The last examinations were over, and with them, yet another chapter in our school life had come to a close.
Winter was giving way gradually to spring, the days growing warmer, air lighter. For a change, there were no classes, no homework, no punishments — only afternoons stretching on and on, street cricket, and peaceful walks home in a dying orange sky.
But something in Krishanu had… altered.
It wasn't sudden. Maybe it started during winter break, or maybe it had always been waiting to happen. Either way, when the exams ended, he wasn't the same boy I'd known since Class 3.
His hair was different — neatly parted, slicked back like one of those actors on the TV shows our sisters used to watch. He pressed his shirts before going out to meet friends, wore a new watch that he didn't actually need, and admired himself in every glass door we walked by.
I figured at first that he was just bored. Then I figured out — no, this was something else.
---
It struck me one night when he suddenly blurted it out in our usual conversation by the corner shop.
"There's this girl," he muttered, avoiding eye contact.
I almost choked on the samosa. "Wait—what?"
"She's in my lane," he went on, trying to sound nonchalant but doing badly. "She's… nice."
I stared at him. "Since when are you talking about girls?"
He scratched his head, looking embarrassed. "Since… now, I suppose."
That's when it hit me — puberty had finally claimed its next victim.
---
The following days were something else altogether.
He just went on and on about her — what she said, what she wore, how she smiled when he assisted her with her bicycle.
We, naturally, had no experience with these things.
So, being the courteous friends that we were, we laughed. A lot.
"Ask her out," one of us said.
"Yeah, right after your voice cracks," another joked.
But Krishanu wasn't kidding around. He really sought her advice. He began "researching," as he described it — inquiring of her classmates about what she enjoyed, what classes she excelled at, what color she preferred.
I remember him sitting next to me one afternoon, telling me, "She likes blue. Should I wear blue the next time?"
I rolled my eyes. "You're finished."
---
A few days afterward, he did it — he spoke to her.
Initially, it was small conversation around the grocery store or when their families got together. She was about our age, or a year older, not very talkative but very nice.
"She's super nice," he said afterward, eyes aglow. "She said I'm good at drawing."
"Did you draw something for her?" I asked.
He nodded shyly. "A flower."
And that's how it began — their own little non-friendship, their non-conversations.
He never told her how he felt.
He said to me once, "What if she doesn't speak to me anymore if I tell her? I'd prefer to have her as a friend than to lose her altogether."
So he remained quiet — comfort over risk, warmth over truth.
And in some odd way, I admired that.
---
In retrospect, that period seems nearly movie-like now.
The painstaking, naive learning of what it is to like someone — not as a classmate, not as a competitor, but as a human being who makes you suddenly interested in the way you look, the way you sound, the way you smile.
Krishanu would take longer picking out shirts than doing math problems. He'd be humming a tune under his breath, and we'd mercilessly tease him for it. But through the laughter, we could sense it — the start of something new, something unknown.
That was the beginning of his first crush.
The day when the "golden boy" of our class made his first tentative foray into the madness called growing up.
And although we didn't know it at the time, that small spark — that basic feeling — would inform a lot of what was to follow.
---
To be continued…