How did I do it? I mean alright, I went ahead and gave it to her but the courage? When I was so young, just a child, in fifth class, C section. I was not grown up enough to even wear number three slippers and I was writing love letters. I clearly remember the letter though, it was precise, it made its point and should I say, hoped to hit the spot.

“Dear xxx, I love you. Want to marry you. Please don’t tell it to anyone. Thanks.”

Who could have refused it but her? I remember struggling to walk towards her, partly because I was scared but mostly because I was wearing shoes two sizes too short. They were lent to me by my younger sibling, who was a sort of a daredevil wearing my shoes, looking a bit like Chaplin only without the humour and imbued with pity. She was wiping the blackboard and was just about to rub out my name which she herself had written in the previous period because I had been talking too much. I thought she was reciprocating. I learned this word in the dictionary while I was searching for ‘reciprocals’. I am terrible at math. I guess all artists are.

So she was rubbing off my name and was struggling to reach the end of it. That was a bit embarrassing. She had written my name with my father’s name inserted in the middle. I hate these people, as soon as they read Sachin ‘Ramesh’ Tendulkar in that damned trump card, everybody’s name had a middle. Anyway, she wrote it, I let bygones be bygones. So I handed her the letter, she read it in two minutes. Three small lines, she took two minutes. This should have been my hint. But love is not blind for nothing. It stabbed itself on foolishness. And then, she started crying, more like bawling. I felt bad, I apologised profusely. Mind you, I had never apologised in my life before. Not even when my father took the skin off my back for walking barefoot on the pavement. The Hare Krishna mission was popular only in the US, not here. He slapped me back and forth senseless.

Alright, I will concede, I apologised that day. A man apologises. So here I was, a man, apologising ferociously. My friends had vanished from the scene, even the one who had pushed me most to hand it over and most of all the rascal who had the guts to suggest that I insert “From Raja’s side too” after the “I love you” in the letter. Where were they?

Now she was crying. She will go to father Gregory next, who will go to my father, who after skinning me will send me to jail. Career finished.

Only it didn’t, life had other plans. Childhood is a distant memory now and here I am, sort of a king of 6th C.