The Worst Thing About Red Roses

Roses are red.

It's needless to add that they have thorns.

I had been a prosperous, young - short,hairless,ugly and at the threshold of puberty! - man when I first saw her.She was tall - taller than the average girl in our batch,if you take my meaning - and skinny and fair and graceful. At least that is what I could see in her frame. She was not in my section,so there was always a distance. And (gods!), distances are like fertilizer for the weed of fascination. She was the kind of girl I would have liked : closest to the possible best.

Well, she was - no,she seemed - 'The' epitome of my latest hormonal-demands anyway.

Sadly,I was a lame man.Though not in the literal sense of the word : just that hair had finally started sprouting in my armpits, I had just shifted and the school was as new to me as my pelvic hair,and, - to top it all - I must tell you guys, I was a stupid,shy,self-conscious and pansy-kind-of-a creature,always busy making a fool of myself. I was hesitant to approach her.

I am an Indian,you see,and as boys grow up,no matter the secret desires - and the bathroom sins, if you don't mind - and the passions unquenchable,we need to be shy in front of girls;sort-of distant. It works pretty well to the effect of the concept of 'social behaviour' here. And - even though my parents are as open-minded as anyone's who reads this - I grant you,I had always portrayed myself as the good child of the house,as if I was India's last innocent soul.

I was that lame, you see.

Naturally,there had to be a certain tinge of that shyness in me when it came to the girl.For half-an-year I did not approach her.I did not even as much as glanced her way,avoiding any chance of her getting to know my 'basal-desires' .I told you : lame.

Well,I finally got to know the girl on an olympiad-trip.It was the first year of high school - ninth grade.Indeed, I got to know her.

She had this characteristically unusual name,the typically irregular array of teeth - canines,to help the image - that made her look like a horse with dental subscription - but a wonderously beautiful smile at that-,she had some good words in her English,she had this mature way of talking and teaching I never had,and she had - gods take me, how I still love that part - such beautiful eyes! I mean, that's what gave me a pause when she looked me straight in the eye.O.K, I'll tell you the name. Her name is Rohita. And I always called her Rohita.( Oh, just in case you're wondering about the name : Indian names,one-and-all have a meaning,an aspect. And both her name and its aspect is unique.)

She said she liked me as a person.Well, I say that to every second person.I got my chance to understand her,and start knowing her. (Notice one thing,if you may, here - I take 'understanding' and 'knowing' people as very different ideas. You can develop an understanding within a week, a day, may be an hour. But knowing someone takes your time.) We grew great friends. She told me stuff no one ever got to know. I din't do the same,however.

They say it is always an even exchange between friends. Mine was,too. You try to find how.

I know all this is going towards the philosophic side, but - I tell you - it has been two and a half years since the puberty thing started and it is not all that exciting anymore.

So, where were we? Yeah, puberty! NO, understanding and knowing....

It's like I say - 'when you start getting familiar with life,it gets difficult to love it'.(I like my own one-liners, you see.)

So, though the 'tall, skinny and fair' thing about her was all in good health,knowing her was not as wholesome an experience as 'drinking her smells', 'bathing in her warmth', or 'sinking in her eyes' was.She was not the typical, 'good-girl' i wanted.

Granted, it is not all that difficult to say this today,but I would never have accepted such truths when infatuation and puberty were mating with my hormones. You neglect them when you're so close to something you've secretly desired for what has felt like ages.Not to mention the puberty-thingey. But deep down somewhere I always knew she was not the romantic girl,nor the emotional one either,or the 'good, gracious lady' or even 'the little miss sunshine'. She was real. Practical. Uncaring. Demanding. Hurtfully straight-forward. And may be that is why I accepted all the vices.Or maybe the puberty thing was on a high.

Whatever be the truth of it, we had a nice long friendship for about an year.

Then things worsened for the best. I had a fight with one of her friends. The other girl was wrong. Rohita never said a word. She smiled, she laughed. I didn't appreciate that. I stopped talking to her.Things came back to normal with both of us after few days. But there were two normal worlds now. We didn't share one. I wouldn't accept the apology. She wouldn't exactly apologise. So I left it there.I think now that she didn't know my actual reasons back then.But I have some principles in my rule-book.She just took it all very casually.Not the emotional kind,I told you.

Another year went by. We seldom so much as exchanged a "Hi". And the times we did,the greeting came from her side.

Then there was another talent search exam.Olympiads, and exams! Gods, such unfortunate events of my life! Three students who sat around me in the exam-room qualified for the State-level exams.( Don't tell me I didn't tell you I was good at academics...fairly good.) Basically, she was there among the three. They all cheated.From me! We cheated,I mean. It was fun doing it right in front of the invigilators.

Oh, lets try to see the point here(Not puberty AGAIN,I grant you).

Our school also held special classes at the end of every full school session for such "honourable" students who qualified the exam. We all came. She knew only me there.

Then she had invited this new problem.Oh, she is a girl of problems, I tell you.It was drinking problem this time. Not hers, but her best friend's.

