Does LOVE happen ?

Holidays were over. Results were out. Now there was excitement. The excitement of going to the college. The stage in life where you become a young man from a boy. Many things change in this small time span. And we don’t find time to realize.

Harsh was feeling the same. "How will be the college? Will there be the same restrictions that we used to have in school? And yes, there will be many new faces, new friends. The next two years will be full of surprises for sure".

Long before the classes in college started, there were various coaching-centers that used provide free demo coaching classes. Harsh also used attend them with his friends, to have a feel what the next two years would have in them. That was the first class. They were sitting and watching new faces coming in. Some known, many unknown. He was a bit tensed, or in a better way to explain, confused. The class was about to begin. Many students have entered the class now.

Suddenly she enters. A girl with an unusual glow on her face. It seemed like the innocence from  her childhood had forgotten to leave. She quietly entered and sat. The lecturer came and gave a preview of the syllabus that will be covered in next 2 years. After the class the friends discussed how boring the class was. Harsh had a different thought. He was not able to get her face out of his mind. His best friend, Mohit figured it out easily. He asked “What’s in your mind?” Harsh replied: ”Nothing yaar. Just can’t get her out of my mind. She was so simple.” Mohit understood  Harsh’s feeling and said “ I know her. She is Akankhya.”. That was the first day Harsh knew her. He saw her in many such demo classes. All he hoped was she joins the college there.

That was the first day in college. Hundreds of new faces were to be seen that day. 12th batch of newcomers were divided into two sections. Harsh was sad because he was put in different section from Mohit. For next 2 years he will be alone in a group  of 120 students. He hardly knew anyone there. So he went and sat in 2nd last line. He observed boys and girls coming to the class one by one. It was full of chaos. He felt nervous. Suddenly among all these things, Harsh saw someone. The atmosphere was engulfed by an unusual silence. It was her, entering the class. Not only him, every other guys who saw her for the first time were mesmerized by the glow of her face and her simplicity. As always her face was down. She was not making eye contact with anyone. That quality of her, that innocence, Harsh din't even realize he was smiling. “She is here in my section. For next 2 years. God, you are too good”. At the end of that day Harsh saw her leaving the college with her bi-cycle. He din’t know what that feeling was. “Love does not happen at this age. I am just thinking too much”, he told to himself. He had no idea what is there ahead for this “Not-Love-But” feeling.

After that day, every day in college was a new excitement for Harsh. He would go to college wishing she would come. Just to ensure he did not miss any day that may have a possibility of her coming to college, he  used to attend college almost every day. The chances of seeing her were more in  the lab classes. There was a strict policy of attending the lab classes which she used to attend. There was that incident in one of the Zoology labs. Harsh was there before time. She came with her friends and since the lab was not open till then, all were waiting outside. Harsh was looking at her from distance. Suddenly she looked at him.  There was a pause of half a second when both of them were looking at each other. Harsh moved his eyes somewhere else. He felt so discomposed that he never dared to look at her eyes again.

There was one day when Harsh was not able to attend the college as he was suffering from high fever. His friend Mohit came running to him and said “You are here? She has come to college today. Hurry up.” Harsh dint think anything else. As if his fever was gone somewhere. He rushed to the college to attend the Botany lab that day. He was sitting in the front row and was shivering with fever. Almost feeling sleepy there, he was keeping his head down and all he could see was her feet and sandal. That was enough for him to feel good at that time.

There were exams and those days were very interesting. Harsh and Mohit would go to college early, to check the sitting arrangements. Harsh always hoped, she sat in the same exam hall as him. There was not much gap between their roll numbers too. But the arrangements kept on changing each day and Harsh had to ensure where she  was sitting and how far from him. Whenever he found her sitting too far and other  not so good guys sitting beside her, he with the help of Mohit, used to stick chewing gum on the tables of those guys. It was too funny to see their reactions when they came to sit on that desk. There was only one occasion when Harsh could not believe his luck as he got a chance to sit near her and on the same bench. He knew that day will never come again as the sitting arrangement would again change next day. But it din’t happen. For all 4 days of exam he sat on the same long bench beside her. She used come and then Harsh had to get up to allow her to sit beside him. She was sitting on the right and for the whole 3 hours of exam, Harsh wished it never ended. That was the most beautiful thing that ever happened to him in college life. He lived every moment of it.

