Crushing Crushes!

A dear friend of mine just got me down the memory lane to where I began my journey of handling crushes and being crushed!

While growing up and as adolescence set in on my hitherto super seedhi life, I used to have crushes @ of one every day...yes, you read right-almost EVERY DAY on an average. I think it is a little girlie thing don’t you dare single me out now my sisterhood gender on this. We little girls become all ‘awwww-ed’ with and about anyone who is relatively nicer or essentially cuter or gives us a little more than usual attention. For some, this inbuilt defective tendency continues till an unfathomable age, as I am a living proof. So I used to think the world about the new computer teacher-the only male teacher by the way in a convent school, governed by super staunch nuns-are there ever nuns who aren’t those anyways? Also about the friends’ cousins, the aunt’s brother, my elder brother’s friends, the shop keeper’s cute son and heck, much to my embarrassment now, even the boutique owner in those days he was called a tailor but that sounds even more awful and hence these small fonts to escape readers in a rush. There’s a reason why the government does not provide voting rights to adolescents and I just proved them right. But on second thoughts, if they did, at least the leaders representing our country would be good looking...sigh!

So my friends could pretty much count my crushes on their fingers, not the middle ones, please. And for accurate counting here I mean each finger getting into further sub divisions of three and thereby thirty at a time would suffice for reference’s sake. Just so that our moms would not know while eves-dropping, we rechristened the hunks as Anita for say Arun, Sonia for Saurabh, etc*the names have been changed to maintain the privacy of those concerned and also a concerned me* And before you think I was the worst, to keep a count of my friends’ crushes we had to maintain the abacus!

But more of my crushes some other time...this post is not about THAT!

I can almost imagine with sadist pleasure, you watching the screen with a gaping mouth and a disdained look that says, ‘She ranted one page about this crap and says she will “talk” about it some “other” time.’ Yes, sorry, this post was meant to be about people who had crushes on me and the encounters thereby which thankfully did not lead to the ‘happily ever after’.

Cut to my first year in college-the bubbling excitement of being on the threshold of adulthood was barely under control and we attended college for almost a full month as dedicated students. Of course later we realised that in Kanpur, you DON’T attend college, you just appear before the exams to collect your admit cards and then for the exam itself.

There was this College Union Leader. Remember Salman Khan in a flick called ‘Tere Naam’ but minus the atrocious hair flicks? He was the dada of the college-everything, even the teachers seemed to be under his control. He somehow developed a fascination for the plain Jane in me. While I would sit in the class and try to listen to the lectures, he would stand outside and watch me through the French windows. Then like the good Hutch puppy or is it Vodafone now, he would follow me around. This went on for a month till I became the butt of everyone’s jokes, as the moment I entered college and till I left, I had acquired an obnoxious, unpaid, almost pupils dilated for he would just stand and stare, as if in life there was no care body guard. I remember just when I had decided to not come to the college because of him that I got into trouble with not getting an admit card for some stupid reasons. And who else would I have to turn to instead of standing in long queues to wait for irritated professors to hear my plea!

His answer- “You do not worry, the admit card would reach your home.”

Me- “But I can wait here till you get it, sir.”

He- “Girls like you should not wait around here, aap jao, mein hoon na.”

Needless to say the admit card reached my home, without me being asked for my address.

I had not complained about him for he never really tried to approach or talk to me and anyways no one would have listened to me against him. I did not see him again, although till now I can picture precisely his slightly tilted stupid head and fixedly gazing face and all the filmy drama that he created. Maybe that was my preparatory ground of influence for acquiring the title of ‘drama queen’ that I subsequently developed.

There was this another time when a friend’s cousin managed to extract from me, my phone number after badgering me about it for months. After five days of telephonic conversations, he proposed to me I do sound vain here, don’t I? Well, it is a good thing I can’t show you pictures of these samples, so you would then sympathise with me instead. Now, I was in a fix. How do I tell this totally bhaiyya ji type manushya that this was the worst idea ever, even worse than watching shows like Rakhi Sawant or Rahul Mahajan getting hitched on television-my epitome of experiencing hell on earth? So I managed a little argument to confuse his duh-brain-ic abilities. He was thin like a rake and dim like a cake*used the analogy for rhyme’s sake*.

Me- “I don’t think we would have a future. You are soooo thin and I am well, not soooo thin. We would look terribly odd and soon you won’t like me anymore.”

He- “You think I am so shallow to like you for your body. I like your soul”

Me- *Oh my bloody hell-actually thinking that and not saying it aloud...probably because he had rendered me speechless and thank god I did not lose my voice forever out of shock, after hearing such utterances*

Somehow I succeeded to use my weight for the first time in my favour. Sometimes when I still bump into him in public gatherings, after a cold eye, I get a murderous look from him of his late realisation that he was hoodwinked then and how!

There was another episode that is tumbling down the annals of my suddenly revitalised memory. When we gang of school girls would get together at someone’s house, our idea of fun would be to get phone numbers of the hottest, cutest guys in towns and call them up to indulge in anonymous chats over the speaker phone. One would talk and the rest would indulge in mute guffaws. My friends were professionals in the game and we would later sit and do character assassination of too eager boys to spill their beans. With no caller Id’s and cell phones in those good old days, we connived with panache, knowing we’d never be caught.

One fine day at my friend’s house, I was challenged and a new number was put on the platter. I was handed the baton*in this case the telephone receiver* and instructed to get him bewitched. Come to think of it, television shows like “Emotional Atyachaar” where boyfriends/girlfriends get loyalty tests done on their lovers, was actually our brain child, devised years ago but sadly not patented. Anyways, there was a capsule course of voice training given by my batch mate followed by a briefing of what I should or should not do and say yes, the only thing missing was an armour and gun for I felt I was going at the border for a war and the onus of all womankind was on my not-so-little shoulders.

I spoke to this so termed ‘newest dish on the block’ for half an hour and was quite proud of myself, as everyone looked at me with a new respect for they didn’t expect me to last beyond 5 minutes. I still remember we all used the name “Anamika” ironically and left half of the eligible guys in quaint little Kanpur wondering who the hell for ‘who the fuck’ was not so common then was Anamika, screwing up the happiness of their lives.

The drama began when two days later I got a call from this ‘dish’ at my home number. What the fuck! Yes, I decided to fuck decency even in my thought bubble. This had never happened before with any of us girls that the guys managed to know who we were or get our numbers. They were always left at our mercy, to make the next call at OUR pleasure-that is whenever we got together again.

All hell broke loose. My virginal attempt became the biggest screw up and for a long time I got blank calls and pleading calls when I picked up the phone, till he eventually gave up. We never got to know how he reached me but our little secret enterprise died an untimely death and all Anamikas were wiped off from the face of Mother Kanpur for good.

Another dim wit of the highest order, called at my house and the schmuck flirted with my mother thinking it was me and my mother carried along with the whole idea for a couple of calls, throwing in her defence that she wanted to get to the bottom to know how deep my knees were in it. Years later, now I tease her that she did so then for her own little kicks that she must have got out of it!

Enough revelations for now! Such is life-there have been rarely “crush”ed people advancing towards me whom I did not actually want to crush with a rolling pin.

Does everyone go through these buggers or am I god’s special child?