The Crush

Bangalore, can be beautiful in the evening and that too on a lazy Sunday evening with less traffic, it looks even better. I had just come out of my cozy little PG room after finishing an excellent novel by Henning Mankel – The return of the dance master. Had some tea and was upon deciding on going to the nearest mall for one of my surveys for my business plan that’s when I noticed the long road towards Wilson Garden just off the K. H. Road (more popularly known as Double Road I haven’t been able to figure why). I settled for the later option. The road is lined by trees on one side mostly coconut trees and the view is magnificent. As I started to walk towards Wilson Garden I was hardly aware of the surprise that awaited at the end of the road.

Bangalore has these old buildings, Buses and even some places that seem as if they are straight out of R K Laxmans Malgudi Days books. And this road to Wilson Garden is one such place it looked absolutely beautiful with all the greenery. It is a wide road with very little traffic and the buildings that are there mostly belong to Bangalore Municipal Transport Corp. The coconut trees swayed in the breeze while some white clouds were flying in the sky. So I walked along enjoying the long lonely walk, I guess I am beginning to like this loneliness. It started to drizzle. I thought it would not rain for long as I couldn’t see any large piece of cloud in the sky. But Mother Nature can be surprising.

I continued to walk enjoying the rain. In a few minutes the drizzle became a steady rain and I was almost half soaked when I noticed a girl walking in front of me tripping on a pot hole and fall to her knees. I rushed immediately to her aid. I offered my hand, which she accepted and tried to stand erect. She grimaced with pain as she tried to straighten her left leg. It seemed she had hurt her knee badly. She put her right arm around my shoulders for support. I saw a clinic around 20 steps ahead of us. I suggested that we should go there. She agreed.

She tried to limp, all the while her right arm not leaving my shoulders and her cheeks so close to my lips that I only resisted giving her a peck (dont ask me how). My left hand was around her waist to support her and she didn’t seemed to mind. She was wearing a orange kurta and a salwar and she was as fair as a girl should be. We were soaked to the skin by the time we reached the clinic though it had been only a few steps but she walked really slowly. At last I helped her climb the last of the stairs to the clinic and she slid into a chair near by. How I wished the clinic had been a bit farther.

It turned out that the clinic had only one lady doctor and that most of the residents in that locality had chosen this very Sunday evening to fall ill. There was a long queue waiting outside the doctor’s chamber though there were enough chairs for people to sit. She tried to remove the wet strands of hair all over her temple and cheek and I thought she looked absolutely beautiful as slid into a chair beside her. She had big blakc eyes. “Does that hurt?” I asked. She nodded feeling her wounded knee. The salwar was torn at the place she was hurt and the wound showed through the torn piece of fabric. I could see she was bleeding. She saw me watching her wound and said “thank you for helping me”. I said that anyone would have done the same thing. “If I am not bugging you can stay with me until the doctor has seen me because I am dead scared of doctors especially of syringes” she said. I laughed out loud and said that it would be my pleasure; little did she know how much I was enjoying her company.

“I am Priya” she said and stretched her right hand towards me, which I took and told her my name. There was some familiarity in her face and voice, I thought that I had seen her somewhere but I was not able to place her just where. I am pretty bad at remembering faces or even names but I have this knack of remembering voices I think that’s a god’s gift. She asked me where I lived and I told her that I was living in a pg on the Double Road. I told her where I was from and what I was doing in Bangalore. She said that she had been all over India since her father had a transfer job. She said that she was born in Jamshedpur then her family had moved on to Kolkata, then guwahati, then ooty and many other cities, which I don’t remember. And now for the past one year she was living in Bangalore with her family and was working for some software firm. All the while I was staring rather stupidly at her beautiful face. I was so full of her that I forgot to mention that I was from Jamshedpur as well. She chattered about so many things and as usual I said very little encouraging her only to tell more about herself. I loved the way she spoke, the way she looked at me as if we had been friends since the 4th grade.

As the queue neared the doctor’s chamber I gave her my hand to hold and get up but she chose the door instead and limped inside the doctors chamber. Since it was a lady doctor and a lady patient as well I decided to wait outside. All the time wishing that the queue had been a little longer. She came out of the doctor’s chamber in 5 minutes and her knee looked swollen due to the bandage. I asked how she was feeling now she said that she was feeling better. I asked whether she would be able to walk and she said that she would be so I didn’t offer my hand or my shoulder this time. We slowly walked out of the clinic all this while she told me how grateful she was that I had helped her and said sorry to have kept me for so long.

We came out of the clinic and hailed an auto and she climbed into it. She said thanks once again and the auto started moving. She waved at me and so did I. I watched the tail lamp of the auto disappear round the corner. And the rain gods smiled on Bangalore once again.

By the time I found this cyber café I was fully soaked and as I sit here sneezing and keying these words into 360 I realize that I forgot to take her number or email id or any contact data of the girl who was my first crush when I was in the 4th grade.