Harsh had only one complain. She used to bunk too many classes. Mohit told him, “She must be studying at home. She is a good student”. Harsh replied, “Is it? I wish she does well in final exam. But she would never score more than me.” Even the rarest days when she used come to college, some of those classes were cancelled because of occasional strikes. Once such incident occurred and Harsh was too sad. He stood on the college field and saw her leaving for home as classes were cancelled. He stood there till she was not visible. “Why am I doing this? This is unusual. I don’t even know her. How can it be love”, he asked himself many times.

Akankhya never used to chat with boys in college. She would come with her friends and leave when classes were over. She was different from every other girl there. She was one of her kind. This thing Harsh liked very much. He could never remember the faces of the friends around her, because he rarely could get his eyes off her.

2 years passed like 2 months. The days of final exam came and everyone was busy for it. Harsh had two regrets. Soon this glorious years of college life will end and secondly, he had screwed up his Math-1 paper. It was funny that the second reason actually made him cry. He had to do well in Math-2 to get a decent score in total. Math-2 exam was on the last day. Just before the exam started, when Harsh  saw Akankhya , he forgot his tension for some time. He told to himself, “If the exam goes well, I will go and talk to her for the first time. I will ask her how was her Math-2 paper. This much I can do.”. By god’s grace, the paper went well. The final bell rang and everyone started leaving the hall. “Now it’s time to go and talk to her as I had decided.”. Harsh got up and started walking towards her desk before she would leave. Suddenly he saw another guy went to her and started talking. Harsh stopped there and thought “If I go now and talk to her, what will be the difference between that guy and me? She also may feel bad about me. She may not like talking to strangers”. That was the last day of theory exams and he knew in Lab tests he will not be able to see her again as they had different slots. “So it all ends here. 2 years, 30 lab classes, 121 incidents of seeing that face in college and half a second of eye contact. It all ends here.”- Harsh thought to himself. He was not sad, but the feeling was unusual. He never wanted to actually feel that he was in love. His opinion was quite clear. “I will never give commitment to anyone till I get a job. First I need to have my own identity”. So what was happening at that time in his mind and heart? A boy at the age of 17, there is no way one can describe that feeling. He may be thinking “I wish I could be a friend of her in this time so that we might have known each other well. At least I can have a name to this feeling.”

The last attempt that Harsh did was to ask one of his friends, a girl, to tell Akankhya about his feelings. That was probably the stupidest thing he could think of at that time as he knew he might never see Akankhya again. But thankfully that friend of him could not tell her. So That was the end of that story. It should have been at least.

The final results for the exams were out and Harsh had scored more than Akankhya as he had told to himself once. Though he did not have this thing in mind then. In fact that was first time actually he felt the pain that he may not see her again. There was one incident that was too special for Harsh. After one month of college days over, It was his birth day. As always he was not celebrating it. Rather he went to the temple that day. After the prayer when he opened his eyes, he saw her. He could not believe it was her. Akankhya was there in the temple with her father. He thought he got the biggest birthday gift from god that day.

Time did not wait after college. In fact it ran  faster. Nine years have been passed now. Today Harsh has a job. He has many friends and he is happy the way his life is going. But sometimes when he sits alone and thinks about her, the day when he saw her for the first time and the last time, her beautiful eyes and that black “bindi” on her forehead. He smiles at some of his feelings and becomes emotional at some of the feelings that he had at that time. Till now he has not got his answer. “Was it love? How can someone love somebody without being a friend of her. It was her simplicity , decency and innocence that all I could figure out. But were these traits enough to seriously thinking someone to be a life partner?  And are we that matured at the age of 16-17 to fall in love with someone?”

He can search for her, know her, start from the point where it was left. But he is not doing this. May be, he is not willing to give a chance to that boy who took 2 years to realize it was love and then it was not. “That boy is still standing there at that stage of his life. Let him stand there. May be in next life he will get her”- He concludes.