I first saw her when she entered my class in the third standard. I got this urge to sit closer to her as I always felt a gravitational pull towards her. I am not sure whether I loved her, but it was undoubtedly a crush. Her laugh was so infectious that it would spin me into an orbit.

She left school in the ninth standard. I was shattered. My body trembled. There was a certain emptiness, my soul broken into fragments now blown away by the wind.

I saw her thirty years later inside a mall.

‘Sujata’ I almost whispered. She turned around. ‘Yes’

‘Do you remember me? We were in school together.’ I re-introduced myself after three decades.

‘Yes, I studied in that school, but I don’t remember you. I am sorry.’ And then she walked away.

I bled an ocean through my eyes the second time.