That cold, silly autumn night

It was a cold autumn night and a steady rain was falling in the darkness. The sky overhead was black with clouds. Continuous lightning rippled across the sky, while the wind howled and thunder continued to roar. A few moments later, the rain began to intensify.

It was already 7.00 p.m

“Damn,” my friend growled. The rain was causing us a significant delay. We had been waiting for about one hour for the sky to clear. Time passed, but the rain wouldn’t just stop. And so, there we were, me and my buddy, braving the pouring rain, on our way to an extremely important mission – the great romantic operation, as we termed it – on that fateful night.

We were studying XIth class at Rayburn College in Lamka at that time. Life was so good. We were enjoying every bit of our time in school. There was this girl in our class who was the favorite of every one. She was kind, articulate, unpretentious and open about her feelings. And yes, stunningly beautiful.

She had that kind of eyes like if you fix your eyes on hers, you would be completely locked in her spell. Everyone seemed to adore her. So it was natural for us to be among her innumerable admirers too.

We knew quite well the admiration and adoration part in our story alone wouldn’t take us anywhere. We had to take the chance, go for it and grab before someone else get it! We heard from friends that there was a guy who hovered around her day in, day out. So we had to really act fast, if we really wanted to …(?) We seemed to be caught in a now-or-never situation. But we agreed that nothing could stand in our way. Be it men, families, friends, rain, even thunder.

The rain continued to fall. We had to walk for a good 40 minutes to reach their place. It was considered too feminine for guys (teenagers like us, to be precise) to carry umbrella, at least among our circle of friends, and so we resigned ourselves to the fact that we were sure to get drenched. And that’s precisely what happened. After walking for about 10 minutes, we were caught in a downpour. It took only a few moments, but before we knew it, we were soaked with water. My clothes felt 5 kg heavier, my shoes 10 kg, my hair was firmly matted against my head, and my face dripped with moisture as the rain pounded down upon me. Drenched.

When we reached their place, she was extremely surprised to see us - wet, damp and dripping. Then what followed was something like a contemporary Bollywood movie scene. Deewanapan. Chalte Chalte. We disclosed our feelings for her. It was not an easy one, when it came to the practical implementation. We had to tell her that it was a love-at-first-sight thing. That she was the only one. That we really meant it. That we were sincere and trustworthy. And that it was for eternity. That sort of things, you know.

After displaying our impressive skills for quite sometime, we could tell she was somewhat giving us a yellow signal. Green light wouldn’t be that far, we told ourselves.

It never was. We heard her response after a couple of days.

Yes. That’s what she said. That’s what we had been dying to hear from her.

When we returned we seemed to be flying all the way back home. We were filled with a great sense of pride and accomplishment. Yes, we did it! We were going to get it! It was such a lovely, cold night. But hey, I soon began to feel something strange happening inside of me. My head grew heavier. My sight grew dimmer. I was feeling cold, terribly cold. Following that fateful night, I was completely lying in bed for two whole days ‘cause of – fever!

It was pretty silly for me to do such things. But I did them for the sake of friendship. And my friend did them for the sake of love.