Somehow I felt exhausted.

All I did was resting my backside on a bench and strumming some strings.

Maybe it was just school.

After all, I was forced to attend PT.

Sanya had tried her best to teach my sorry self how badminton was played in human civilization.

How the cock refused to fall on my racket was beyond me.

I popped my head into the house while wriggling my shoes off. My sister perched on the sofa with her physics book.
Her face was caked with some green goo.

The TV was switched on, airing a repeat telecast of Full House.
After changing into my pyjamas, I hit the bed with a bag of Cheetos.

Usually, it was only both of us in the confines of our home because my dad went on a lot of business trips and my mum usually came home only at night because of her hectic schedule.

I was engrossed in my Marvel comics when the landline began to ring insistently.

It rang a few times while Siya blissfully ignored it
as she usually does when I'm around.

I stuffed my face with more Cheetos and picked it up.

"Hello.Kumar residence,"I greeted in my sweetest sanskari voice.

A chuckle resounded on the other end making me almost spit the junk in my mouth.

"So, Shyla..."His deep voice greeted me."Did you come up with a good nickname for me?"

I almost died.

"Nickname?"

"Don't people who date keep nicknames for each other? I don't know the trend now. You tell me."

I ignored the angels singing Heavenly Calls with their harps behind me.

1....2....3...

I waited for him to laugh but nothing came.

Though I heard him loud and clear, on the safer side:
"What did you say?"

"What do you want to hear?"

I toyed with the wire, heat rushing to my cheeks.
"My sister must have told you that...you know,"

"I don't know."

"That you...I mean..I--"I was stuck there for 6 seconds.

He laughed."Save it. We need a topic for our lunch date anyways."

"Lunch date?" I repeated, just in case I heard wrong.

Siya's physics book flew in the air and the next moment she was beside me and grabbed the phone out of my grip with unnecessary force.

"OMIGOD!I'm so happy!"She squealed into the telephone.

Whatever he replied for that made her grin.

"You're the luckiest person Kabir! My sister is a gem. Though she's a little butt lazy, completely inefficient and cuckoo in the head she's actually a wonderful person!"

"Gee, thanks, sis. What would I have done without you?"I commented dryly.

She spoke for another half hour with him and occasionally she would decline his request of giving the phone to me.
And my sister loved to chat over the phone.
A remarkable resource for call centres in India.

That Saturday afternoon, everything went according to plan. Our parents left when we were half groggy in our pyjamas.

Siya stared at me and I at her, all in silent communication.

"Eat all the spinach curry and do your homework. Siya, supervise her," My mother shouldered her handbag, bidding goodbye with a complimentary instruction.

Poor choice of supervisors, really.

I sneakily peered out of the balcony while my mother's scooter pushed out a disgruntled puff of smoke.

My sister was pushing all the curtains down and I narrowed my eyes at her.

"That is so unnecessary, she left."

"Just in case," She stage whispered in semi-darkness and creaked open our wardrobe.

"How is this?" She asked, modelling a floral print kurta over her torso.

My toothbrush paused in my foamy mouth, "Wait, are you also coming or something?"

She puffed put a scornful guffaw, "You thought I'll let you gaily skip off alone with him? Dream on."

On the way to a pizza place in the adjacent street, my sister forced me into a window-shopping spree in a few local garment stores, much to my distaste.

But it was worth a pinch of seeing Kabir flounced at the edge of the pizza parlour later, his long neck craned towards the glass window.He was observing the streets. 

Isn't he adorable?

Once I decide I like a person, there's no going back.I would even detect adorableness in the pattern of their breathing.

His head flipped at me and then at my sister in amusement. A wisp of a chortle left him, witnessing his buy one, get one date. I gave him my most apologetic smile.

Siya was visibly unaffected, pulling out a chair for herself.

"As promised I have arranged a date for you," she said and nodded to herself in self-satisfaction.

"This is a date?"Kabir raised his eyebrows."Then why are you here?"

"I'm here for adult supervision."

