(My winning entry for a contest)
The doorbell buzzed aloud marking the routine alarm. I kissed my little bundle of joy sleeping in all his innocence and shuffled to answer the door. As I retrieved the milk packets, the newspaper boy arrived. .. A teenager who supported his studies doing odd job filled me with a sense of pride. He wished me good morning with a grin showing a crooked incisor reminding me of someone from years ago. Shaking my head I shut the door.
Breakfast preparations done, I joined hubby dearest at the dining table with my cuppa. He was devouring the newspaper along with the stream of dosas I laid before him… As I sipped the blissful filter Kaapi my eyes fell on the newspaper part facing me as he held it up…
Two killed in Mumbai’s Dharavi gang war…
… Leathercamp witnessed prolonged gunfight…. Annadurai gang leader K. Shivanan succumbed…
I dropped the cup on the saucer with a thud; hubby moved the paper and looked at me, concern in his deep brown eyes. “All Ok Srilata?”
“Yes… burnt …tongue…Kaapi too hot…” I fibbed. Tears filled my eyes as I took my plate and cup to the kitchen sink, plunging down the memory lane.
Shivanan was my classmate in school from 5th grade to 9th. He was a repeating 5th grade and usually was looked down upon and ridiculed by the teachers and us scholarly kids. I never spoke to him but something about him always made me look out for him. Was it a crush? I didn’t know.
In next couple of years, I was the only girl in class who spoke with him and occasionally helped him with notes and studies. He only smirked or gave a cold shoulder to others but when with me he smiled occasionally revealing his crooked front incisor…
It was a rainy evening one day during the 9th grade. I was waiting to go home alone in the waterlogged bus-stand. My heart fluttered seeing Shiva, as I lovingly called him, come running.
“Sri, I …I love you… you are everything to me…” He panted. He was tall and he looked down at me face dripping with water. I just kept staring… the strict upbringing in me not permitting to say anything. I looked away and just then my bus arrived. As the bus moved… I looked back at him. Till date the vision of Shiva with tears streaming down his cheeks remains deep within my heart. That was the last I saw him. He dropped out of school midway and was never heard of again.
Years passed, and I often wondered about Shiva. Till one day a friend added me to the school WhatsApp group. Someone mentioned him being a gang leader…
As I started to pack my office lunchbox, I wondered if the fourteen year-old in me had reciprocated to Shiva or said something, would he have become a gang leader. I would never know…
He was my first love… my lost love…
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