She was looking out of the window, her face palmed in her hand.
Birds were singing, there was sunshine sprinkled across every bit of the gleaming view stretching before her eyes. The schoolhouse visible from here was empty today, no kids with their minds playing truant stealing longing glances through the crisscrossed bars of the teachers' stern vigilance. No bells would ring signalling the lunch hour, when the kids would pell-mell rush out like a waterfall set free to cascade.
There would be no cheeky grins today, flashing eyes not yet aged by the complexities of life sparkling mischievously from underneath a bushy flop of unruly hair. No rowdy uncontrolled unchecked laughter would bubble out, from the most beautiful and carefree term of human life---childhood.
The school had moved on to new fangled, modern premises. The children had moved on to a far more complex...fast path to the future. Simplicity and innocence had gone out of style. This schoolhouse was still there, left to ruin itself amidst the haunting emptiness accentuated by the brambles and rubbish heap burying its paint peeling off'brick loosened condition of neglect .
Yet, she could still see them.
The little boy...thin to the extreme...brown hair covering his eyebrows...a set of brilliantly flashing teeth grinning in a wide boyish smile. He was quiet, and studious...topper in every class...a typical 'good boy' by all standards.
And the little girl. Garbed in the same uniform as the others in the bevy the school held, she was at least twice as naughty as all the boys put together and outstripped the girls' potential for getting into mischief by twice more. Pretty, vivacious, an all rounder, with a non stop talkative mouth and a ready tongue to match her split of the second wit----sharon raiprakash was the tomboy of the school. She ruled the roost, and she knew it.
One day during lunchtime...sharon had been jay walking the school boundary wall. All of a sudden she saw swayam---engrossed in a book----sitting on the same wall, with his legs dangling about a feet from where she stood precariously.
"oy!"
swayam looked up from his book.
"move, shekhawat---can't you see or what?"
"Sharon...only last week you fell off from the old gardener's ladder nah? This week you are again up to your antics. You'll get into a scrape if the teacher sees you." Swayam showed no signs of moving out of the way.
"hey, listen----i like getting into scrapes, ok? Now move---i want to pretend i'm walking over the London bridge---and it spoils the effect if a geek is sitting feet from you telling you how you fell off a ladder a hundred years ago." She replied haughtily.
"well, pretend on the plane ground, why don't you?" swayam replied---and buried himself back into his book.
"look who's talking. Even you are sitting on the wall!"
"yes. But i am sitting down---not trapezing here. I am not likely to fall off."
'swayam, i said move!"
"No. You'll fall off and hurt yourself. get down."
Red with anger, Sharon, somehow, clawed her way down the wall and once she saw that his attention was once again riveted in his book, she took careful aim with her sling---and meaning to hit his book out of his hand---she missed and hit a beehive, which was hanging from the overhanging boughs of a tree overhead.
Seeing the cloud of bees swarming towards them buzzing like fighter planes, sharon fled. Swayam however was still perched on the wall...and could not get out of the way in time. The bees attacked.
By the time, swayam had got down and jumped into a pond nearby...his face had already swollen to thrice its normal contours.
The students playing nearby got help...and an swayam, falling unconscious from the pain of the innumerable bites all over his body, was saved from drowning in the pool.
Two weeks followed with swayam being tended day and night by doctors...until he could recover somewhat. Sharon heard his news in school from the other kids, but she did not dare go visit him. She was guilty as hell...and on top of it, she was afraid that swayam might complain against her, and she would be punished.
But no one ever knew. Swaym never told anyone that sharon was the cause of this mishap.
When he came back to school, one day, sharon went up timidly to him.
"s-sw-swayam-mm?"
"yeah?"
"how are you?" she squeaked.
"better."
"voh---i-i just wanted to say that'i'i"
"you're sorry?"
"yeah---really---i "
"its ok sharon."
"and thank you"
"why?"
"for not complaining about me...i know i deserved to be punished..."
"relax sharon---i know you did not mean to hurt me...it was an accident. besides, i'm fine now'
"ok----chalo---my mom cooked paranthas today---wanna have some?" sharon was anxious to make up. he agreed.
While they were having paranthas---swaym noticed that sharon's right arm was all swollen.
"kya hua hai sharon tumhare haath ko?'
'nothing. Eat na." Sharon waved it away.
"sharon----were you bitten by those bees as well?----this...and did you not treat ----they look infected sharon" swayam cried, shocked.
"relax, i treated them with home made remedies----my grandma knows all about them. I'm fine. But they don't work as fast as antibiotics---they'll take time to heal. But they are not infected. Chill'
"but, why not go to the doctor's? It will heal faster---and be less painful"
"vo---swayam---i figured ki tumhe toh mujhse thousand times zyada lagi thi----it was my fault, so'"
"so you decided to punish yourself this way? By making your bites take a longer time to heal? And they'll likely leave marks. this is stupid sharon."
"well yes. Maybe. But then i deserved it. i am sorry swayam."
"you are mad as a hatter. You know that?"
She started---when she felt his arms at her waist.
"what on earth are you thinking sharon---staring at nothing?" the two children faded away----giving way to the smiling countenance of a husband adoringly staring at his wife.
"only about the day i fell in love swayam."
"hmmm?"
"remember the bees?"
"yeah---can i forget?" he said, kissing his wife's arm which still held some blemishes, permanently marking the incident which had taken place some fifteen odd years ago.
"I was such a scallywag then" sharon laughed.
"yeah---you were. But that is how i found you sharon. And thats how i loved you."
They came close and kissed----happy in the memories of the past---and the memories yet to make.Together.
ok.so no fixed idea. no idea about what i wrote---cause i had no plan to write this. just something. tell me if u like it. tell me if u dont like it as well.
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