Vysh, how I miss you! (1/2)

It was 1:00 am. I laid awake on my bed, staring at a pointed red light indicating to me my AC was running. I couldn't contain my thoughts, it was a raging night. I I tried to stay calm, I had an unamusing day, so I wanted to create my own muse by travelling through the labyrinth of my mind. I cannot recollect what catapulted my attention to Vaishnavi (Vysh), but that moment marked the beginning of a long night that was to unfold.

The serendipity

Most girls I went to school with do not know Vysh and I were good friends; damn it, we were close friends. It doesn't appear silly to me that they didn't know it, because we didn't speak much in school, we didn't have lunch together and we were not paired in any team or called out to be a part of any event. However, we existed in the same school. 

It was the year 2003, the dreaded 10th std. board exams were over and the good, better and the best bunch in school made it., yup we were in higher secondary, ya'll! We were on top of the food chain. We were the ultimate seniors! We were bitchin'. Wow, how unabashedly happy we were :D

On the first day after summer, when the school re-opened, the girls were summoned to classes based on the groups they had chosen. The class was full of familiar faces.  Faces we had seen over the years of middle school and high school. As clueless teenagers who like to act out like know-it-alls, we teamed up with girls we were already friends with. Finding your bench farther from the black board and making sure you have in the same row and in the adjacent benches all the girls you liked, was pivotal to excelling in school; or so we thought. 

And there was me. I was a wonder to many. People didn't know who I was friends with; they have all seen me at some point in time but they didn't know me. They didn't know if I was a dull or bright student, whether I was friendly or weird., who I sat in lunch with (that shit mattered a lot you guys). It was all a puzzle. Some still identified me as the "new admission" though it was five years before that I was new to the school. I don't blame them, middle school was not the best years of my life. They were however the years that shaped my expectation in relationships. The struggle was real. Deep stuff right? May be I will share later what went down in those years. Re-routing to Vysh: Kris and I were friends in high school and so it was a natural choice for us to sit together. Kris and Vysh were friends from elementary school, so Vysh was also in the same row with me.

Thinking back, Kris was too tall to be sitting in the second row, I wonder if the girls behind us complained. Anyway, we were in class, sitting in second row, doing calculus, understanding nothing but trying to prove the damn LHS to RHS. We sat through together pretty much for all classes. We enjoyed each others company, we still were just friends, we didn't talk about personal things or family affairs. We simply liked and cared for each other and probably, subconsciously chose each other more than others in class because we kinda were destined to be great friends.

The heartbreak

It was not even a good 3 months into 11th std, we were in class. It was between periods, which was obviously the best times. The classroom was a scene of riot, all kinds of gossips were being told and received. Jokes were cracked about classmates and teachers, the class monitor was trying to settle us down and we obviously had to make fun of her. I mean, common! Vysh and I were also playing the fool, I remember having a pencil in my hand and when I turned to tell her something, I poked her with the flat side of the pencil on her hind arm. She was a fair and good looking girl, her skin was of a yellow tone. The pencil caused a blood clot immediately and it was strange to see a beaming reddish mark form against her pale, sunny skin for such a small tug. 

It was the next day, we were in class, doing integrals, and I noticed the blood clot and it hadn't faded. I asked her about it, she evaded my question. I think there had been other symptoms and she was already seeing a doctor. She did not discuss about her health situation, may be she was embarrassed, may be she didn't want to make a big deal of it. Knowing her, I think that she didn't want to believe that something is going wrong in her body and she didn't want to talk about it because she didn't want to give her ailment the attention that it was demanding of her that was breaking her will and bruising her body.

To be continued...