THAT WEIRD KID
So there I was, mind-numbingly scrolling down
through my timeline or as GRE folks would like to say, ‘staring into the
abyss’, when I stumbled across her status update. Man! She can write some
crappy status and still manage to entice 390,408,532,064 ‘likes’ in a flick of
her hair. Now wait, this post isn’t about my ‘growling-under-the-nose’ for this
unfairness and the stupid sycophancy but it’s about that weird kid who had this
major-raanjhana crush on her.
The kid! He was a normal teenager. And by normal, I
mean below average. Replete with the oiled and immaculately combed hair, he
looked an exemplary model of those dweeb-ish students who raised their hands to
answer every question of the teacher. But this kid was no Chatur-Ramalingam (3
idiots) even, coz he sucked at studies. On top of that he was short too. So
short that during assembly he had to stand at 2nd or 3rd
in line, which he obviously hated because that girl used to stand at the end of
her line. He was frail, debilitated and may be even thinner than that Sméagol (Lord
of the Rings). Okay I know I’m turning this into a full-blown cliché of a high
school loser reminiscent of American Pie-esque movies. But he was all those
things. He sucked at sports or you name any other activity. So in a nutshell,
yes you said it right, he was a LOSER.
But the kid was a dreamer. Not that John-Lennon’s-imagine-song
kind of dreamer. No he had dreams and imagination running wild like a dog
swirling round and round to bite his tail. From love stories, to adventures, to
glorious tales, to dirty wet dreams, to death wishes. The Kid had ’em all. He
would imagine himself as the famous Harry potter, playing Quidditch, fighting
the three-headed dog, saving the stone from Voldemort, and I might add winning
over the witty little thing, that was Hermione. So all he desperately craved
for was that wand and the owl, with his joining letter from Hogwarts.
Okay, I agree, he was a bit loony. I mean normal
kids would think about, why apple drops down from the tree or why sky is blue
in the day and dark at night. But our kid! Oh, he would smile like an idiot
with one finger in his nose and ponder all day about weird stuffs. Like, like he
would ask elders about the guy, who first discovered milk from the cow, what
was he doing there in the first place? And you should read his poem about how
great it feels to pee after holding it for hours. Yup crazy!
But above all he was crazy about her. Every night,
he would sleep himself to stories of adventure and deadly foes and monsters.
And of course, every fantasy would feature her as the damsel in distress. He
would jump in front of fires for her, drown for her and protect her from that evil
fat kid in school. He would do anything to watch her smile. Oh yes, those were the
simpler times when it used to be all about her smile only.
The smile, which could redefine sweetness. Smile
that could dampen the din of melancholy. Smile which was the most updated
version of Life! Everything was a cliché compared to her smile. For him, she
was the most beautiful girl in the face of earth. Beautiful in that 5am
songbird way, slicing the air with the first call of daily life while everyone
goes on to sleep. Beautiful in that hazel-eyed way; Beautiful in those
rose-lips way; in that spicy chilli way that make boys blow out forceful huffs
of breath and make tunes that follow the curves of her body. I don’t know whether
to call it love or just some hormones going crazy but clearly he was smitten.
She would pass by him chit-chatting with her friend,
unaware of his physical existence but that didn't matter to him, because those
fleeting two seconds would be the highlight of his day. In those moments when
she would cross him, he could hear his own heart echoing from his ears to his
tips of fingers. The little torpedoes in his chest would almost give him a
cardiac arrest. He never wanted anything more than a single sight of her. All he
cared about was how he wanted to drown forever in the vast ocean of
unfathomable emotions that he felt for her.
But one fine day, somewhere above on those clouds, that
cupid in his undies with his diabolical plan and that wicked smile, thought to
meddle in this perfect unrequited love-story. Before the kid could fathom what
hit him; out of nowhere, she came up to him to talk about something-something.
His respiration was rendered. Senses momentarily disabled
and legs refused to stand. His every part, every fibre of the body was
involuntarily falling apart, piece by piece. He couldn't even squelch a sound or
much for a word except for once in a while the awkward nodding. I think even Mr
Bean would have uttered something after a while.
But alas! What could have been the best opportunity
knocking at his door, turned out to be a beautiful angel with electric shock,
leaving him all sweaty and setting his heart into arrhythmia. And as once said
by the great wise man, Eminem, “You don’t get another chance, life is no
Nintendo game”, after that episode, opportunity never knocked at his door, not
even a window.
Now you see life is not a theme-park-movie where some
way-way-out-of-league-kinda-hot-girl would fall for a weird-mediocre guy like
our kid. No sir. Nice-hot girls fall for assholes, who turn them into cold
hearted bitches, who nice guys fall for, till they turn into assholes. That’s
the cycle of life, my friend. But the guys like our kid are always the one wandering
far away from this cycle. They are always the fourth person in every triangular
love story.
But all said and done, I think a true love story
never ends and never starts. The kid, now in his twenties, stuck in the
complacent cobweb called life, refuses to grow-up. Every now and then he goes
through her Facebook profile. He doesn’t know why he does that. May be to keep
that ‘Princess-Fabulosa’ in his life or may be to just re-live his crush. Unflinchingly,
every year he remembers her birthday without any Facebook or mobile reminder. But even now he can’t muster the courage to wish
her directly or utter a word in front of her.
Epilogue:
The kid is still that crazy dimwit dweeb, always
lost in his fantasy world. He is still waiting for his owl with the letter from
Hogwarts. He says this is his lucky year.
