My first ever love

I was five and a half. My kid sister had just joined our family so Maa had to stay at home watching her. Ba took me to the Gokarna Safari Park with M aunty's family. I was excited! We were going to get to ride an elephant. So, there we were on a winter morning, climbing up the steps of what looked like a snapped end of a slide and getting on to the square seat on the elephant back.

Lulu never stopped talking. He was a couple of months younger than me. Everyone thought he was cute and he stole all the limelight all the time. Jordan, three years my senior, was always quiet and well behaved. I instantly fell in love with him!

A snake crossed the elephant's path and I, who was the first to see it, screamed, "Look! Snak!"
I could have been a Gujrati, mistaking snacks for "Snakes". But the word was out! I had no time to correct myself to "Snake" and everyone was already laughing. Lulu laughed the loudest and kept taunting me for the rest of the day with "Snak". How I hated him! I hated him for being younger than me and for being cuter than me. And I hated how everyone talked to him and much less to Jordan or me.

The next time Lulu and Jordan were home from the boarding school, they did momos at M auntie's place. We played hide and seek around the house while the women made momos and men played at a game of cards. Lulu showed me their dog and Jordan shared his five star with me. And I just knew I was going to marry Jordan when I grew up.

Maa and P aunty and M aunty busied themselves in the kitchen stuffing flattened dough with spiced buff mince. Maa was an expert! They praised her for the beautiful shapes she made. They were such a big hit that evening. I was standing by the kitchen watching them do the curious shapes, when Lulu pulled me toward the sink in the dinning space and kissed me on my cheek.

"What's going on?" asked Vikram uncle.

I turned scarlet. I wanted to punch Lulu on his face and disappear. I hated Vikram uncle who went around telling everyone in the house what had happened. The uncles and aunties in the house decided Lulu and I should get married when we grew up. But I hated him even more. I felt defiled. How dare he! I was in love with Jordan! How was I ever going to marry him now?!!

I never saw either of them again. But as I passed into teenage, I often thought I should actually kiss Lulu and maybe really marry him since he'd kissed my cheeks already. But what about Jordan?

Once, P aunty's daughter told me Lulu had grown up into an unattractive young man and it delighted me. Serves him right, I thought! But it also disappointed me. He was my first kiss.

I forgot the brothers as I grew older. They were away at boarding school all the time. At that time, I had no clue what going to boarding schools in Darjeeling were like.

My experience only came much later in my late teens when I joined Loreto Hall. Girls lived under such strict rule, I think of them now and wonder how the gypsy in me endured such austerity. The only visitors allowed to us were our parents, siblings and relatives. Among male relatives, it was either your father's brother or your mother's.

I had a visitor on a Saturday morning. I went down to the parlour. Visitors meant grub!

A young man, fitting the traditional description of a "nerd" sat on a chair near the fire place. Next to him sat my friend's brother Chong, who had made the visit possible.

"I'm Jordan."

Jordan was on his way to Bangalore, where he would live in a monastery. He was training in the Ghoom monastery to become a monk. It was too late to persuade him not to go. Regardless, I tried. To no avail.

I ran into Jordan in the Darjeeling Chowk Bazar once. His glasses were broken so he'd tied it up with a string. I made him remove them and cleaned them for him. He put them back on.

I haven't seen Jordan since. But I heard he had become an English teaching monk in Bangalore. I heard about him from Ba now and then.

Last week, Jordan added me on Face Book. He's working in Kathmandu now and is getting married soon. I felt the same warmth I did as a five year old to hear his voice over the phone again, in a brief conversation. One long friendship!

I went around telling whoever would listen, the story of my first love that day.