her short kurti. Her face stiffened and she snapped at me again. I could hear the hard quirky sounds of her teeth, pressed against each other. And only then I came to senses, and shifted my gaze away from her and looked outside through the sweat tainted glass. ‘God. She is damn beautiful and she looks just like my first crush in college’.

Once I read in Quora, if the stalker is handsome and well dressed, then girls take him as secret admirer. Well, I was neither well-dressed nor handsome. I was returning from office, and I was in metro. I was a mess. I choose a corner to stand, and the girl with fiery eyes stood beside me.

Some persons have these things. They’re like Jatinga Fire. Innocent birds burn themselves to death. My first crush in college had this ‘Jatinga’ thing. Her reputation reached to college even before we were admitted and our class started.

‘You know, there’s a girl in my school. Simply wow. We were in same class. And I heard she has taken admission to this college’. I didn’t know the guy in front of me was happy or sad. Obviously the ‘wow’ meant that the girl was out of his bound, and he too didn’t find any chance. But it was my first week in college, and I wanted to hear more and more about girls. So I kept hearing him, until oneday he came hurriedly, all sweating and announced as if winning a lottery that the girl was here. In this freaking college.

She was more than beautiful. Short hair and a soft melodic voice gave her an appearance of confident smart woman, who knew what she was doing unlike others. Like Jatinga Fire maybe. Burn them all.

And this girl in metro reminded me of her. As I was glued to her little round eyes and shoulder length short hair, I remembered the days I spent in college. I used to wait for her bursting smile, having a cascading effect over all poor souls. Back in hostel, I used to write diary and only the words were comfort during night, when her pictures were all over my tiny room. At morning during class, I used to sit behind her just to smell her flowery hair and sweet intoxicated fragrance. And when we became friends, I used to listen her songs. God. She had a great voice.

My crush lasted for long three years. The first two years I was hopeless. Friends pulled my legs and then some comforted and advised to open my heart to her. And I was in this classic dilemma. What if she says no! Blah blah blah. But then something happened in last year.

A professor was in due retirement and we planned a farewell party. So I was in this bakery & sweet shop near my college on a sultry Sunday afternoon, hoping to persuade the rotund middle aged uncle seated at cash counter to cough up some money. It was going nowhere. I was hopeless. And then she entered. All alone. In a beautiful blue dress.

‘Hi. What are you doing here?’ she asked.

‘Hi’, I managed somehow. It was a surprise for no reason.

‘What are you doing here?’

‘Mmm..nothing. Just for some donation’, I shot back, ‘What are you doing here?’

‘I was feeling bored at hostel. So thought of eating something. Do you like Misti Doi?’

I forgot the donation and the uncle. I spent the afternoon with her eating sweets and drinking tea, and then strolled the evening with laugh. And then when we stood in front of her hostel gate, I asked, ‘What’s the smell coming from your body?’

‘What? What smell? Is it bad?’ she tried to smell her own dress.

‘No no. I love that. It’s like an unknown flower of jungle’.

She stopped for a second or two and then looked at me. Oh boy. Jantinga fire. Before turning back and vanishing behind the wall, she uttered, ‘I like your smell too.’

Dwarka Mor. My station had come. For a moment, I thought I’d explain to the girl everything. I didn’t mean to ogle her or something. She just started a chain of nostalgias in my head, and I couldn’t help it.

But then what the hell. When I was neither handsome nor well-dressed, girls were supposed to take me a strange stalker, not a secret admirer. I got down.