The end of a love story

While remembering those days in school there are some things that we cannot forget ever in our life. These incidents can range from the first day in a new school to the various characters we have known, including our friends. There were love affairs and fights and all such activities. Here I am trying to narrate something which happened to me on one such day.

This is a story about my first girlfriend and how that relation came to an end. Before the story, I’ll tell you something about this relation I had with this girl.

It was my most-idiotic friend who went to Nita and told her that I love her and that too without me knowing about it. Obviously he, neither me, had any idea about what this ‘love’ thing really is. We, like all teenagers, mistook ‘infatuation’ for ‘love’. He thought my comments about her being cute, her dress and all were because I was in love with her. Anyways, when I got the green signal after two days, when her friend came to me and said “Vishnu, the answer is ‘yes’!”, I decided to play along.

This girl was, she still is – I hope, a very cute girl; the type who is surrounded by friends and admirers at all times. I was quite puzzled to hear that she likes me, out of the blue, as I didn’t know that my friend went to her for me. I thought am going to have very bad days ahead as I’ve seen my friends suffering with their girlfriends, by buying chocolates and gifts for them. 


But in my case it was all different. She bought me chocolates almost every day. She bought gifts for me and made gifts with her own hands. All in all it was going very well. But during one of those days it all went “KABOOOMMM”. Yeah, I had a very narrow escape from that explosion.

“Vishnu, come meet me in the staff room immediately after this hour”, said my Math teacher when he came to the class on that fateful day. I said, “Yes sir, but, May I know why?” His answer was rather odd and incomplete. He said, “We’ll see after this hour!” 

Well, I understood that part where I’ve to go and meet him at his desk, but he was denying sharing any more about the reason why I was summoned. “Hell,” I thought, “these guys get something, everyday, to call me and harass me in front of all the staff.” In fact, it’s true. It’s true that I was a regular visitor to the staff room and almost every day the teachers had the pleasure of stepping on my nerves. But they did that, not because of there is some real pleasure that they got from this regular activity, but they knew if I continued on that path I would reach nowhere. Anyways, am sorry to inform them that am still in the middle of no-where where my vehicle ran out of petrol and am desperately waiting for a passer by vehicle to get a lift. Sob sob….

Anyways, I decided to visit him, my math teacher, only when the bell rang after the interval. As I stepped into the staff room many a pair of curious-looking eyes turned towards me, as if they are seeing me for the first time. From this reaction I came to an understanding with myself, “It’s something very bad this time. You should do everything you can to prevent yourself from standing and sleeping which might lead to severe head injury if you fall!” With this ringing loud in my head I faced him, Mr. Anil, our math teacher.

“Sir, you wanted to see me?” I said. “Yes, yes. We wanted to ask you something.” We? Who all are in this ‘We’? I looked around in the room. Hmm! All of them are there. Don’t they have classes to teach? I came back to face Mr. Anil and he shot another question at me, “So, Vishnu, tell me something. How many girls you know who are named ‘Nita’?” And with this query I became alert than ever!

“Pardon!” said I and the question got repeated. “Well,” pausing for a minute I threw back a question, “Why would you want to know, sir?” I sensed he was serious and without any hesitation, replied, “Sir I know 3-4 girls with that name. I’ve a neighbor, a cousin, a friend of a friend and there is a girl in my class, too, with that name! Why do you ask me such a question?” For this he raised an envelope and asked me, “Then, of all these girls who gave you this Greetings card?”

“Oh! Yeah! The game is on!” I started to sweat, really hard. “What should I say?” There were no answers in my mind. I, the guy who was always spontaneous in countering anything thrown at me, had nothing to say. Totally speechless! Mr. Anil was all ears to me and he could even hear me gulping down the last drop of saliva. I could feel my legs losing balance. Sweat trickled down from my nose tip and chin. It was like I was inside a tandoori oven!

“Sir,” I managed to gain some strength and said, “She is my neighbor. From where did you get this?”

“Why do you want to know? And I am asking the questions here. Not the other way around! And, I know this is not from your neighbor.” was his response. But, I noticed that, nobody else in that room where talking, either to me or between them.

I made a desperate attempt. “Sir, I don’t know from who this is. It was in my place, one day, when I returned from home after lunch.”

Hilarious, isn’t it? I knew I was in big trouble when I looked into his eyes. He didn’t say anything for some time. Then he said, “Either you should tell me the truth or you shall come back tomorrow with your father.”

“No way!!!” I thought, “dude, you should never let you dad know about this! Else it’ll be your cremation the very next day! Do you want your father to eat dry chapattis in a jail?” and I decided, “No, I shouldn’t let my dad know anything about this.” So I told him, “Sir, actually, this girl is from my class.”

There was a triumphant smile on his face, for an instant. But he managed to wipe that off and tried to look a little grimmer than he usually was. So, there I was, standing helpless to have opened the doors, for those interrogators from hell, to my girlfriend. I thought, “You idiot! How could you let them have your private property? You could’ve been a bit more careful to conceal it from prying eyes!” 

Prying eyes? Oh yeah! There was no one in the HSE department who didn't know about our affair, except for the teachers, may be. They seldom get such hard evidence to give away unwelcome and free advice to the lovers and when they get one, they are not going to let this slip that easily. So I expected a lot more grilling.

After my confession about the girl being my classmate, somebody was sent to my class room to call Nita to staff room. I was aware of it only when I saw her coming in! I knew from her face that she had an outline about what was happening in there. Looking at her face didn’t help me at all. I saw the accusing look which said, “You gave me away? How could you?” As if answering to this question, I nodded at her and looked at the card Mr. Anil was holding. She looked at it and looked back at me as if asking me, “How in the world did that get there?” I nodded again, saying, “I don’t know!”

