Musings of an Undercover Yogi

A high school senior was my first crush. He was an athlete—tall, lean—and to my 14-year-old mind, handsome. Every year, he bagged medals of all three colors in various sports competitions. When it came to javelin throw, it was as if the gold had his name engraved on it. 😇

No riches in the world made me move from my seat during his turn. I held my breath every time he swooped through the playground like a graceful, majestic eagle, and hurled the javelin. 😍😍 The vision was far better than the war scenes in Indian mythological TV shows. My king was way faster than the ancient kings, whose single weapon took a ridiculous five minutes, in the showtime of 60 minutes, to reach opponents. Ten such weapons thrown almost ended the weekly episode. Remember the Ramayan and Mahabharat days, anyone? 😆

Returning to the story—my king was also an NCC cadet, a drummer, and a notorious mischief-maker. Basically, he had a flair for all things non-academic, including the art of bird-watching (if you know what I mean 😉😉).

One fine day, my best friend Sheetal confessed that she too had a crush on my king! 😱😰 Instead of letting the situation cause a rift in our friendship, we decided to join forces. United we stand, blah blah. 🤩 We vowed to stay away from petty emotions such as jealousy and offense if either of us caught the eye of “our” king. So, we stared at him together, blushed when he looked in our general direction, overanalyzed his expressions, encouraged each other to stroll past his group during recess, and the likes. 💃💃

We had a gala time until K, our king’s best friend, proposed Sheetal. 🤒 It so happened that Sheetal and K lived in the same area far from our school, so their friendship started and grew during daily bus rides. Of course, K got rejected and spent the next few days trying to woo Sheetal. Frustrated, the girl had a major slip-of-the-tongue moment, and let out that she likes our king. 😖🤢

K then swore her to secrecy before sharing a dubious, but critical piece of information. Apparently, our king was chasing the most popular girl from our batch. 😭😭 We were heartbroken. So much for our joint devotion—our guy couldn’t even choose wisely. Humph! 😡😃

It began slowly, as K realized that Sheetal was serious about our king. All of a sudden, during morning assembly, recess, and other breaks, we noticed their group eyeing us with interest as we walked past. Grins and catcalls followed in a few days and soon turned into full-blown teasing. Our king’s cronies honored Sheetal with the dreaded label—sister-in-law. 😅😃

In the whole circus of events that followed, our king’s passive face confused us. He didn’t seem to enjoy the situation as much as his buddies. About a month later, we heard that our king proposed the popular girl, and got rejected. Apparently, the juicy gossip involving Sheetal and him reached his lady love through other channels before his proposal could. Sheetal and I hi-fived! What to say, we were shallow! 😂😂

If you are wondering what happened to my crush angle in this whole story, well, a big fat nothing is what happened. 🤐 Sheetal, who was a transfer student from Pune in the eighth grade, moved back to Pune a year later. In the ninth grade, I wondered occasionally if our king knew about my angle as our paths crossed and glances met frequently.

I wasn’t exactly ‘les miserable,’ but I missed Sheetal, and her absence took the thrill out of the whole first-crush thing. I outgrew that crush in the tenth grade, as soon as our king moved on to junior college. Different buildings and timings did the trick. Thankfully, Sheetal kept my crush a secret, and the fellow remains blissfully unaware till date. 😁😁

Image credit: deviantart.com