Looking back - Part 1

Ok. So now I am in the city of angels like a week now. I have gone out only to the nearby Cerritos mall and nowhere else and my plans for today's museum row visit gets canceled by incessant drizzling and to make matters worse, it was hot and sunny in the evening. So much for the rains. So this is when I thought I could write something about it. As obviously, I have been nostalgic for some time now. I thought I could write about some persons from the past who have helped me cross the obstacles I faced and who have changed me for good. This is not about family. Because family is going to be there whatever you are. This is just about the people who shaped me for good.

Whenever I think about school, the first person who comes to my mind is my first real friend and caretaker. It was in my fifth standard or grade, whatever you may call it. But, I still remember the fair girl who just walked suddenly into class one day. And who with no friends and a reputation as a foreigner got into the hearts of all the people in my class. I can still remember her for she was my first competitor in school and was the niece of my aunt's best friend.

I was a really shy young fellow and was bullied by the bullies in my class. So I really had no friends at all in school. I was either bullied in the free time or was too shy to really have friends. I did have another side though. I was the leader of the group of children in my street, where we used to play and do stuff together. I still have a mental picture of me running the streets in the name of reading for a P.E. exam and playing in the mud of a nearby construction site with my gang.

But of course this was my second life and the school bullies won't have this qualification to stop bullying me. Then came a star in my life. As I was too shy to talk with even people I know, I didn't even look at her direction. School went on as usual but soon, I can't remember how, but I learnt that she was the niece of my aunt's friend. I also have a faint recollection of she coming to my house or me going over to her aunt's house and seeing her there with her brother. But it is so faint. But the thing with such connections outside school is what makes one feel comfortable with the other person around.

She used to get 2nd rank or 3rd rank depending on mine. Yup, we were neck to neck when it came to studies. Either I got the 2nd rank or she got it. so we kinda kept juggling the second and third position in class. I think one time she reached the 1st rank with me on the second rank ( the only time I got the first rank was in my tenth standard in a midterm in a really ugly battle for the first place). And this was enough to just break my shell. So I let her inside my very closed circle(I was not a loser, I had a whole lot of friends, but they simply weren't in my school). I have a recollection of us studying together for exam and she fighting for me with a bully to keep me from harm's way. She took care of me and thus becoming my very best and close friend.

But wait, I have this jinx cast upon me. I don't know whether it is a blessing or curse, but whenever I get a girl as a friend, the maximum period the friendship is going to last is 2 years. After that, lots change quickly that either they disappear without any trace from my life or they have their life to live so they kinda become disconnected however close they had been or as recently I found out, they fight and become your 'un-friends'. This girl was the start of the jinx. After breaking into my closed world, She disappeared one day without a trace. Poof!!!! She was gone. I did not know about it and was expecting her for nearly a week after the school opened as I assumed she has left the country and since overseas travel took a lots of time she will come, but weeks became a month and that was when I had to accept that she is not coming back. But I wouldn't accept it for 3 more years until I got into a different activity time.

It was very hard to accept. Just look at this at the point of view of a 6th standard boy. You wait the whole 2 months of summer, impatient to get to your one and only new best friend, to show her your new uniform, your new shoes, your new pencil and pencil boxes. You get there and find she is not there at class. You wait impatiently until the first period hoping she is just late. But she does not turn up and the school that day turns into nightmare. You have the same thing happening for a week. then you get the same the next week. Each week making you hope more that she will be there the next week, until your expectations does not work and you are hugely disappointed. The fall was really hard, but hey life has to go on even for a sixth grade boy.

I never moved on from my buddy. After her, my other friends who were girls were unfairly compared to her by me. So she kinda set the bar for all the other girls I was to meet in my life. But that is not the only thing she did. She kinda opened my world for others to enter. If you are alone, you can stay alone forever as you are used to it, but when you have had company and now want to be alone again, it is not easy to be. So now I had to open my world for others to come and that's what I did. And I found some friends after this incident. But my world will never be the same again.

footnote :- I found her again nearly 11 years of searching through various channels. Finally, it was orkut and two or three girls of her same name later, I found her through one of my school friends. I got a chance to meet her a year after I found her. When I was going to meet her I almost expected her to be the small girl that I met in my life, but turns out she too has grown with me and is no more a small girl. She still remembered me and is my friend again, thought not like old times. We are occasionally chatting, but she does not know the impact of her presence in my life. She once wore a 'Angel' dress to a fancy dress competition. it was very symbolic. She was the angel sent by god to bring some life to my life and she most certainly did.