Mohsin Maqbool Elahi on his first crush
IT WAS 1962. I was a schoolboy of about seven, studying in Class I at Loreto Day School, Bow Bazaar, in Calcutta.
I was scared of speaking English because of not being confident enough. I somehow thought that I would be making grammatical mistakes and I would be made fun of by my classmates who were fluent in the language. So I got along with speaking Hindi/Urdu with my friends.
I was OK in class where dictation, spellings and dealing with jumbled words were concerned. But I loved nothing more than drawing and sketching and water painting and I was thrilled to bits while using magic colour/painting books. I also enjoyed singing classes even though I could hardly sing a note. I loved playing hopscotch and marbles, spinning tops, hide and seek, Orange is a lemon, I sent a letter to my friend, and marbles. Besides, I loved watching senior class girls playing ‘be quick’ while going through the names of fruits, vegetables, birds or animals, as the case may be, as fast as they could.
In one corner of the school playground inside a playing shed there used to be a wooden rocking horse which was always being ridden either by a schoolgirl or schoolboy. Even though I remember watching it longingly, I somehow can’t recall whether I ever got a chance to ride it.
That same year my eyes fell upon the sweetest of girls who had probably joined school recently. She was a year junior to me both age- and class-wise. I also came to learn that she was a Zoroastrian called Shahnaz. I am sure she was fairer than Snow-white could have ever been. She had a braid on each side of her nape which was tightly knotted with black and white ribbons.
Every time I happened to set my eyes on her, my heart would start beating like a grandfather clock going tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock. However, each time I approached her for friendship, she would rebuff me with a cold look in her eyes. Still I never gave up hope, hoping that her heart would melt and she would accept my friendship with a smile. But that never happened, as Shahnaz would always start walking in a different direction, leaving me most dejected.
I soon realized that I had madly fallen in love with her. Had she given me the chance, I would have crooned ‘Chaudhwin ka chand ho ya aftab ho’ in its entirety in the most mellifluous of voices. Unfortunately, she never did!
One day while she was waiting for her turn to drink tap water in the front yard of the school, I just walked up to her, picked her ever so lightly, by her waist and planted a kiss on one of her cheeks. She blushed in embarrassment.
So I put her down and walked back to my class. Some of my friends, including Lawrence de Gama and Sukhjinder Singh, had been watching all this from a distance. From the very next day, they started teasing me:
Georgie Porgie, pudding and pie,
Kissed the girls and made them cry,
When the boys came out to play
Georgie Porgie ran away.
I just didn’t know what to say to them!
Shahnaz still had not talked to me. So one day after school was over, I followed her all the way to her home which was at a distance of about a 10-minute walk. She entered her compound, climbed the stairs and was soon inside her flat on the first floor. I started calling out her name at the top of my voice. After a couple of minutes, her ayah came out on the verandah and told me, “Baby ghar par naheen hai (Baby is not at home)!”
I wanted to tell her, “Baby just entered the house. Don’t lie to me!” Nevertheless I was so disappointed that I just could not or rather did not and with a heavy heart walked to my house which was about another 12-minute walk.
Anyhow, after that I never approached Shahnaz again. In fact, I never even looked at her again. A few months later, I had been admitted to a nearby boys’ school called St Joseph’s College. Lawrence and Sukhjinder did tease me a couple of times regarding Georgie-Porgie making the girl blush after having kissed her. I only smiled back at them. Soon they too forgot about me kissing Shahnaz the way I had about my first crush.
After five or six years when I was in Class VI or VII, I happened to catch sight of Shahnaz for the last time while both of us were walking back home after school. Though, this time she was just another girl to me.