Tale of "first love."

Tale of "first love."

It was a snowy December evening, and I was home on college vacation. The sun had disappeared behind the clouds already. The mist had already started to shower, soaking the road uphill to my home. The road looked like a greyish black python, lying silently. Waiting impatiently to see her, struggling on her bicycle uphill like old times, I was worried why the sun was so hasty to drown today! The gentle winter shower thickened with mist, masking my full view down the way.

I got up from my study table, facing the window. It was the third Christmas that we were celebrating in this estate cottage. When we first entered it, the house felt so greyish and old, vacant for long. My dad was an engineer who took Voluntary discharge from the forces and joined the plantation career. We got this cottage when he moved to supervise the estate's factory erection work. The initial days of gloominess, mist and my sister's persistent migraine headaches vanished for me when the estate's doctor came to our home to treat my sister, who had severe fever during one snowy night. He took his daughter with him in his jeep since she was my sister's classmate.

When my dad offered the doctor a drink, we walked to the dining table for our coffee with my mother. Sitting beside the fireplace was the first time I saw her closely. She was tall, lean and gorgeous, with slightly brownish hair glazed in the flame. She looked a bit nervous, being with a group of strangers. Though she studied with us in the plantation officers' school, she was two years junior, in 9th, and I saw her for the first time. I was shy; I didn't know why! I didn't talk to her through my mother, sat aside her and spoke a lot to her.

I met her in the school somewhat daily. But I couldn't talk to her and always walked away, even reluctant to smile. One sunny day, I saw her cycling uphill with my sister, chit chattering so gladly. Seeing her talking and laughing so gladly quite amazed me. I kept watching her till the moment she passed past my view. Though she stayed just five minutes ahead of our cottage, I never used to walk that side. Since moving for graduate studies last year, I realised now that it was her presence that I was missing terribly.

Growing nervous about the weather, I realised that it was three years we had been here and we will be moving probably next year. I didn't know what I was planning this time. I put on the jerkins, took an umbrella, and walked fast down the hill. I saw her with my sister, soaked in the rain, standing under the tractor shelter in the third turning. Though I wished to smile at her, I couldn't. ?I quickly took my sister under the umbrella. My sister grabbed the umbrella and asked her friend to join. Shaking off the raindrops from her hair, she clung to my sister, wrapping her around the shoulder, and they walked past me, chit chattering and laughing.

Walking all alone in the rain, totally lost in some strange feeling, I looked around like I had seen this place the first time. The bougainvillaea petals lying on the road kissed my heart ardently, and the mushroom head silver oaks shook off chilling droplets on me. I realised for the first time that the night jasmine and roses that peeped through the fencing looked so marvellous. It was the first time I immersed myself in nature like never before. Those raindrops seemed to bear the fragrance of her hair, which I treasured deep in my heart when she shook it onto my face, and I didn't mind the rain even if it was hurting my cheeks!

It's a story, owing to the eternal spirit of love! (I wasn't lucky to have such a dreamlike past, though!)

My loving Christmas gift to all my connections!

Bala