anymore. I wanted to fit into my new college.
‘English,’ she said.‘Here, see, that’s my name.' Riya Somani,
English (Hons), it said. My heart sank. A girl doing an English degree
would never befriend a country bumpkin like me.
Her phone rang. She took out the sleek Nokia instrument from her
jeans’ pocket.
‘Hi, Mom,’ she said in Hindi. ‘Yes, I reached. Yes, all good, just
finding my way.’
Her Hindi was music to my ears. So I could talk to her. She spoke
for a minute more and hung up to find me looking at her.
‘Moms, you know,’ she said.
‘Yes.You speak Hindi?’
She laughed. ‘You keep asking me that. Of course I do. Why?’
‘My English isn’t good,’ I said, and switched languages.‘Can I talk
to you in Hindi?’
‘What you say matters, not the language,’ she said and smiled.
Some say there is an exact moment when you fall in love. I didn’t
know if it was true before, but I do now. This was it. When Riya
Somani said that line, the world turned in slow motion. I noticed her
delicate eyebrows. When she spoke, they moved slightly. They had the
perfect length, thickness and width. She would win a ‘best eyebrows’
competition hands down—or as we say in basketball, it would be a
slam dunk.
Perhaps I should have waited to fall in love with her. However, I
knew it was pointless. I had little control over my feelings. So from
my first day in college, I was in love. Riya Somani, ace basketball
player, English literature student, most beautiful girl on the planet,
owner of extraordinary eyebrows and speaker of wonderful lines, had
yanked my heart out of its hiding place.
Of course, I could not show it. I didn’t have the courage, nor
would it be a smart idea.
We walked down a corridor towards our respective classrooms. I
had her with me for two more minutes.