A Second Chance
As Raj walked down the airport, he caught a glimpse of a face he didn’t think he would ever see again. Just like that his heart was hammering at the speed of a bullet train as he quickly told his parents he was going to the bathroom as he dashed after the girl.
He told himself while running and weaving through the crowd, ” Calm down , Calm down.” To know the reason why our young 15 year old protagonist was panicking, we will have to dive a little into his past. I’ll make it brief-;
You see, Raj was always a compassionate, intuitive and a all good ,do good type of boy. Ever since he was five years old his mind was way ahead of his years when it came to philosophical thinking and basic knowledge of life and stuff like that. As a result he was different from the other kids and while he did his best to understand and help everyone, he was never really understood. To make things worse when he was in 1st grade he took a liking to a girl in his class named Lily.
Yes this is the same girl he is running after right now.
Now at first Raj didn’t know how to make sense of what he was feeling,so he tried to push it down , telling himself it was wrong. That he was a little kid , how could he be capable of liking someone?
Then after two years of liking her he finally came to terms with himself and what he was feeling and told her. At first things turned out well,Lily accepted Raj and told him she liked him back and for a while everything was well. Then came the time in 4th grade when the classes had to shuffle and both Lily and Raj were shifted to different sections. Nevertheless the bond between the two remained strong until one day Raj got a note in his desk saying Lily wanted to meet him during recess in her class.Raj immediately made up his mind.
Little did he know, this was going to be the very last time he was to meet Lily, atleast until today. So as he went to her class he prepared himself, calmed himself down , telling himself it was a normal meet with a friend but his instincts were screaming at him that he shouldn’t go , if he did something wrong might happen. But Raj being Raj , he went anyway. That is one flaw in our saint like hero, once he makes up his mind about something, even he can’t tell himself not to do it, he will do it no matter what the circumstances suggest or what his own mind tells him.
Back to the past, as Raj entered her class he could immediately tell something was wrong with Lily. She wasn’t looking that happy to see him , infact she looked almost sad . He quickly asked her what was wrong , but instead of replying directly to his question she simply said ,”My family is shifting to London.” Raj froze in his tracks. Even though he had thought this day might come he had almost never actually thought about it . You see, Raj lived in India and was born and raised in
this very country and belonging to a middle class family had never really visited any other country, at least not in the age that he could remember it. On the contrary Lily, while also living in India lived in a quiet well to do family and had visited other countries quite often, London being a particular amongst these trips. She had told Raj about these trips , but neither of them had thought that they would have to separated so soon after their just a year long relationship. So in short this news devastated both of them and while Lily kept trying to get a chance to meet Raj again and again, Raj kept shying away from her thinking it would be better for her if she could move on from him as they would probably never see each other again.
Now both of them were 8 years old at that time so you can imagine the surprise Raj got when he saw Lily at an airport in India, 7 years after this incident. Raj had tried and failed on several occasions to move on from her to other girls and on one recent occasion he had almost succeeded but as fate would have it didn’t quite go as planned and he messed up again.
Raj had grown quite alot in these years and was no longer the little kid he used to be back in 4th grade. One major difference was that now instead of being the one kid most would pick on he now wore a mask of toughness and managed to fool anyone he encountered to stay away from him. Well almost anyone. He had friends and despite him trying hard to shrink into the shadows he always seemed to shine so bright amongst the crowd that every eye eventually had to turn to him.
So in short, over the years Raj had grown more mature and while he understood his past , he still couldn’t come to terms with it. This was his one flaw . Despite him always saying he was over it and always acting as though he was alright, he really was living in his past. When alone , he would often cry and then admonish himself for crying over something that was already done . In 11 th grade and no longer in anyway a little boy he was an independent young man with post traumatic issues that he still hadn’t resolved. Still he did his best and worked his ass off when he could in studies.
This was one of his rare occasions when he was on trip with his family and as if God knew he was dreading going back home, he had provided Raj with an opportunity to finally get over his past and given him a motivation to finally go back home without feeling completely worthless and lonely and unworthy and in short every negative word Raj could think of to describe himself.
Raj finally had a second chance. It was up to him to use it.
His mind racing past the scenarios as his higher than most analytical skills allowed him to asses the situation and maneuver around the crowds while also thinking about how to tackle the current situation, he thought about whether or not he should tell these developments to his parents, that is of course if things went according to plan this time round.
He sighed inwardly and with one more burst of speed caught up to Lily.
Fighting the urge to call her name out, he acted as if he accidentally bumped into her.
She turned around to face him and his heart stopped. It was her, it was Lily. To her credit, Lily , instead of ignoring him, also seemed to recognise him. She smiled at him and then waved a hand in front of his face , saying,” Hello? Raj? You here?” Raj had just realised that Lily had recognised him. He nodded in agreement to show that he wasn’t frozen at the site of her anymore but couldn’t really think of anything to say. His voice seemed to have left him and his mind was completely quite as though every cell of his body was holding its breath in anticipation of what will happen now.
On the other hand Lily was calm and collected, and taking Raj’s hand she asked in a joking manner,” Long time no see huh?” Raj replied ,” Too long , Lily , too long”. Lily gave him a sad smile before gently squeezing his hand and asking,”So you still remember what happened back then?” Raj nodded in the affirmative and said,” I remember almost every single detail of it. How could I not?” Then he said,” Though I certainly hope we can move on from that” Lily said ,” I know i can , and from your face i can tell that you had the same
experiences as me so you should also be able to.” Raj smiled at that and asked,” So this might be a little early but seeing that we haven’t seen each other in a while and if you still live in London then we probably won’t, so we should share our contact info , just to keep in touch?”Lily replied, ” It’s not early at all in fact it’s late if anything we should have done it earlier before i went to London and all.
But as for we not seeing each other that won’t be a problem cause i will be living in India again, and besides I think your parents made good friends with my parents so we shouldn’t have a problem staying in touch.” When Raj still looked sceptical, Lily sighed and pointed towards where his parents had been standing when he had left them.
Raj looked around to see Lily’s parents in what looked like a good natured conversation with his parents. Then Lily tapped him on the shoulder and said,” But still i suppose it would be better not to rely on our parents so we should probably know each other’s numbers.” Raj immediately agreed and after telling each other their numbers they went over to meet their parents. Both were equally anxious this time and neither of them noticed they were holding hands as they walked.
By: Dhruvaditya Tiwari
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