Savere... Savere... Yaaron se milne...

Remember those days..?
When you used to run to school carrying 10 KG bags, your mom running behind you to keep the lunch box inside..
Remember the song.. ?
"savere savere...
yaron se milne..."

This an incident from those days of my life. and I warn you, it is a very filmy story.
###################################################################

I still remember the look.
Those two eyes staring at me...
big round eyes... full of anger...
That was the very first meeting.
She was angry at me.. and she had every reason to be...
I was the reason, why, she had to change her school.
Incidentally, my Mom had told her mom, that the school in which I'm studying is good, the fee is very reasonable, and overall it is much better than where she was going now...

So..??? She was arguing with her mom.. toh kya...
so what...!!!? Her school was also good.
Everybody in her school loved her.
She was the topper, not just in her class, but in all the divisions. She was the one selected to speak during the prayers. She loved her school.
And all the more, who is this guy and his mom to decide which school should she go..????
But the fact was that she was studying in a Govt. Malayalam medium school, where there were hardly any teachers and even less teaching.

I was in 9th then and was studying in the Technical Higher Secondary School, again a Govt. school but which was much much better than where she was studying.
My Mom did convinced her mother.
She joined, in 7th, in our prestigious THSS.
and once again she had to come to my house, her mother had come to ask, whether I can take her to school with me.
Woooo..... The stare.... She was giving me the same stare.. full of anger... but this time I was laughing at her helplessness.
The school was some 6 km from he bus stop and bus stop 1km from our house, which meant a 2 km walk every day,.

Everyday I reach her house and shout..
"Aunty..."
and the girl would come out.. some times a small smile, more often a blank look. Then starts a march of two kids, not even looking at each other, we walked as if we lived in two parallel universes... Have you seen the ceremony at the wagah border ? We were pretty much like those Indian and Pakistani soldiers..., seeing each other daily..., staying so close..., but still hating each other.
The only relief I had was that more friends joined after half a km walk.

Life was going on like this for us soldiers,.. until one day,
when she fell unconscious in school. A peon came running to me and said the teacher is calling.
Her teacher had called for an auto and was asking me to take her back home. I was a bit hesitant, but looking at her awfully tired face...
She was looking really tired, and for no reason, or reasons unknown to me, she was crying.
I had to console her. but how..
I should speak something to her..
and I asked.. a genuine doubt I had...

"How do you feel, when you fall unconscious ?"

entho...!!! (what...!!!) (kya...!!!) and a smile, was her first reaction. It turned to a big laughter and a lot of many things. She said it feels very good...It is really fun to fall unconscious.. and many more things.. making fun of me.. making fun of the stupidity of the question. But I did not care. She was happy. I could cheer her up. At last we have become friends... and we don't have to march...

Next day I was expecting a happy smiling face.
But it was gloomy. and just after a few meters she said she needed to get a chart.
Can we go the other way today so that she can get the chart?
anytime ma'am...
Little did I know then that the other way was to remain the permanent way for us.. Away from those friends waiting half a km away, eating our other half a km away.

The first day, we went the other way, she was really happy and talking.. She talked a lot. She told me how she hated me for changing her school, how much she loved her older school, how much she hated this new school and a lot other things. When she starts talking it is like boarding a deccan flight. She starts a sentence which she does not know where to end or when..?
But as the days went by, I was supposed to understand whatever she was telling, however meaningless that was.
After all, I was the one who changed her school, and I was responsible for all her unhappiness. Any thing bad happens to her, she would stare at me, the same anger...
even if that is toppling over a stone.. she would look at me with the same anger...
I would laugh and tell.. areh yaar... maine toh kuch nahi kiya..

toh kya.. bacha toh sakte the...
(btw, toh kya was her favourite sentence, every time I try to make her understand some logic, .. this one sentence .. toh kya... failed me..)
Are pani khatam hogaya na.. kahase dedoo..
toh kya.. mujhe pyas lagi hai.. mujhe pani chahiye...

I don't know.. she was so sure .. she as so sure nothing would ever happen to her without my consent.
She was so sure she was mine...

Even in the school, when her friends see me and starts chidafying her..
"See here comes your hero.."
My face used to turn red.. (default color being black, the color change was not that much noticeable though.. )
But she never minded it..
Yes it was so. I was her hero.. and she was never afraid of proclaiming it.
She would make me do all those hero stuffs in front of her friends.. spinning books on fingers, moving my ears.. etc etc etc.. anything which I do to entertain her, I had to do it in front of her friends also.

I could never fail her. I was a hero, a hero, she owned.

But she hated this school. All this english... close but distant friends.. she used to remind me often that it was due to me that she had to change her school, and if it was not for me she would have gone mad in this new school.

But as long as she was with me she was happy...
and like this days went by... exams were over.. results out...
we went together to check our results.

I had topped my class, and she was shouting with happiness like anything. But when I said chalo... now lets see your results, she didn't want to. She didn't want to see her results, Some how I pushed her to the place where her results were published...

Five subjects in red.

"Yeh kya hain.. teacher lal painting kar rakha hai kya..??
ha ha ha ha ha ha...
ha ha ha ha ha ha..."

I don't know whether it was, she failing in the subjects, or the cruel face of mine, laughing at her state...,
she was running.., running back home, crying... both hands on her face...

The whole vacation she did not talk to me. Not even a stare...

and the next year she moved back to the school she belonged to, and we shifted to a new house.

I still remember the stare, full of anger, full of love, and I miss it badly.

Now sometimes, I wonder, how a stupid comment made her come the closest to my life, and another stupid one, drove her away from my life... for ever...?