Iha was short. Even shorter than me. So, I was bouncing with happiness. Cunningly-heart-felt-happy.
I met Iha for the first time in class 8th during our recess in my so loving school. Vinny, my then best friend introduced me to her. I first looked at her with the glasses of jealousy before with my real glasses. She was a friend of my best friend after all, whose copyrights were claimed by me. That way, I hated Astha as well. Well, that is a different story altogether.
Another story another day.
Gradually I came to know the facts, Iha was a painter, a writer and a player. The only dominance I had was that I was scoring higher than her. Oh, and did I mention, I was taller by some inches. An absolute joy that I would stand at the second position in the assembly in my class line. A similar joy, Harry must have had felt after he made potions in Snape's potion classes to beat Severus Snape himself.
When I saw her art in the drawing and the painting, they mesmerized me. Iha could draw so neatly and the strokes or paint was perfect. She was great, crossed my mind first. She was the best in the class or in the school. Saying that would not be an exaggeration.
Iha had another flair. A flair I never thought real people show in a real world. She was a poet. A POET!
She used to write dreamy musical poems. I thought Shakespeare was a superhuman or a man from another world who wrote ‘Tempest’. We read Tempest (only a piece of it) in Literature classes the same year. I was really impressed with the story. So, how could she write? Only Shakespeare did it.
I started living in a mild depression. But then one day something happened in the Maths class. My then favorite class teacher asked her why was she not laughing when all the students are splitting themselves on his joke? She stammered, “Ladkiyan nahi hasti. (Girls don’t laugh).” And I burst into giggles. Uncontrollable giggles!
That day, I picked up two things now an important part of me and my thinking.
First - No matter how perfect one appears everybody has their share of suffering.
Second - when one is overwhelmed and has too many emotions and ideas flowing in their brain, nothing helps better than writing.
Hence the seed of writing was sowed into me and since then I never looked back.