Kabir scoffed to that while I rolled my eyes, inconspicuously giving Kabir's flannel shirt and skinny pants a once over.

Siya ignored us and helped herself with humongous proportions of food.

Kabir's eyes flickered to me.

And I was already a mushy pool on the floor, my gaze was addled by a silent challenge of a more confident pair of orbs looking right at me like a pair of laser rays.

I never understood how couples in movies gazed at each other for a while three-minute song.

But here we were, allowing our gazes to melt into each other, taking in every moment and every indent of each other's face.

God, this was so embarrassing and somehow weird because Siya was chewing french fries in the backdrop.

His lips twitched into a small smile.

I could see the laughter in his eyes.

I wonder how I looked then.

All red and flustered with an unimpressive simper of a Cheshire cat.

"Well, if you both speak something it will be worth the risk I took."
Siya intervened, popping another French fry into her mouth.

I refocused on Kabir who was peering somewhere behind me.
Before I could catch the object of his attention, I felt a hand on my head.
"Duck!" Duck, as in the bir--oh.

We were under the table and I caught sight of feet coming towards our table.
'Nivita,' Kabir mouthed to me.
Well, that lady was the biggest gossip queen in our colony.
I heard my sister's weak laugh as she told her she came alone for a snack.

If she saw us here together she would put up a poster in every bus terminal in Hyderabad.

Before she came to our booth, we'd wormed into the nearest door in our vicinity which bore a hoarding that claimed that Pizzas 'Chased away the summer blahs.' But the little cartoon of a toddler following a butterfly must mean something.

When we stumbled into the glass doors, we knew exactly what.

I looked behind me at the board that said that it was a KIDS tour of the kitchen and we both stood towering over Grumpy, Happy, Sleepy and Dopey.

I gave a sweet smile to the chefs. Slightly overgrown, but a child's heart inside after all.

A middle-aged man had just tossed a ball of dough in the air which flowered into a wider, elastic pancake of dough that landed adeptly in his hands. The children watched with awe and began to applaud. Not to seem more out of place than we already were, I also began to slow clap while Kabir stifled a smile.

But of course, after our unique feature of being several inches taller than the rest of the guests and the fact that we were not able to fit into the plastic toy chairs caught some staff's attention. They tried to explain to us as gently as they could that being a child at heart and being a physical one was not the same.

But we could always drop by for a discount on Yummy tummy Mondays apparently.

With two glossy handouts in our hands, we stealthily exited from the opposite door that led us into the washbasin area. Which seemed a little too condensed and puny for two teenagers to be standing there.

Somewhat like that random wooden door that Rose survived on in the Titanic. Except for the fact that Kabir won't be in mortal danger if he would freaking shift away and let me focus on my breathing.

Kabir noticed and after a moment, leaned back on the wall and plunged his fingers into his pockets. Observing Siya talking to the local gossipmonger.

I shifted back until my back hit a metal tissue paper roll, bruising my shoulder.

We somehow found the marble floor and our shoes more interesting than each other's visage.

Awkwardness.That's what this is called.

That's what we were doing. The only chance to have a decent, private conversation and we chose to bask in the noise of jaws chewing incessantly in the near table.

I was going to heroically plunge into striking a dialogue when Kabir resumed his posture, looking behind me. I didn't need to turn and confirm Siya's loquacious grin. I unfolded my arms and followed him with a huff.

Sisters are such spoilsports.

The next few weeks also, my sister graced us with her unnecessary presence everywhere possible and I was surprised when Kabir casually strolled alone on the terrace that evening. Our meeting place for the day.

He was casually strolling through the rows of potted plants when he spotted me. We both stilled for a single moment.

"Siya?"I asked feeling a little giddy.

"Your sister didn't tell you?"

"Tell me what?"

"She has a boyfriend."

There was absolutely no way my innocent nerdy little sister who made sweet love to the physics book could actually fall for the charms of a man.
Unless he was an educationist of course.

"Who is he?" I asked, completely clueless and doubly shocked. "When, how, who? Most importantly, who?"

"You know the Dhaba near our residency?"

