My First Kiss

CJ… had it been someone else who had tagged me, there is no way I’d have written this…. but for you… a thousand times over.



My mom studied in a residential school in rajasthan… place called Vanasthali Vidyapeeth. If you can believe it possible, she was wilder than I am… and a hundred times more rebellious than me. In fact, I don’t think I am rebellious at all. No… really…! I am not joking.

Anyhow, she did her graduation from there. If my grandma thought mum would be tamed by the stay in a strictly regimented institution, she miscalculated grossly. Mom came home with proof of the devastation she could wreak. The place was meant to be a jail… an exile… but it became her laboratory where she had conducted successful experiments.

I could go on about her exploits forever. But I had better get on with the narrative.

Needless to say, people like that have a massive fan following. She was no exception. People many batches after her would talk of her as if they knew her personally. She attained legend status.

About the time I was 12, we happened to meet a couple at party. They got to talking.. my parents and them. In the course of the conversation, it turned out that the lady had studied at Vanasthali too and was 5 years mum’s junior. But she knew mum… or knew OF mum I guess I should say.

The 2 families became close friends. The lady’s husband taught at the university and so was mum’s colleague. They became a second set of parents I had… In fact I became closer to them than to my own parents. They had 3 kids, 2 sons and a daughter in between them. The youngest was a year older to me and the eldest was 5 years older. I got along with the youngest like a house on fire… The oldest was a bit of a drag… too bloody serious for my taste… like the end of the world was coming any minute. I refuse to speak of the girl. I can bet you anything you like… that wherever she is now... she watches the K-serials like there is no tomorrow. Or maybe she plays the Saas in one of them… even then she had the raw talent. Talk of being a pest…!

After a year, uncle got an offer to go abroad for research and so they left abruptly… and left a huge void behind. I never expected to see them again.

Then they came back. 5 years had passed… I was 18 by then. They left the daughter (phew…) in college at Delhi and came back with the 2 boys. It was like they had never gone. I was going thru the roughest time of my life that time… and I really needed them around.

I got along with the younger son as much as ever. We would fight.. go into gales of laughter over nothing at all. The eldest became… if possible… even a bigger bore than ever. He looked all the time as if he’d swallowed a poker. Grim is not the word for it.

Naturally, I went over to their place all the time. Though they lived far from our place... yet I would go every other day on my bicycle. One such day… I was about to leave their place. It was getting dark and then it began to rain. Aunty wouldn’t let me leave. But I told her I would have to go… or it might get too dark for me to go alone.

She told the elder one to give me his wind-cheater… since that was all they had. He brought it and I tucked my shirt inside my jeans and put the wind-cheater on. It had a draw string at the bottom but I couldn't find the sting-end to pull and secure. So I asked him to help. He located it and tied it up for me.

The next thing I knew was that he was kissing me. It has been many years since that happened… but even today when I remember it... my heart leaves its moorings and lands in my mouth with a dull thud.

Don’t ask me how long the kiss lasted. I am clueless. I know it seemed like an eternity. By the time he released me… my lower lip was swollen as if stung by a bee. I pushed him away and ran down the stairs, picked up my bike and left as if the devil were after me.

By the time I reached home I was in a state… In addition to the intense emotional turmoil… my lower lip had turned purple. Why turmoil…? Ok… if I tell you… will you promise not to laugh…?

I was filled with a deep sense of guilt. I used to call him Bhaiya… like girls normally do in my part of the country. I couldn’t forgive him for doing something THIS wrong. Though I didn’t know the word for it that time… it felt like I- we- had committed incest.

This is NOT fair. You promised you won’t laugh…!!!

I didn’t go to their house for 10 days after that. When I did, I was told he had got admission in a university abroad and was leaving in a week. That was the last time I met him.

He left. His parents stayed here for 2 more months after that. Then they shifted to Delhi too. The nightmare of my life had left me in no condition to want to keep in touch with them. Later I found they had all settled in US.

I never saw him again. Don’t know where he would be. Or where his parents- my parents too in many ways- would be either. I miss them… I wish I had not stayed away from their place for 10 days.

But then these things happen. People come… people go... and leave a part of them behind in the form of a stamp on your soul. 

Tags: teenage, first kiss, kiss, values

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