Chapter 3

Chapter - 03

Saavi got startled listening to Piya’s laughter. She turned around and was surprised to see Piya laughing, holding her stomach. It took her a while to regain her composure and she walked towards Naman and Saavi. “Thank God you are here Di! I wish you had come earlier so that I could get saved from reading his brilliant stories.” “Yeah, me too. I wish I could reach earlier and get to know about my other love affairs!” Piya burst out laughing again. “How do you know about this!” “Well, I came here a few minutes ago when you were taking Naman’s class and I was listening to his justification. Makes sense. Now even I am wondering who is my soulmate in true sense? Ansh or Mohana?” “See, she gets it.” Naman was elated to get Piya’s support.  

“I don’t understand Di, how could you support him? Do you have any idea how he has correlated your and Mohana’s interactions?” “I might, considering I grew up with him.” Piya answered with a smile. “See, you are too serious. So often you get frustrated with Naman’s jokes and the way he correlates things. Since we have grown up together, I am accustomed to his reasoning. You may not believe it but he was actually very popular in our school for his writing. Give him the toughest topic and he would come up with such unique ideas that no one could possibly imagine.” “Of course.” Saavi replied sarcastically. “Seriously! Every year before the publication of our annual school magazine our classmates used to beg him to write something.” Saavi was shocked at the revelation and her mouth formed a perfect ‘O’. She looked at Naman and he nodded in the affirmative.

“Leave Naman, now I am more concerned about the mental state of your classmates. I wonder how Guru Maa could tolerate this nonsense!” “Well, Amma couldn’t read my stories or see my cartoons. So this was the only medium where I could unleash my Kanchaness.” Naman smiled as if he had conquered the world. “Although no matter how amazing something is, nothing can last forever.” He replied while rubbing his cheek. “What do you mean?” Saavi got excited seeing the change in his expression.

“Actually, I am responsible for that.” Piya replied with a guilty look on her face. “We were probably in 9th or 10th standard back then. I was in the editorial board that year. I was reviewing the articles and Naman had submitted a satirical essay. But....” “But what?” Saavi got impatient. “I wrote Piya a love letter and slipped it in her backpack. She didn’t realize it and....” “By mistake I handed over that letter for publishing.” Piya covered her mouth. “You did what!” Saavi couldn’t believe her ears and almost laughed in schadenfreude. “It was unintentional. Both the pages were kept side by side and I mixed those up in a hurry.” Piya’s face turned red. “So when that love letter got published in our annual school magazine our friends had a great laugh but some of the guardians had complained to Amma and the rest you can imagine.” 

“Of course! I can understand. My condolences!” Saavi tried really hard not to laugh but both Naman and Piya could understand her actual reaction. “Now that I think about it, I am glad that I hadn’t addressed your name in that letter. Otherwise Amma would have drowned me in that well behind our house.” Naman shuddered a little thinking about his impending doom at Guru Maa's hand. “Yeah! I think so too.” Piya replied weakly. “I have never really apologized to you properly for that mishap. I mean I did, for the swapping. But back then it didn’t really occur to me that you could have written the letter to me. I am extremely sorry Naman!” “It’s okay. It was a long time ago. Besides, Amma just needed an excuse to slap me. It gave her the perfect opportunity. However, I wonder if she realized I had written it to you. I had never told her that I loved you but she understood my feelings for you anyway." “Wait, you misplaced his letter but didn’t understand he addressed it to you?” Saavi was surprised. “Actually, I had never read the letter in the first place. I saw his handwriting and assumed it to be his article. It didn't really occur to me that someone could write me a love letter, specially Naman." “Besides, I had written it in proper language with utmost SHARAFAT. So it would be difficult for anyone to guess that I wrote that letter. People rather made fun of it thinking something so serious got published under my name and you know teenagers, it was sweeter than sugar and everyone had a great laugh." 

“To be honest, if I hadn't recognized Naman's handwriting, I would have assumed it to be someone else's prank.” “Still you didn't ask him anything?” “Nope. I was rather mortified upon realizing my blunder and couldn't meet his eyes for several days.” “Except for the two of us no one was really bothered about it. Like Piya said, everyone thought it was a prank. Everything was fine until that one nosy auntie gathered other mothers to complain to Amma and then there was Thappad Ke Barsaat.” 

Piya and Naman stood with sad expression but Saavi burst out laughing. “Oh God! Now I wish I could read that letter!” Naman glared at her. “You have a problem with my cartoons but you are more than excited to read my love letter which earned me a good beating? Great!” Sensing the impending war between the two Piya decided to meddle in. “Don’t you guys have somewhere else to be?” “Yes! We are getting late. Bye Di!” “Bye Piya! Dafli is asleep and hopefully she won’t be much trouble. I’ll be back as soon as I can.” “Don’t worry, little one loves me. We’ll have fun together. You go and finish your work. Would you mind if I read your stories?” “Not at all. Go ahead.” “Yes Di, go ahead. Who knows? You might have had other admirers as well. I am sure even if you failed to notice them, Naman didn't." Naman was about to say something but Saavi dragged him out and bade goodbye to Piya.

Piya closed the door and checked up on Dafli. Since she was asleep, Piya made herself a mug of coffee and opened Naman’s books. Not only Ekayan, but Naman wrote stories on almost every entity they had encountered including - Bhaisasur, Dukayan, Chalayan, Prathmayan, Dev, Kalashree, even Singha. Not to mention the hilarious description he had added for Singha and Mohana’s love story. Nevertheless, Saavi was right. Despite knowing Naman’s quirk and Saavi's warning she had a hard time reading her own love story with Mohana keeping her face straight. It was really witty and she couldn’t help but praised the way Naman had correlated all the incidents till the final battle. “Not bad! His romanticized version is much more entertaining than our original story. I wonder what Ansh’s reaction would be upon reading this!”  A mischievous smile crept across her face.  

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