Droopy eyes

Droopy eyes  

It was 1997 - ABCL had released their first movie last year with the launch of the bollywood newbie Chandrachud Singh. The name was complex and so were the looks. His droopy eyes and curtain hair became a rage with the girls. Apparently droopy eyelids are a medical ailment but in this case there was something intoxicating about those droopy dark eyes which every girl wanted to look deep into and to feel those eyes on them. 

Call it coincidence or mechanics of teenage life, a new boy joined our school with The Chandrachud eyes. Probably one would have never noticed him but like big lips became popular with Angeline Jolie so did droopy eyes with Chandrachud. 

He was in the non medical batch where there were mostly boys. The commerce and arts sections were beaming with girls and they started surrounding non medical class like bees on a flower. Girls of all kinds were scheming to get the Turkey to themselves. The fast girls gang, the Tom boy girls, the Aunty gang, the girl next door gang which was us. Despite the hormonal drama in every teen’s life, it only  takes a boy to be added to the equation for a ticking bomb. 

You see every girl in the batch had a story about how the droopy eyes was watching her. Yes all of them. His eyes were such, it seemed like he was watching you, really watching you in a seductive way. So the stories around him started buzzing. How someone had crossed him on the stairs, one had bumped into him on the sports field, another had exchanged a smile with him at the parking lot. There were also rumors how he already had a girlfriend in his old school. The girls were heart broken and secretly wished they would break up. Having a relationship in school was a given but breaking up was also a given. We imagined his girl friend to be a silky haired, perfectly shaped, sharp featured and dusky beauty who had a smile which lit up the room. Despite being jealous we wanted to make sure the girl was worth it to bag the prize. And we were all jealous of someone we weren’t even sure of name or existence. 

The twist in the tale happened  when drop eyes left our school for another due to attendance restrictions. For non medical students board exams were not important. They focused on  specialized entrance exam tuitions and maintained low attendance in schools. So another school was giving more flexibility to miss schools and most guys who loved bunking went for the same. We are not sure of the truth of this. But there were all kinds of notions, opinions, oddities and humor in our school. 

As was expected the girls were heart broken. I for once was mostly indifferent, enjoying the emotion drama happening to others. I would not ever go for a man who is so in demand. The popular boys were in general vain or tough to please with such evident female attention. Probably too pretty for my taste as I liked my men slightly rogue, boyish, with easy going aura. Add to it the silent looks and stolen glances you have my perfect bad boy! 

So in his absence his close friends started getting attention from the other girls who came enquiring about him. His friend Aloo, actually Alok. He was called Aloo not as a tease but because that’s what he called himself. It’s just sad when people can’t pronounce their own names. Aloo was cute too but in a plain vanilla way, and was also enjoying the female attention. 

I always got front row tickets to crazy show of droopy eyes fandom as my closest friend Simran was obsessed with him. She would write his name repeatedly at the back of her notebook. I had also seen it written on the palm of her hand. She had picture of Chandrachud Singh hidden in the her bag which she would be staring at when she thought she was alone. And would show me every newspaper clipping of Chandrachud which she cut and saved. She was a shy and quiet girl, who came from a conservative and protective family. For her to like a guy was a bit too rebellious. Her family thought celebrity crises were normal but if they knew it were the droopy eyes then she would face dire consequences. She never spoke to him but looked at him from the corners of the school ground or in the open areas. If I reflect back probably the craze doesn’t droopy eyes  didn’t touch me was for the strong sister code. You don’t like the guy your friend likes. There is plenty of fish in the sea, especially for us girls. 

Aloo was often visited by her too to check about droopy eyes. One day Aloo approached me and mentioned he wanted to have a chat with me after school. These kind of pre- positioned chats were how boys made the proposal. A boy and a girl chatting alone is no less scandalous than someone actually eloping. The guy generally confesses his feelings during such quick meetings. 

I was also popular in my own way as the reigning Miss Fresher of the school. Aloo (I can’t call him anything else, and I was the one who invested much in keeping and popularizing pet names for people back then) and I agreed to meet after school at the two wheeler parking. The small town and a smaller school meant that this will be the talk of the town soon. If any one finds me talking alone to a boy in school it would be assumed as the smoke before the fire. So my loyal friends came along and stood at a little distance. 

I moved fwd and said Hello to him. He said Hello and mentioned that he wants to ask something. I awkwardly say ‘Ok! Say.’

My tendency to hide my nervousness in humour meant that I had a stupid smile plastered on my face. I was conscious of people looking at us. The meeting scheduled at the end of school meant that  everyone will be there soon getting their vehicles to get home or Geri.  The only reason we were meeting here so it looks like a pure coincidence what with half the school being there. 

I look at him but don’t want to look at him. His Os were really Ooos. I can never not laugh at someone with a quirk pronunciation especially his own name. Mentally I was already rejecting him. Then he said, “Neha, you see he likes you.”

He! is he referring to himself in third person. I wondered. 

I ask ‘Who he?” 

Droopy eyes!, he says.

And it seemed like the time and place froze. Suddenly the white noise chatter of a parking lot came to a stand still. People stopped moving freezing in time and space. The only sound I heard was the gentle inhale from someone behind me. I could feel were the alerting of the ears, the tightening of the joys and two eyes brimming. I think I heard a tiny heartbreak. It was my friend Simran standing right behind me in solidarity, not knowing what to do. She wanted to run away but that would only make it obvious. What do you do when you are unintentionally the reason of your friends misery. Dear lord, she didn’t deserve this.

Aloo continued. “Think and tell. “

“Bbbut don’t think along with your brothers.” He added. 

This made me laugh. Yes that was another thing I was famous for. My two elder brothers. Appropriate age difference, tall and good looking elder brothers were a fake friend magnet. There were girls who would get friendly with me to get in proximity with my brothers. The boys were scared to get close to me to avoid proximity to my brothers. Aloo thought that I would tell them about his overtures. Only I knew how my brothers would mock me and call the guy either blind or moron for liking their apparently ugly sister.

Calling Aloo ‘a fatoo’ in my head, I tersely turned around and found myself face to face with Simran. Her face was pale even whiter than usual and her eyes downcast. For most part of the return back home she was quite and composed.  Nowadays we both rode to and from school in her car. My father had banned my two wheeler riding after a silly accident so her car and driver were the only parental approved way of going to school. 

There was nothing I could have said that would have made her feel better. Abusing him meant giving him too much importance, not mentioning meant no acknowledgement for her pain. I sat next to her trying to be there for her. There was nothing in this world which could make me say Yes to the damn proposal. You just didn’t do it to a friend. I had no feelings for the man to even have second thoughts. Nor my parents or family would have liked the idea. The challenge was that now we couldn’t talk about him. She had shared her deepest desires and love for him over the past months with me. And now we couldn’t talk as we had not really spoken about anything else. I felt I betrayed her. The pain of not being chosen was something I had not felt until then. 

Oh those droopy eyes.. how many hearts you broke. And that was the day when the first cracks in our friendship appeared, which eventually died not able to face the test of time and distance. 

P.s. I had a follow up chat with Aloo where I said No to droopy eyes proposal. He then revised the proposal showing his own romantic interest in me. I laughed at his suggestion and walked away. I had  already had enough drama to make me droopy.