Some of you guys might be wondering why this topic now.Well, some days back I was reminiscing on how many crushes I must have had till date, and what ever happened to them.Or rather, what happened to me due to these crushes.And guess what! After the flashback, I couldn't find a better heading for this post.This one's going to be long, so get a lot of popcorn while you're reading through it.
The first couple of crushes were, well primary school crushes.The first must have lasted a full week and the second,I don't even remember who that was. Then came the third in the list.Lets call her Miss Smile.For, everytime we passed each other in the corridor, she used to give me a nice smile.And I used to return back with one my clumsy looking shy smiles.She knew that I had a crush on her, but never responded positiely to me.Probably one of the reasons was that she was a full 4 inches taller than me.
But that didn't deter me.When summer holidays came,I took my bike(read bicylce) and started cycling 2 hours everyday for 2 months to try and become taller.Incidentally, this was a team effort.Some of my best friends were giving me company in the cycling effort, as we used to make endless rounds around Miss Smile.Only after 2 years did I come to know that, the sole purpose of my friends joining me , was that they too had a crush on Miss Smile. I don't remember if I managed to reach her height, but surely was able to reduce the difference.Come schooltime the next year, and my interest in her gradually waned way for no apparent reason.But the smiles were still being exchanged back and forth.
Then I decided to get rid of diversions in life and become serious in life.And by God, I did become dead serious.After a period of romantic lull, it was time for another crush.This time, I set my sights a lot lower.Meaning that I became interested in Miss Smile's best friend, who was incidentally a full 6 inches shorter than me.Other than her height there was nothing that can be called low about her.She was beautiful, charming and extremely good at studies.For me, it was her eyes that swept me off my feet.Even to this day, I haven't come across a girl who could match the divine beauty of her eyes. Lets call her 'The Doll', for that's how neat she looked.
I confided the news about my new crush with KV,my best friend at that time(He still is a very good friend even today).All he said,"If you want to impress her, then you need to atleast start making some impression with the marks you score."
I'm pretty sure he must have thought I never had a chance to impress her with my soda glass spectacle looks.This statement saw a sea of change in my approach to studies.From someone who was only known for his on field heroics in cricket, to be now seen as someone who was scoring good marks too.The plan was, to be able to match her in her studies and then go upto her and tell her my "Dil Ki Baat".All this was a closely guarded secret for a greater part of one year,with my marks showing improvement with every examination.
But all this came suddenly crashing down, when a friend of mine came and told me that my crush had a crush on him, and that she told him that, on that day.He even showed me her handwritten loveletter to me.This had such a shattering effect on me, that even to this day I mark this day in the calendar as a Black Letter Day.
All this drama also reflected on my marks in the board exam, and somehow managed to get into a decent enough college for my Plus 2.We also became 'just friends' for a brief period, after which due to some misunderstanding, we both cut all types of communication with each other.I recently heard that she got married and is happily settled in the US, 5 miles north of a place where I was living for 3 months last year.I just hope someday she reads this post, just to know that she made a big difference.
The next 2 years or so went in recuperating, and also focussing on studies.This time the studies part was not to impress someone, but to get into a good engineering college, and prove a point or two in the process.Once this was done, there was another momentary lapse of reason on my side.One more smalltime crush, which came crashing down within 2 weeks.This time because I came to know that she got married to someone in far away Kolkata and was getting settled down there.A few days' of incessantly listening to Richard Marx's "I will be right here waiting for you " and Jon Secada's "Just Another Day Without You" and I was back to normal.
Time slipped by, and suddenly I seemed to realise that I was in 3rd semester and still didn't have a girlfriend.Peer pressure was getting onto me.So I started off with my Operation Find Girlfriend.The first step was to catch hold of some juniors for ragging, and then take it ahead from there. I found one such girl of my liking.The start was good.Soon we became good friends.What started as endless conversations on phone, soon became a daily dose of aspirin for me, without which I thought I would have a heart attack.It was this thought that made me weaker by the day.
And when I told her my feelings, all my world turned upside down with her answer, "I never saw you that way...Lets just be good friends...All you guys are the same." By now, everything other than this,including studies had already taken a backseat.This was similar to,"...Steps taken forwards, but sleepwalking back again."All the progress that had made due to The Doll, I succesfully undid that.And perhaps, ended up even worse.
Stubborn that I was not to give up, tried, tried and tried for a full 5 years or slightly more, to change her mind about me.All my efforts would be responded with a single word,"NO!"
This was how this crush came crashing down,almost threatening to bring my life down with it.In retrospect, I felt it was like trying to beat a dead horse to victory.
When I realised that it was not working out, I had completed a year in my job, by which I got better things to think about, for 12 hours a days, than about love life.This was probably the second best thing that happened to me.The first best thing is a secret that I can't share.Thanks to those 2 good things that came along, I still happen to be alive and kicking.The next two years were uneventful with no crushes at all,leading to make me think that I was romantically challenged.
After all that I've been through, I never could muster courage to fall in love again.But that didn't mean that the wanderlust mind of mine didn't find anyone interesting enough.I switched jobs, and then saw a very interesting girl in my adjacent row in a training programme.Lets call her Deep Blue Sea, simply because a friend of mine gave her that name.Almost our entire group would go ooh - aah about her.A big smile was what that struck about her the most.Everyday she used to come twice a day to our floor, to have coffee with her teammates.We friends used to hang around in the vicinity of the coffee vending machine, harmlessly staring at her.But as always this crush too came all crashing down, when I heard her saying, "My husband and I..." and also later came to know that she was pretty much older than all of us in our group.
The next blow was when we found out that she just disappeared all of a sudden.The news was that she quit the company.To be honest Manju and I had some difficulty in finishing our lunch in the cafetaria for a week or two after that.We were so used to having it sitting in the vicinity of where she sat and of course, harmlessly staring at her.Later I came to know out that she was into creative writing, bigtime.She'd even won some competitions in office.So there lies the inspiration of me starting to blog.When I started of blogging, I wanted to add her name in the credits section, but later decided against it.
Then there was another girl whom I shall call 'Raindrops', for her name nearly translates to that in Sanskrit.She's someone whom I happened to pass one evening on the way back home from office.She had a very pleasant face, immediately reminding me of seeing her somewhere before.Then it struck to me that about four years back,we used to wait for the bus at the same bus stop.She waited for her college bus,while I waited for the BMTC one.I used all my intelligence sources to find out more about her, and finally found out her name, where she works.It also turned out that there's also a common friend between me and her.But I was fully confused whether to take it ahead from there or not.And having such a fantastic track record with crushes, I decided against it.
And finally there was this girl at my cousin's wedding,from the bride's side whom I felt seriously interested in,.And going by past experience, I knew that this interest was all one way traffic in a No Entry streey.And this being a family affair, I had to be overly discreet, so as to not attract any raised eyebrows.And even all my intelligence gathering couldn't get me enough information.I could not be even as succesful as finding out her name to start with.Being such a superstitious person, I finally gave up on her thinking that a job not so well started, is best left undone.
From all these crushes, I was able to conclude that every girl that I'm interested in, is one of older than me,married,committed or all of these.If its none of these, then definetely that girl's not interested in me.That's why I say, "And all those crushes keep coming crashing down all the time!" And I'm happy being single still. And waiting for the next fleeting crush to come across.
PS: Names have been replaced with nicknames to ensure privacy.
