Cotton, Silk and Love!

Valentines day comes too often for my comfort . Every year this same anxiety of ' Is my love life happening enough?! 'So far I haven't passed even once. There is always something lacking. Either the love is far away, Either its too near . Most of the times there is no love at all. And yet when I see lovely cotton-silks blooming around me and smell that change of weather in the air..I know I have known love. More than I am thankful for..more than I have accounted for with my gratitude. And more than what I have understood.

I remember Sharma ji(everybody called him Sharmaji) who never spoke to me unless it was to tease me. He was so annoying, that in order to make me speak to him he would call me names! Once he even invented a poem to make fun of my name. It used to make me mad. I would shout cry and not go to school because he sang that poem to everyone as soon as I entered the scene.

'Pearl pearl main Tayyar
khane main mazedar'.

I hated him then. 
PS. I fondly remember the poem and him because of the poem.

Then there was the Son of the Peon of my playschool. A  territorial and taciturn boy called Raju(what a silly name!). Once I went to school in the evening on the insistence of my cousin who wanted to play on the swings and the usually quiet Raju laughed and showed us around the whole school.(He was just another person that evening as he opened up!)  He allowed me to sit on the swings and even pushed me higher in the sky. There was no one else around from the school that evening and the playground looked like some other time and space. It was the first time I sway so far up in the sky. For the first time it felt that he considered me more alive than the walls of the school. He had looked through me all the living days of my life before that.
The school bell started sounding sweet that day onwards( he used to ring the bell)

Oh and there was a thin wiry surdy boy who followed me on my way back from school. He never said anything except just follow me like he was an ISI agent. It made me miserable. I got so stressed at 13 thinking What on the world was he doing following an ugly girl like me? Now it would be good to meet him on one of these valentine's day if he comes with roses. I love the fact how proportions of our or shapes or the schools ( I was in a convent and he was from a chungi school) we went to didn't matter to him at all! We would have looked like bitter gourd and pumpkin if we were made to stand together . It looks so completely funny now. And sweet.

Then there was this cousin of mine who treated me like a house help! He would give me silly things to do just so I didnt disturb him." Go and see if the hen has layed an egg! Dont come back without an egg!" , "Go and get the fishing pole from Nanaji.". "Get the tumbler from the bathroom" I was such a dutiful Manfriday that it breaks my heart to think of that kind of earnestness now.I adored hims so much and he always left me behind with the old women(nani mom and masi's) He had lovely brown eyes and he knew every nook of the village. He was even allowed to go for shikar with Nanaji and Mama. Once however he agreed to take me in his gang and let me come to their fishing trip. He shoo'd away the wild dogs of other villages, Taught me to roast peanuts and (I still think it could have been a dream) and decorated my hair with flowers of a gulmohur tree. I looked like a mad Red Indian that day...as everybody around picked me up to cuddle and Coo. But I still watch that picture of me and him standing side by side with my hair full of leaves and flowers. I don't think it gets higher than this. That day had all  the silk cotton and love I  needed to be alive. A little more and I would have died of happiness.

And it wasn't Valentines day!