"He's a DHABAWALA?!"

"Whoa, wait. There's a boys hostel beside it. He lives there. He used to follow your sister to college and he proposed to her yesterday with a rose."

"She was flattered because he followed her? That's stalking. Technically, she should be creeped out."

Kabir chuckled and rested his tall frame on the stone bench.

"I know it's hard to impress a girl like yourself but not everyone is you, "He replied, an unfathomable expression swimming in his eyes. 

I didn't say anything to that.That was true partly. Everything in life felt mundane to me most of the time unless something catches my fancy and I'm obsessed with it. (Or him).

I flounced down on the bench too leaving space for two people in between and folded my legs.

A gentle breeze caressed us.

I turned to Kabir whose thick hair was dancing with the wind.

I suddenly had this inexplicable urge to feel his dark locks through my fingers, but that would just make things weird.

"You have beautiful hair, "I told him tenderly until he faced me and I wanted to put my foot in my mouth.

His lips stretched into a mesmerizing smile.
"And you have beautiful lips," Was his immediate reply.

I froze into an iceberg.

He seemed to actually realise what he blurted out.
"Sorry if that made you uncomfortable."He apologized and his eyes travelled down my face and he looked away.

I noticed his hands fisting at his sides. 

~

I realised that I could actually see my sister's boyfriend through our bedroom window.
It was facing his hostel balcony and they both spoke through sign languages all night.

My sister's phone buzzed.

"Gudnite Shyla."

One reply led to another and I realised that Kabir was an insomniac.

He didn't get the hint whatsoever that I wanted to goddamn shut my eyes.

So I tried to catch up with the all-night talk while my sister tried to convey in sign language to her boyfriend that her dinner was chole puri.

My mom woke me up and my head was throbbing from lack of sleep for the past few days because I stayed up late-night texting Kabir.

In the morning, we were brightly awoken by the insistent chirp of the doorbell and my sister slapped my shoulder. " Get the door." She muttered and I crossed her unmoving body, stifling a yawn. My parents must have already left for work. The doorbell rang again.

"Coming, coming...Calm down." I mused, crossing the living room. I opened the door in a little slit and my watch guard stood there with a blank face.

"What?" I asked.

He made a gesture with his index finger and thumb. I narrowed my eyes. "Money...The flat money...Pasupathy sir saying me to..."

"Oh, the maintenance fee. Right.One second." I closed the door and looked through the cabinet shelf where my mother usually kept the payments.

"Siya!" I hollered. "Did mummy say something about the maintenance money?" I peeped into the bedroom.

Siya turned over. "Grrnfgl Wsskmn."

"Okay, thanks."

I whipped the door open. "Sorry. My parents didn't say anything about this.I'll inform them, come in the evening."

He twiddled his thumbs nervously, "Vokay, you tell,... But also we have the Durga Pooja and association was telling that the members should sponsor for the return gifts and everything because they only..."

I apologetically shut the door in the middle of his monologue when my gaze fell on the wall clock. I'd woken up later than usual. I knotted my hair into a bun and raced into my bedroom.

We had a math test today and I studied zero shit.
Math was by birth my Achilles heel and trying to calculate algebraic equations without proper sleep sure was encouraging.

The difference between myself and Kabir was simple.
He would get straight A's without much effort because he was intelligent.
While my case was pathetic.
I was going to flunk my test.

Juggling my math textbook in one hand and a sandwich in another I made my way to the school van which was waiting for me when I heard someone honking their vehicle behind me.
Kabir.

In his school uniform.

His shirt wasn't tucked and he had rolled up his sleeves. But he looking immaculately good-looking.
He gave me a once over.
I was sporting a blue pinafore that reached my knees and my short hair was nearly pulled back with a hairband.

"Do you want me to drop you off?"He asked.
What! No!
I shook my head vigorously making him smirk.
"I'll see you in the evening Shyla."

His bike vroomed and he drove off.
I got into the school van and sat by the window, opening my math notes.

"Who is he?"The girl next to me asked referring to Kabir.

"My...brother," I replied impulsively.