Mr. Anil: “Did you give this to Vishnu?”

Nita: “Yes, sir”

He: “So, you wrote all these in this?”

She: “I wrote what, sir?”

He: (Pointing at all that poetry written in beautiful English) “These lines.”

She: “No, sir! I didn’t write any of those!”

He: “You sure?”

She: “Yes, sir. It’s true that I gave this to Vishnu on Christmas. But there was nothing written on it then! My brother bought this for me and I thought why buy a new one to give him when I have this. So I gave it to him. But am pretty sure that there was nothing written on it when I gave him this card!”

“Well, that was a very nice performance! I didn’t know she had this much acting skills! She should become an actress,” I thought. I felt all that chocolate and such things, which she fed me till then, roll into a big roll inside me. I could feel that big lump fighting its way out of my body. I could feel the pressure at my back-end. And, I wanted to barf on her face!

I could see all those eyes focused on me are filling with disbelief. “Well, people, please wait. Let me make it clear for you,” and I began.

Me: “So, you are saying that you didn’t write this?”

She: “Yes”

Me: “I thought so! [Laughing] I knew you couldn’t write even one complete sentence in English! Anyways, I should congratulate whoever wrote that. Such powerful lines!”

She: “Who said I can’t write in English?”

Me: “Oh, don’t tell me! Read your book, sometimes!”

At this point Mr. Anil understood that it’s going to be a fight and he intervened.

He: “Stop this! What are you doing?! Don’t you understand that this is not a market?”

Me: “Oh! Sorry sir.”

She: “Sorry sir, but what I am saying is the truth.”

Me: “Change your name to ‘Savithri’. Then they might believe you.”

He: “Vishnu, stop it!”

Me: “Again am sorry, sir.”

He: “Are you mocking me?”

Me: “Am not mocking you, sir. But if you would care to look deeper you will find the truth!”

He: “And, what is the truth?!”

Me: “That she is the liar!”

She: (Sobbing! Am in trouble and she is the one crying! I should be cleaning the whole floor with tears!) “Sir, I’m not a liar. You can see that this is not my handwriting. Then how can it be me who wrote this?”

Oh God! Yes, it was not her handwriting. Why didn’t I think about it before? I should’ve thought about this when I saw the letter in English!

“Let me see that.”

Who is that? It was our Hindi teacher. She took the card and had a look at it and went straight to my class room. After a minute she came back with Lida, a mutual friend of me and Nita. Then teachers began questioning her.

Teacher: Isn’t this your handwriting?

Lida: Yes, ma’am.

Teacher: So you wrote this? [Wow! What a sensible question!]

Lida: Yes, ma’am.

Teacher: Who asked you to write this?

Lida: Nita. She said she wanted to give him a card for Xmas and she wanted to have a lot of English poetry in it. So I helped her.

Well, to tell you the truth, I was at cloud 9 when I heard her spilling the tumbler of truth. It was me who had this winning smile on my face, this time. I looked at all the teachers’ faces and now I saw that they were all looking at Nita, with the same anger and disbelief they had for me. Of course they understood that I was saying the truth and Mr. Anil asked me to return to the class and not to speak to anyone. I was out of the picture and they were grilling those two girls for what they had done – trying to blame an innocent student with the false allegations of forging a love letter! Man!!! Was it a relief? Hell YEAH!!!

By the end of their discussions those two girls were asked to bring their parents to see Mr. Anil. Lida had to bring her parents as she had facilitated Nita with English poetry and helped her in writing those in that card. I felt awfully sorry for her as she was the one who said the truth in my favor. She still is a good friend of mine.

In the evening I went to staff room and asked Mr. Anil, “Do I still have to bring my father?” To my dismay, his answer was, “Yes, you have to. If you bring you father you won’t be allowed to sit in class.”

I understood it was my turn to act big and score the prize. I began, “Sir, what did I do to deserve this? Do you really think that I did anything wrong here? I told you the truth!” and to add some spice I managed to show two drops of tears. By this time his wife – theirs was a love-marriage! – came to my rescue. She said, “Oh poor child! Don’t be sentimental now. You are meant to have many a relations at this age!” Brightened by her soothing words I asked Mr. Anil, “Sir, now tell me, do I have to bring my father tomorrow?” adding a grin in the end. I knew he was trapped and he said, “Okay. You don’t have to.” And so the victory was mine!

As for my ex-girlfriend - we didn’t talk, after this incident, for months. I didn’t want to talk to her. But I could see that she didn’t really want to suffer, but it was a desperate attempt made to save her skin, even though she didn’t think much about me. She might’ve thought that I would somehow manage as I am a boy.

And now, I’ll tell you how that card got into Mr. Anil’s hands.

The outer covering of notebooks was my favorite place to conceal things. I used to place money and other thin stuff inside these covers and was so far successful in concealing these things from anyone else. So I put this card from Nita, inside the cover of my Math homework book. 

It was all good till our visiting lecturer for Physics, aka ‘Torque’ - as he began his first session with torque and for at least one week he wouldn’t move from this topic, took this book and said, “Nice cover!” Mr. Torque went on to open the covering and there it was! There comes a greeting card with lot of poetry and kisses and all. Like in a hat-trick by a magician! And that one little, insignificant and innocent act nailed the fate of my relation with Nita!


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