It was the last day of summer and the first day of monsoon. And for a brief period in the morning, both conditions coexisted amiably. The kids were all in high spirits, the classroom entropy at a fever pitch. There was too much information to divulge about what they did during the summer vacation and too little time to do it in before the first teacher arrived. The teacher came but the excitement in the classroom refused to die down in front of this authority. The teacher thumped on the table for a bit and shouted ‘silence’, ‘quiet’ and other such words aimed to bring the decibel down. Order spread slowly like water on cotton. Still the teacher felt some other gesture was required to put a marker down to these kids. And one of her favourite modes of reprimanding unruly boys was making them sit with the girls. She surveyed the room for a martyr.  

It didn’t matter that it was the first time in the whole morning that he talked but as his luck would have it, his foray into conversation happened at the same inopportune moment the teacher’s eyes were looking for moving lips. He was plucked from his cocoon in the middle row bench and planted in the first row on the girls’ side. He didn’t plead his innocence but listed out names of a few boys who made more noise than him as he walked gingerly over to the other side. Other boys got the message and a hush enveloped the classroom.  

He was still seething when he sat down. The first day of fifth standard was not off to a good start. He made an enclosure out of the immediate air surrounding his body and wrapped himself in it, trying to make him into an entity detached from everything else happening in that classroom. Before he could secure himself in this airy seclusion, a waft of sandalwood fragrance hit his senses like a polite enquiry. He looked up to his right and found the meaning of life. She was just a girl but, in her presence, he was suddenly made acutely aware of his own existence. He froze when she looked at him. She smiled at him like no one had smiled before and no one would in the future. He smiled back but his facial muscles did not move. 

She was a new admission, so he could ask her her name. He had already caught a glimpse of her name in his peripheral vision from the name slip on her notebook. A notebook that was neatly wrapped in brown paper with plastic film coating. Who brought neatly wrapped notebooks to the first day of school.  But she didn’t know that he was in possession of this information and that sounded like a good place to start the conversation from. But the first words that came out from his mouth was her name and that window to ask her name was suddenly shut in his face. 

He improvised. 

Tara, could I borrow your pen? She didn’t say yes or no like the other girls in class. She said of course and placed her Reynolds 045 carbure pen in his expectant palm. He acknowledged the receipt with a smile, this time his facial muscles cooperated. 

Time flew. The bell woke him from his sandalwood redolence wrapped trance. The teacher departed without telling him to go back to his seat. For a moment, he was confused about his place in the world. He wanted an extension on the punishment so he could sit there longer. But how much longer? The whole day? The whole year? For the rest of his life? The heart is always greedy in the matter of time. But he made his way back to his usual place; heavier than his journey in the opposite direction forty-five minutes back. 

Next period was Geography. He tried to make himself unruly as possible hoping this teacher would also dislocate him to his favourite place on earth. But that hope was misplaced. He spent the hour looking at the back of her head, fiddling her Reynolds between his fingers. Maths, Malayalam, Science, Hindi and Social Studies all came and went as he sat looking at her trying to remember her fragrance. 

Monsoon bundled the summer over fully by evening. He came home with soggy feet and a sunny heart. He took her pen out of his pencil box, looked at it and carefully put it back in. Tomorrow he can speak to her when he returned her pen. He was kept awake at night by this prospect of a second encounter with her. 

The school looked like a new place that day. He floated to his classroom and after he took his usual seat, his eyes renewed its acquaintance to the field of view from the other day. Except there was no Tara there. She must be late, he thought. The teacher didn’t call her name during roll call and he felt strange. Where is she? Why is no one else not worried about her absence? He struggled to make it through the day in that classroom that had no Tara in it. 

May be her parents got a transfer and had to move.  Maybe she was trying out different schools in town and could come back to this one again. At least she would come to get her pen back. An unreturned pen is bad luck. He turned around in bed concocting all the possibilities that could have manifested Tara’s absence. 

Some other girl who doesn’t smell like sandalwood sits in Tara’s place now. He does not look at her. 

Writers and artists usually tend to disown their first work. Since they were still learning the ropes at that point, they feel it could have been better when they look back on it.  But love was different. It was always the first love that we remember fondly and cherish. It happens when we were not looking. When we haven’t yet perfected the act of falling in love and our hearts didn’t know the feeling of getting broken. It was the most honest act one could ever do in their life. Years later, he realised his most honest act had happened on that first day of fifth standard. The memory of which he tucked away carefully in a secure part of his brain, to revisit in secret, something to take care of for the rest of his life.    

And he still carried that Reynolds pen with him in case he met her again and she asked for her pen back. He would try to see her in the strangers’ faces he passed while walking through neon-lit streets. People became a slideshow of images. Unfulfilled love stories reminded him of her. Such chance encounters happened in movies all the time. But this was no movie. This was is life.   

                                                             ***      

Kiran Gandhi is a writer from Kerala looking for humour even in desperate circumstances. A writer of literary fiction mainly, his short story ‘Reverse Swing’ was published as part of an anthology. He blogs at https://kirangandhiblog.wordpress.com/ where he shares his writing exploits and random observations.