The girl vomited pools in her bathroom one night after a party and Rohita got pulled up at home for underage drinking suspicions.

She told me everything.She wanted advice and help, she said. She needed moral support, I knew.

I scolded her for her choice of company. She didn't like that.Not at first. We talked and talked. And I spoke for a change.Oh,how she was flat on me!Mind you,it was she who fell for me then.Not me.

AND THAT WAS WHERE THINGS BEGAN!

Gods, those were such dreamy days!

We never stopped talking after that.The "special classes" were on for almost a month.And,officially, the school had closed.Just a bunch of students came to the place for the classes.

We bunked lectures,we played games we'd never played since the second grade,we held hands.I used to wink at her secretly,and I can still recall the day she first winked back. Yes,she was shy when it came to relationships and confessions. I had always known that.The grown-unemotional type.Purposefully so,trying to be "real" and "grown-up".

Whatever!

I presented my proposal to her within a week.That would be 19th April. We went out for the first time on the 30th. And then it never stopped.Not until six months later.

I used to sing to her sometimes.I am not all that bad at it,you see. I bloody learned the songs she liked and sung them to her: when alone,or over the phone.She said she had these goosebumps whenever I sung one particular song to her. She used to say, "You know, you feel that song, Anant. I mean when you sing it to me." I could only listen to her and feel myself fall back into the trance.

I remember the first time she said "Anant, I love you." That was a month before we broke-up.

It happened on the 19th of October.Notice the bloody irony,gods-damn-it!She said tha things were not working out properly.That she was not able to give me back even the tiniest bit of what I was giving her. She said I was getting too involved.That my studies were going all bad.She said that I had begun to change.That she wanted the Anant back.Not the new one.Not the dreamy, the all-too-loving, the occassionally misunderstanding and the usually stupid new lover.She wanted the sarcastic, the funny, the intelligent, the prudent and the stand-out man that was me.She was right.Almost totally right. I had changed myself somehow, without actually knowing it.It might be that the romanticism was responsible.Or may be it was puberty, after-all.

But I didn't want to see all that.Puberty was raging,probably.Romanticism was in my blood.I had always known that.And I genuinely loved her, I think. But even I disliked the new, 'lamer' Anant.In every sense of the word.

Well.She wanted a bloody break-up, gods-damn-it!

Unfortunately,I had told her something right at the time things began.I had said - "Rohita : Whenever,i mean, whenever you feel there's something wrong,you tell me. No one,but me first. We'll talk it out and sort it. If not, then we'll deal with things as they fall before us. Just know that I DON'T EXPECT! You're all I ever secretly wanted. I am happy with just the feeling of having you there. I don't need more. And when you tell me it's not working, it'll be your descision. Believe me."

And I am nothing if not a man of my word.

No matter how I pined for her embrace...No matter how much I didn't want this to happen, - gods,this was all going so wrong !- I told her the same thing when she said it wasn't working out between us.Then she put the phone off.

We tried to stay friends.She went into a whole lot of misunderstanding and things went 'bad,badder,baddest' ! No puberty-surge,no silent acceptance, no understanding of her state and of my own on my part could piece things together. I tried still, failed miserably,and ended-up ruining even the friendship.Things went all-awry, if you understand me. I mean,this was as bad as things ever went with me. I even cried! Curse everything, it was no one's fault ! But we had broken-up.

Well, the things between us never settled. We are in 12th grade and still struggling with our own demons.She's with the worst guy anyone could ever find in the entire city and I have tried three-four relationships and literally jumped out of them.The feel never came back.

It's like : "when you've tasted the finest wine in the cellar, you can't digest a modest kind."(My words, again.)

I go around the school premises everyday, pretending to flirt,check-out girls,bathe in all the attention accorded me (Mine was never that bad a personality, you know!) and seem to love it all. It's called 'camouflaging'.

I know I don't want her as my girl anymore, but her thought never leaves my mind totally.There's still something about her that keeps me stuck.And though she's with the worst and the most morally-pathetic creature in the entire school and one with a face to shame even the prettiest girls here, she knows how it feels.She always will.

I somehow always had an unexplainable feeling that this would come one day; that then I wouldn't even so much as LOOK at her even when she sat right beside me in lectures; that I would often get disgusted with even her mention. But it can never escape me that even today if she is sitting in the next class, I can very well picture her.Her stance, the tilt of her head, the hair, the grace, the pretty feet, the hands, and - gods!!! - those eyes!

I might not even be there in school on time, but I almost always have a feeling if she's present in the class,or has absented herself to go out with her boyfriend,or if she is simply sitting back to study.

For all the things she said later, for all the abuses and the insults - no, public insults - I endured after that break-up, and for all those useless tears I wept, and for all the hollowness,and the bloody fact that I have matured - oh, you don't want to start growing, you don't! - for all that, she's still there in the back of my mind.More than a demon of the past.More than just a surge of hormones.

Roses are red. It's pointless to add that they have thorns.

I think for all that she was for me,my life felt like a SONG!Or may be, it was puberty, after-all!...And...never mind the title!