First Love

My first great love affair was when I was six or seven. I do not remember the particulars but only that I felt this great unknown thing for her. Was there something physical in the feeling? I can’t say, I must have entered the latency stage by then if we go by Freud and the animal in me should have been resting. Then what was it. I think it was love. There were other girls around but I never had a thing for them. I hardly looked at them, but I could not take my eyes away from this one.

It must have been a great struggle for me to not to look at her always. She was my classmate and was so yummy I could have eaten her up alive. I intensely desired for her to take notice of me. I was not aware of the nature of attraction, but I was so jealous when she was talking to other boys and even girls that I was in great torment every minute that I was in class. I thought myself unworthy of her because she was so classy and imperious. I would go through raptures if she just looked my way. I never could understand why the other boys were not under the same sort of spell that I was. They seemed to take her as a friend only and not as final destination of their lives. I looked at them as if they were crazy. How could they talk to her and not fall for her. Are they any different from me? To me they looked stupid; completely unaware that there are subtler things to life than it appear.

I would tentatively ask some boy who had just exchanged a few words with her, horribly afraid that my voice would betray my emotions for her. I need not have worried.

She is nice isn’t she?

My face must have looked a sight asking it.

Yes, yes?

Would be the reply. They were hardly interested in my face or my expression or anything else than what they had in their mind then. Well it was true that they had other interests in life. Like driving an imaginary vehicle or, hunting for a bug in the ground, or flying a kite.

Oh yes I too used to do all this but I was not totally absorbed in them as they were. This was a curious feeling. I believed that every action of mine was watched by her and judged by her. I did not want to look foolish before her and so would naturally appear in the most foolish light when I was in her vicinity. This put me to such a humiliation and feelings of worthlessness that I usually grieved the way I was made. I must say those feelings of ineptness has remained with me afterwards and comes back and take their toll whenever I am having an unpleasant time.

It was a fact that I never was curious about the way I looked then. I barely stood before the mirror. I was always impatient to be off and do something; I was not concerned about what the thing I wanted to do. But there always was something to do. Mostly not very good things.

But her thought would make me think twice before I ventured into anything. I still remember the time I was leading a bunch of local boys with my little sister in tow through the newly dug telephone trenches near my home. We had gone some distance without being noticed. I still wonder how we managed to do that. We must have been very tiny then. The trenches I see now are not deep enough to conceal small children. Perhaps they dug the trenches more deep then.

The long and short of it was that we were discovered by some one who was passing by and was receiving admonitions and serious advice when she came along with her mother through the road. My heart sank and I wished to disappear into the thin air if I could. They stopped near us and even before the mother put the question across the man described the whole thing for their benefit.

We were all mud spattered and could not have been a very good site to see. I could see her imperious eyes looking at me without an expression in them. This hurt me more than anything else; I would have consoled myself if see had shown any distaste or amusement at our predicament. But no, she was like a wall, no expressions as if noticing such things were below her great status.

I loved her even then. I am sure that I was inconsequential in her scheme of things. I can still see her faintly. There is something indefinable in a girl who arouses your fantasy, some mystery which lingers on through out the rest of your lives. Though she never cared for me I went on loving her till I left the place and curiously still carry her memory with me.

Where is she now, have I met her again in the course of my life. The only girl who came somewhere near her in my school life was a girl named X I had as my classmate when I was in the final year at school. I think both the girls had the same names but though this girl had real beauty I was not enamored with her in the same manner that I was with the other one I believe.