#1 - Maturity Dawns

It all starts on the day, when I and Allan technically went our separate ways. It wasn’t half as tragic as a Veeru-Jai separation, but it was supposed to be something given that he is my best friend. But knowing that we had no style or any sense of occasion back then, our farewell sucked big time (Let’s not talk about it, we didn’t even say a proper goodbye, that should say it all).

Now it was practically the last day of our secondary school and entering junior college was being considered as an exciting prospect. I had 3 simple reasons for being happy:

1.We were gonna get a 3 months break, with nothing to do but whatever we wanted, and tell you what, in any student’s life these 3 months is the only time in which he can have all the fun he wants (after this life screws you endlessly!).

2.Finally, I was gonna get different classmates... (if you had been stuck for 8 years in a class, where girls and boys never ever talked to each other, you might understand what I mean, I still cry sometimes remembering that!)

3.This was the point of time when we were having a false sense of maturity, we thought we were the next best things, and our mind was full of we-will-show-this-world-the-way kinda crap..!!

Agreed, I was quite unhappy, for my best friend was going away from me just ‘coz he wanted to be part of the “esteemed” family of a school with blown-out-of-proportions reputation (they claim to nurture and produce the best minds of our country, though all they produce are awesome MMS scandals, but that’s a different story now). I wanted us to end up in the same place in life, but the amount of talent he had, it would’ve been an awful coincidence (though the title should be enough to convey how we both ended up with same amount of satisfaction, or dissatisfaction... I don’t know!). So cribbing was all I could do at that time.

As Peter Parker (a.k.a. Spiderman) might tell you, any story worth telling is always about a girl, well, so is mine... Well it’s about a few more than "a" girl, but lets start with the one in my life at that time.

Loaded with tons of my new found false maturity I came back home and after getting the usual where-the-hell-are-you-going scolding I went to meet Raina. She was my semi-girlfriend, semi ‘coz with no one around she’d be all cozy and cuddly with me and claimed to be "my girl", but in proximity of any homo sapiens we were "just friends". I bought chocolates for her, and given my pocket money of 10 bucks per week it was really something.

Chocolates were good, they helped in getting "So sweet of you, you’re such a nice guy" out of her, plus she kissed me. Agreed, by Indian standards, this was big, but kisses on cheeks were regular between us. But that day was different, I was 15 and with hormones kicking and loads of free porn in my mind’s database, I had been contemplating to get something more out of her for past few weeks. Not my fault, given that she looked amazingly gorgeous and I always thought that she was the "love of my life" (believe me I was crazy about her). And thus, after doing the usual talking funny (believe me, girls would kill for a guy like that!), the moment of foolhardiness caught up, and I snuggled up to her and tried to touch her in a certain way that was enough for her to give me a stingy slap on my hand. Now, to tell the truth it hurt a lot, I nearly cried, and to top it, she started crying.

Now, her crying made me want to kill myself (or maybe it was the realization that even a girl’s slap was enough to make me cry). And being the asshole I was, I didn’t even try to calm her down. After crying out her full quota and telling me what a bad person I was, she ran away from there, promising she’d never see me again. When she was out of sight, I got up (stunned of course!) and made sure no one had watched the whole damned scene (with no idea of the status of my love life, I at least wanted to make sure my social reputation was intact).

Cursing my crappy life, I walked towards my regular place of having my daily dose of tobacco. So much for being mature enough...