First Love Letter :)

In my childhood days, making friendship with girls was the last thing i even thought off, for i was very shy and simple kind of a person. Not that I have changed, for even today, i have very few friends from the fairer sex. Anyways, the days when i went to school, were not as liberal as we see today. Boys mingling with girls would surely raise a curious eyebrow then.

To be frank, as any youngster of that age, i too yearned for a damsel, at least, an elusive smile or a letter would have then sufficed. No wonder, most of the times we, i mean the boys of my kind, were left with no other option, but to see, romantic relationships either blossoming or breaking. Now, however, looking back though, i realize, that surely was no love. I guess, it was just infatuation or at the most, physical attraction, for hardly one or two percent of those couple stayed together till date.

I never had a girlfriend to flaunt during those days, howsoever i may have desired for one. But still, i always dreamt of getting a love letter, a love letter from my lady love. And finally, i got one, which only shattered in utter embarrassment.

I was in my second year of my college, felt proud to be in one of the better colleges. In our locality, which then was a predominantly marathi one, there were many kids, and i was vijay dada (big brother) for them. After college hours, i used to gleefully mingle with them as a small kid and play games with them. Here was a small girl, she was in her second standard, exactly ten standards junior to me, the girl was very cute looking one and looked like a doll and i would always played with this girl. The neighbors would tease the girl as my would be, the girl would not understand the meaning, but knew that it was something different and would sometimes cry and sometimes shy away. It was a very funny kind of thing, nobody, including myself ever took seriously.

Almost for one year this kind of joke was carried out. One Saturday afternoon, when i was busy in my preparations to go to the Computer Classes, I saw this cute girl playing something, and somebody again teased her about me, and i too joined the person in teasing her. The girl ran inside, scribbled something on paper in peculiar style of a third standard kid. She then came near my house and in a very innocent way threw that chit inside the door, she tried her best to hide that chit from everybody else, but failed. She then ran away to her house and locked the door.

I bent down and almost embarrassingly opened that piece of paper, all the neighbors were just as curious to see what the girl had written. She just wrote, “mala sarkha chidavtos, me lagna nahi karnar..”, (you keep on teasing me, i will not marry you..”). Oh my God!! here was a toddler, who could barely read or write, dreaming of marrying a youth who was fast growing into a man.

My face turned pale and i really felt very blank that day, was unable to react. The neighbors had their field day that moment and they all read aloud the content of the letter.

No, i never expected such a kind of love letter anyways. But, i felt sorry for the girl, we all played with her, teased her, but never realized that she took it all for real. I felt very bad that day. Bad for how we never care for the feelings of others, for momentary pleasure of ours.

I stopped teasing the girl thereafter, the neighbors in the locality too stopped, may be they too realized the gravity of the issue.

But alas, my dream of receiving a love letter never materialized thereafter…