How I met your Mother

           

             On a very pleasant evening, when I was young, I found myself on a beach. I was at an impressionable age and my harmones were raging. It was probably the age when I fell in love with every girl that I saw. And having gone to the beach where the sound of the waves and the constant winds had a lulling effect on me - maybe I was feeling romantic. Or  - since I was alone - I might have been craving for companionship. I missed my friends  The stage was set for my first attempt at befriending someone from the opposite sex. There was this nice looking girl who had come for a walk along with her friend. She was cute. At least as per my perception. When our paths crossed, my reverie was broken and impulsively I turned around to follow them.

             It was dusk and the girls , probably misreading my intent started walking faster. While the sensible part of my brain advised me to stop further investment on this project, my harmones and inbuilt impulses literally forced me to quicken my step. For better or for worse this need to know the conclusion of this story guided all my future actions. Having reached them, I opened with " Hi. I am ------." The girls looked at me as if I had comitted some impropriety. For sometime  the winds and the sea quitened down. Then one of the girls said " My mother told me not to speak to strangers". and with that the girls started walking away at a quick clip from our meeting place. I quietly applauded the instructions of the cautious mother to her child - and at the same time cursed her for being instumental in ruining what I thought would be a perfectly good evening.

             This incident scarred me for life. The mother factor always governed my furture interactions with the fairer sex. At the back of my mind I was worried that all girls' mothers would pass such outlandish instructions to their daughters and that at each time I tried  to befriend some girl this advise would nip my attempt at any relationship in the bud. For a long time I was wary of trying to befriend anyone. Was it my introversion or was I scared at being rejected outright? And then the same mothers would encourage their daughters to converse with some poor soul who was brought forcefully by their family for ' seeing the bride' for an arranged marriage. That fateful evening on the beach had altered my life in a manner which I had never visualised.

            In an attempt at not being a stranger, I decided to approach this problem of befriending girls in a different fashion. During my graduation, the families of many of my fellow students had also come to the graduation party. One of my fellow classmates sister was a stunner. Confident that I had spent three years with my friend and that I was no longer a 'stranger' I approached my friend's sister with all the swagger that a youngster could muster with an intention of establishing a - as I visualised it - a longlasting friendship with this wonderful girl.  She was pleasant to speak to and seemed to be a nice person . Just as I was silently congratulating myself at having established a contact with the other kind, her brother approached her purposefully and said "Don't talk to ----- ; He is a dangerous chap."
Sisters being sisters, the girl conveyed her thanks to her brother and walked away from our interrupted conversation. Of course, while the sister avoideed me because I was 'dangerous' the brother also ensured that he did not cross my path. The aura of 'danger' around me probably intensified when the brother was within my visual distance and he did a great job at avoiding me through the graduation ceremony.

            Over the next few years  my ability to discern between a nice looking girl, good girl, friendly girl, hostile girl etc improved. What did not improve was my capability to establish a meaningful relationship with the fairer sex . The words - from all those years back - still rankled.
           
Who is a stranger? How do you classsify one? Does one know all his/her friends from the previous life? All these questions went through my mind over and over again - all because some mother told her child not to speak to a stranger.  Life throws up many problems at you . Some you solve by yourself, some you solve with the help of friends, some you resolve through learning from other people and those which you cannot solve you sweep them under the carpet .


This was an unsolvable problem which I could not ignore. I am quite adept at forgetting things which irritate me but the fact that a girl did not find me interesting , gnawed at my vitals, kept me awake in the nights and generally started affecting my well being and my work.  I was turning into a shadow of my former self. Stubborn weight which I could never lose by exercising now started melting over my bones. The chubbiness which made me look like a lout was slowly going away - giving me an improved appearance.

People did not know of my internal turmoil. In fact they congratulated me on my good looks. The only person who expressed concern was my mother (She never discouraged me from speaking to strangers) . In her own way she silently kept feeding me. And when I did not put on weight she gave me castor oil to supposedly get rid of the worms in my stomach.

All seemed lost  until I overcame  my inhibitions to  say hello to your mother and she responded....