View: 'Aap jaisi koi meri zindagi mein baar baar aye, tho...'

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

Hindi Sahitya Sammelan, Kadam Kuan, and from a distance she looked extremely fetching in her square black plastic glasses. I have always carried a torch for short-sighted women. She had a book in her hands, and once in a while she would read a few lines and then survey the world.

Most girls in Patna were born bibliophiles. Holding a book was also a defence mechanism, a picket fence from behind which they could scout their immediate neighbourhood of predators. Sometimes, if they liked the predator, they would lower their spectacles and look at him directly.

Just like the girl at the Hindi Sahitya Sammelan bus stop. Our eyes met for a magical second and then her's went back to Alistair Maclean's When Eight Bells Toll. I had the exact same Fontana mass-market edition at home.

So, this was a girl who liked adventure and derring-do. As if right on cue, her school bus arrived, and she took a window seat on the left. I followed the bus on my red Hero bicycle right up to her school and then turned around and went on to my own school, some 3 km away.

I followed the routine for three days. But when by Friday, she hadn't turned around and acknowledged my presence even once from her window seat, I got the message. I stopped stalking her on my bicycle.

It is said that one never forgets one's first love. Mine was Nazia Hasan, the exquisite Pakistani troubadour of the 1980s. In 1980, when I was 6, I told my brother that I wanted to marry Nazia.

He tried to dissuade me like a responsible elder brother. 'She is my age. You are 6 and she is 16.

Think of the age gap.' 'I will handle her.' 'She is taller than you.' 'Good. I will always look up to her.' 'You will have to go to Pakistan.' 'Very well. I will get my suitcase ready.' I suspected