Lost love: A story by Priya Nayak-Gole



The doorbell buzzed aloud marking the routine alarm. I kissed my little bundle of joy sleeping in all his innocence and shuffled to answer the door. As I retrieved the milk packets, the newspaper boy arrived. .. A teenager who supported his studies doing odd jobs filled me with a sense of pride. He wished me a good morning with a grin showing a crooked incisor reminding me of someone from years ago. Shaking my head I shut the door.
Breakfast preparations done, I joined hubby dearest at the dining table with my cuppa. He was devouring the newspaper along with the stream of dosas I laid before him... As I sipped the blissful filter Kaapi my eyes fell on the newspaper part facing me as he held it up…

Two killed in Mumbai’s Dharavi gang war...
... Leathercamp witnessed prolonged gunfight…. Annadurai gang leader K. Shivanan succumbed…

I dropped the cup on the saucer with a thud; hubby moved the paper and looked at me, concern in his deep brown eyes. “All Ok Srilata?”
“Yes… burnt …tongue…Kaapi  too hot…” I fibbed. Tears filled my eyes as I took my plate and cup to the kitchen sink, plunging down the memory lane.
Shivanan was my classmate in school from 5th grade to 9th. He was a repeating 5th grade and usually was looked down upon and ridiculed by the teachers and us scholarly kids. I never spoke to him but something about him always made me look out for him. Was it a crush? I didn’t know.
In the next couple of years, I was the only girl in class who spoke with him and occasionally helped him with notes and studies. He only smirked or gave a cold shoulder to others but when with me he smiled occasionally revealing his crooked front incisor…
It was a rainy evening one day during the 9th grade. I was waiting to go home alone in the waterlogged bus-stand.  My heart fluttered seeing Shiva, as I lovingly called him, come running.
 “Sri, I …I love you… you are everything to me…” He panted.  He was tall and he looked down at me face dripping with water. I just kept staring… the strict upbringing in me not permitted to say anything. I looked away and just then my bus arrived. As the bus moved... I looked back at him. To date the vision of Shiva with tears streaming down his cheeks remains deep within my heart. That was the last I saw him. He dropped out of school midway and was never heard of again.
Years passed, and I often wondered about Shiva. Till one day a friend added me to the school WhatsApp group. Someone mentioned him being a gang leader…
As I started to pack my office lunchbox, I wondered if the fourteen-year-old in me had reciprocated to Shiva or said something, would he have become a gang leader.  I would never know…
He was my first love… my lost love…




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