RU, this one's for you

"She loved me. I loved her. Only, we showed it differently.

She showed me her love by giving me all her respect I never really deserved. I showed her my love in my anger. My anger was my love. My love was my obsession. My obsession was Ravina.

Ravina was mine. Only mine."

- Rohit Wadhwaney, 18/6 Patel Nagar, Chapter 3

It was one November morning, when I first laid my eyes on her - her hair all wet falling down on her shoulders, a body any 17-year-old school goer would die for - perfect breasts, perfect butt... a short top, boot-cut jeans, a couple of trendy bracelets on her right wrist. And what more, she was from the British School.

Trust me, back then, at least in the school I went to - the all-boys MSM (Mount St. Mary's) - you have a girlfriend from British School, and you're the dude. You're bigger than the head-boy. You're talked about, you're talked to, and no matter who you are, what you look like, you immediately become part of the cream of MSM. Somewhat vain when today I think of it. But that's... school life!

She's way out of my league man, I thought. It was a time when you've never been kissed in your life, and all you've done is hear all your class-mates talk about how they got laid the previous day after school, and you shake your head along as if it's no big deal, you've done it a hundred times before, only that your girl is a massive secret, maybe you've even faked a name. It was a time when you're not really sure if you're good looking. Maybe you're not. With all due respect, schools don't really allow you to be yourself. They expect you to be and behave the way they want you to be.

You can't grow your hair, you can't wear earrings... you can't... be who you would really turn out to be later on in life, certain things about you, not just your hair and a couple of rings, yes, that too, but not just that, but everything else that comes along with that - who you are, your attitude. It's really missing in school life.

Na-aa, I wasn't a good looking 17-year-old. I was black-tanned, thin, short - basically a timid guy with side-parting, and a broken nose.

To cut a really long story short, she gave me the first kiss of my life on March 4th, 1997, a little over nine years as of today.

What can I say, I was living a dream. Those two minutes, when she was working my lips, I had lost all count - the past, the future, even the present. My mind stopped working. I could only hear my heart, I'm afraid even she could, beating like a train gone wild.

Everything that I now look back at and re-live seems as if it were just waiting to happen. I was at the right place, at the right time, and I was hell-bent on going as far as I can to make her fall in love with me.

She met me at a time when she and her then boyfriend were going through a terrible patch. I knew then, there was absolutely no room for error. It's do or die. I gave her the shoulder she needed, all the time.

Before I knew it, I was going steady with an out and out hottie, who spoke with a Brit accent, and loved me like crazy.

I was going to get married, eventually, to my childhood sweetheart.

If I, today, have to point out when the love turned into obsession, or when the beautiful, polite, caring man she met, turned into a crazy obsessive lover, who would go uncontrollably berserk even if he saw her talking to another guy, or when I hit her for the first time, which would later turn out to be a lot of times, I really can't.

If I think about it today, it's just a flashback of incidents that come together in my head one after the other, but not particularly in order of occurence.

Why I did it? What drove me to hurt her physically? They're questions I have no answers to.

You know, how a kid, when he gets his first toy, which he just adors playing with, refuses to let it out of his sight, and if anyone else tries to play with it, he goes mad. It's just his, because it's the best. He'd rather destroy it than let it get into another kid's hands.

We were together for five years.

It was she who spoilt me - taking all the shit I gave her, and in return, she'd still be nice to me. She let me take her for granted.

Do you understand when you don't walk out on people that easily? It's when you think they're the best you can do, and it's what you deserve. You're afraid you won't be able to do better, to find better.

She saw me through my college life, saw me through one of the worst injuries i've suffered till yet, saw me through four jobs, till the day I finally said, "Over," meant it, and shattered both our dreams, shattered everything she knew and always wanted.

We still talk sometimes. Somehow, she still makes me feel, without really saying it, she never got over it, that what I did to her made her fear relationships and love, that she's turned into a walking-talking rock.

Sometimes, she makes me believe, without really saying it, that when she said she'll love me forever, she meant it, that she still does.

At times, she makes me feel, without really saying it, I've hurt her forever.

But at the same time, she tells me, without really saying it, that sometimes when you get hurt too bad, something inside you shuts off and can never really open up again. That me and her have just become a memory we might never forget, that the words "I've finally grown up and changed," now hold no more meaning to her.

I've just one regret - she'll never know how much I loved her.

The bigger regret actually is that, in fact, I will never know how much, and if I really ever did.

(A few years too late, but) I'll just say, I'm sorry.

(Just a memory)