Crushes

I've been tagged by OK to write about my crushes. Tough one.

My relationship with the opposite sex has been so platonic that I could make Pope John Paul Two look like a love rat. Not because of any lack of intent. Far from it, in fact. My personality is such. But I wont whine, no siree, we shall make this a nice little autobiographical account by counting as crushes even the slight stirrings I have felt.

Number one - H, 10th grade class mate. Modelled closely on the lines of an ironing board, H was crushed upon because of her fair skin and light eyes. My little crush was finished when I undertook to explain to her a sonnet (Shakespeare's Let me not to the marriage of true minds....) because of the impervious nature of her skull, which appeared to have been made of the finest ivory. There is a line in that poem "the star to every wandering bark" where "bark" means boat. H knew of only one meaning for that word, namely woof woof, refusing to accept that there could be any other, including outer covering of tree.

Number two - R.V., French teacher in a basic French course I joined when I got my first job. I joined the course because I thought that French was the international language of love. It is no such thing. Plus I thought there would be girls! Females! Women! Babes! Chicks! Actually there were 14 of the gender F, 7 of whom were over 60 and the rest under 13. R.V. was the only one who was what they call "mature reproductive female" in biological circles. Said female however showed no inclination to reproduce with anyone, leave alone with a bucktoothed, pot-bellied, bespectacled and humbly employed engineer with a tendency to laugh uncontrollably at his own jokes. So that was that.

Number three - A.R., colleague at work who had extremely mountainous terrain between the 30th and 40th parallel and hence a huge fan following, including me. I was by then a suave and smooth talker and I actually took her out for a cup of coffee to the nearby Kamat's restaurant. Two coffees, I replied to the waiter's surly "Han, Kya mangta hai?" and A. R. said no, just one coffee, I'll have fresh lime soda salted. Then she explained in great detail what happened to her when she had coffee, how it affected her motions, what color they would turn, how they would smell.... leaving out no detail in her endeavour to increase my knowledge of her quirky medical problems, presumably to enable me to write a knowledgeable biography, when the time came.

Number four - Madam Sheela, who is to this day the apple of my eye and the tree on which hangs the fruit of my life, my boss, saviour and generalissimo. In connection with which I HAVE to tell you guys the story of how we met and got married, both the authentic one and the jazzed up one I have for public consumption. Will need another post.

Cheers!