LOVE - PLATONIC, CORPORAL AND THE OTHER KIND

I fell in love for the first time when I was 9 years old with a pretty girl. She was a relative and her family had visited ours during that dusty summer of 1988. She was 6 years old at the time and was a skinny little girl who was fair skinned and whose eyes shone like a star. She was not pesky as the other girls her age and had a certain charm to her.

The summer that year didn’t feel hot and the world suddenly looked very colorful and smelt very good. Waking up early was not painful anymore and I was not sleepy until midnight. She hanged out with me most of the time and I proudly flaunted her in the neighborhood.

The bubble burst 10 days later and I recollect vividly standing on a crowded platform on an April evening waving at the tracks that stretched all the way to some fairyland where she lived. I looked at my wrist at the wrist watch her family had gifted me and for the first time in my life I wished I could go back in time and re-live some moments. When time simply stood still over the next couple of days I realized that I was missing her deeply. I had fallen in love before I learned algebra. The world became dusty again and turned odorless. The school reopened and life went on.

Our family moved to the same city as hers after my father’s retirement in 1989 and I would meet her off and on over the next couple of years when I went along with my father while he visited her family. Having now experienced multiple hues and shades of love I can reflect upon my first love and say it was the purest form of love. I did not want to own her. I did not lust for her body. I did not seek anything. I felt happy giving. I simply wanted to be around her and watch her smile. No words were pure enough to express my love for her and therefore it simply stayed within me. I had learned algebra by then.

Time didn’t wait for me to see her smile one more time on that April evening. It moved constantly and so did the train. Time doesn’t wait for you to find the purest words of a language to express your love for someone. It moves constantly. Time moved until we were both adults and I possibly woke up one day and simply lost interest in my pursuit. I do not know how far away or how close I was to the treasure but as is the case with all pursuits I simply gave up one fine day and I would never know what course life would have taken had I pursued for some more years. I would have possibly found the purest words of a language. She possibly would have been on a pursuit herself waiting to hear the purest words of a language. Life went on nonetheless and I was to realize two years later that there was love of a different kind which took a person to the extremes of pleasure and pain.