The Guy Named Nikhil: Part 1

Nikhil was brought up in a decent middle class family where he was being taken care of everything right from his childhood. He grew up as a naughty, shy and cute kid, having cheeks so fluffy, that every passerby definitely used to ‘poke-in’ on his cheeks elongating them some centimeters for sure. ‘Cheeekabo’ is what he used to call it and he knew he always hated it…

Well, this continued even when he grew up into an adult; only the audience to his cheeks changed with time. Though, the cheeks had a lean ‘cheekabo’ phase between 16-19 when his face got some signals of puberty, but that went off soon and he got spic and span to attract the new found ‘care’ mostly from the opposite sex.

Nikhil had his first crush when he was in the fourth class. The girl was almost six years elder to him but he had fallen in love with her, so much so that he had invented a stylish name for referencing her only to himself. She was Shruti and he used to reference her as ‘Trutsssss’. Definitely, he could never manage the courage to talk to her for the only seven days he had met her during an outstation wedding ceremony. But the feeling remained with him for a long time.

Good in studies and with nice communication skills, Nikhil had been a star among the friends. The shyness in approaching girls had remained inherent only till the time he managed to approach the first one. This had happened when he was in the eleventh class. And then, as they say, it was all history.

Playing volleyball had been the hobby even when it came on the cost of bunking some classes especially those which used to be the free classes of Nancy, the class ninth girl of his school.

He used to play volleyball, all in style, to show off while she used to style-off with her friends somewhere near the volleyball court. Lots of exchanged glances and one fine day, purposefully Nikhil’s threw up the volleyball into the destined bunch of ‘Nancied girls’.

“Can you pass on the ball?”…he reached upto them and asked Nancy, looking straight into her eyes.

Nancy along with the bunch of girls burst out in laughter and they were out of the scene in no time. Poor Nikhil was left aghast and all the more embarrassed.

And so, he could never gather the courage to talk to Nancy again until he met Priya. This happened during the annual school fair when he was in his last year of school. She was managing the class-stall in the fair making people play “Ring-O-Mania”. The same old game where one has to throw rings on articles and once you ring something, that becomes yours. Nikhil spent his entire day on her stall spending all his money and gifting all the articles kept on the stall to the host Priya only.

This definitely impressed upon the tall and beautiful Priya who, as his friends used to call, had ‘interestingly accentuated features’. And hence began his first friendship. It was the first lovey-dovey affair of his life. Spending time in coffee shops, school canteen, book fairs and eateries was an altogether different kind of fun element for him away from the sports ground and the volleyball fields. He never realized before that all these places had so much more in them.

This also gave him the opportunity to understand what was there in a girl’s mind because earlier while reading the text books stating “mind is present only in Human beings”, he had misread it as “mind is only present in Man beings”.

Though he realized he was not the best at reading a girl’s mind but the experience of knowing these all together different beings was very different for him and he was loving it all. He never used to have similar conversations with his friends in school. And he realized he never ever had a girl as a friend in any of his group of friends, before.

The aftermaths of this 'affair', as his friends used to call it, came with the teasing of friends, the eyeing of teachers in the class and the special attention of girls in school. All this was new found to him but he was finding it way different… interesting… enticing and all the more exciting…

The friendship with Priya lasted for a few months till the time Nikhil left school. On the last day of his school, Priya was crying but at that moment, he could never realize that he will also be missing her. But, seeing tears in her eyes made him feel for the first time how important he could be for someone. The distances between them grew with time and both of them soon drifted away from each other…leaving it as a sweet memory in Nikhil’s mind…

He just thought of it as a 'connect' which the two of them shared till the time they were connected and he moved on...realizing nothing...