Love at Second Sight
Original Entry Date: November 26, 2011
Completed From the Future: July 5, 2026
Love at Second Sight 🦋 🦋
Author’s Note
This story began in 2011, in a different lifetime, by a younger version of me who believed love was thunder, slow motion, strawberry lips, and divine conspiracy.
He left it unfinished.
Maybe he did not know how to end it then. Maybe the ending had not happened yet. Maybe some stories need to sleep for fifteen years before they allow themselves to be completed.
So I have returned from the future — older, slightly wiser, still dramatic, still foolish in necessary places — to finish what he started.
This is not just a love story.
This is a message sent backward in time to a boy who once mistook memory for magic.
And honestly, I don’t blame him.
---
When I met her, I thought this is how Bhagavan Sri Krishna must have felt when he met Radha.
It was more than a moment for me. When our eyes locked together, the world started to move in slow motion. She smiled. Yes, she smiled at me with her red strawberry lips, which can make any sane person go mad.
And I went mad.
I lost my senses.
It was a strange feeling, like puffing in one hundred million drags of weed. I started to float in that musical feeling, and things around me started to blur.
“KriShNnaAa!”
A voice pulled me back to reality.
I turned around.
Face palm.
It is said that meeting an angel is always accompanied by a disturbing daemon, and the daemon was right behind me — my close friend Ajay.
By the time I regained my senses, she was lost somewhere.
I knew I should find her, else it would be the biggest conspiracy of the 21st century: losing Radha for this Krishna.
She and her beautiful face remained enchanted in my heart.
I WANT THE F*****G GIRL.
My heart pounded in desire.
Friends are the bestest thing I got in my life. It is so comfortable when they are with me. I ask a single small suggestion from every nth friend before taking an important decision.
But this time I did not want to make that mistake again.
Last time my friends — wonderful friends — messed up my relationship, and it ended in a breakup.
“Are you nuts? How will you find her then?” the silent Krishna inside me asked.
I knew I would.
Yes, I WILL.
Because she is my girl.
It had become a week since I met her. I had sustained the feeling. I was walking alone along the roadside, looking up at the sky. The sun was perfectly round like her face. A gentle breeze rolled over my face.
“Ena weather da macha!” I expelled out of joy.
This is what they call love, I thought.
Love at first sight.
“Bitch!”
Some voice scorned at me.
No, she is not the crappy thing I heard.
Ajay tapped my back.
“Weather nalla iruka? Ena mama, mabla irukiya illa love la irukiya?”
I don’t know how this stupid fellow deciphered it out.
I smirked at him.
“Who? Where? When? How?” A series of questions poked at me.
“Therla macha,” I said.
I don’t know, bro.
After some days, every boy in my college was smoking with a girl’s name in his mouth. I was so curious to see her.
“There, there is Shreya,” Ajay indexed that so-called beauty.
I was shocked.
It was she.
My f*****g girl.
“Awestruck?” Ajay asked me.
“So am I,” he giggled.
I wanted to nip his head off.
“****, she is the girl I told you about the other day,” I yelled at him.
He remained uncared and was seriously drooling at her.
“Ajay, STOP it!”
He looked at me and started laughing madly.
I knew the reason why he was laughing. After all, he is my poor old childhood friend and knows every freaking thing about me.
“Onaku mattum than macha indha madhiri nadakum.”
Only for you, bro, things like this happen in life.
I was sitting over the wall.
“When you were in third standard, you had a crush on Stella Mam. PET Ragu was the competitor. In 10th it was Meera. In 12th it was Swathy. In college first year it was Keerthi, and that girl screwed you!” he continued laughing.
All these females had instigated the beautiful feeling of love in different stages of my life. I know all these girls were a part of my life and not my life.
“Moreover, remember Stella Mam kissed me. Though Meera was reluctant at first, she proposed to me. And Swathy, aaww, she was damn good. Keerthi… she is a bitch.”
“Why didn’t you continue with them then? Don’t tell me you are in love again. I’m bored, dude.”
I knew he would laugh at me. Because he knows everything as Ajay, not as me, Krishna.
It is true. When I see a girl, I lose my senses and fall in love with her. But something crooks in the middle that tells me she isn’t my girl. I look for it, and eventually I break the relationship.
Okay. I had to make the move, I decided.
I went to see panchangam from Rajam mami’s house. I knew I better hit on her before someone picked her up.
It was twenty-one days of December. I was in the love feel. I wanted to break it.
So I practiced asking her out for a date.
I went straight to her. She was having fun with her friends. As I went near her, all the junior fellows made their way away from her. I felt like being a real senior of the wonderful institution.
“Hey!” I called her.
“Hmmm, yeahh?” she said, with her eyes blinking like a four-year-old kiddo.
Every time she blinked, I felt some kind of familiarity.
“What’s your name?”
“Krishna, stop kidding. You know my name, sisisi.”
Sisi.
I was confused.
How would she know my name?
“Krishna, stop kidding. You know my name, sisisi,” she repeated again.
Sisi.
That laugh.
That bloody laugh.
It was not a normal laugh. It was like someone dragging a spoon inside my empty skull. It was cute also. Dangerous combination. Cute and irritating. Like a baby monkey wearing jasmine flowers.
But there was something else.
Something familiar.
Not familiar like I had seen her in college. Not familiar like some girl I had stalked on Orkut. It was older than that. It came from some dusty shelf inside my head, some locked room where useless childhood memories were sleeping under cobwebs.
Sisi.
Where had I heard that before?
“Actually…” I started.
“Actually what?” she asked, still smiling.
“I know your name,” I lied.
“Then tell.”
“Your name is…”
I looked at Ajay, who was standing far away, doing unwanted background support by laughing like a municipal water motor.
“Shreya,” I said finally.
She looked at me for one second.
Not surprised.
Not impressed.
Almost disappointed.
“Very good,” she said. “At least that much you remember.”
At least that much?
Before I could ask anything, she smiled again and covered it up.
“So what do you want, Krishna?”
This was the moment.
The entire Mahabharata came and stood behind me. Conch shells were ready. Horses were ready. Even Bhagavan Sri Krishna from inside my heart adjusted his peacock feather and said, “Macha, now or never.”
“I want…” I began.
She raised her eyebrows.
“I want your notes.”
Silence.
Even my soul slapped me.
“Notes?” she asked.
“Yes. Physics notes.”
“I am from Computer Science.”
“Oh.”
This is the problem with love. It does not ask department before attacking.
Her friends started laughing. Not small laugh. Full hostel corridor laugh. I wanted the earth to open and take me inside, but even the earth was probably laughing.
“Then why did you ask me notes?” she asked.
“Because…” I searched for any respectable answer. “Because knowledge has no department.”
She blinked.
Ajay fell down somewhere behind me.
For the first time, she laughed properly. Not just sisi. Not just giggle. Full laugh. And in that laugh, I found some kind of permission. Not love, not approval, not cinema slow motion. Just permission to exist in front of her without being completely murdered.
“Okay, Knowledge Krishna,” she said. “What do you really want?”
I became serious.
“Coffee?”
“Coffee ah?”
“Yes. One coffee. Canteen. Five minutes. No commitment. No dowry. No family astrologer. Just coffee.”
She looked at me. Then at her friends. Then again at me.
“Now?”
I had not expected now. I thought girls needed three days, two best friends, one cousin sister, and some secret Facebook consultation before saying yes. But she said now as if coffee was some ordinary matter and not the biggest Indo-Pak peace treaty of my personal life.
“Now means now,” she said.
I nodded like a schoolboy who forgot homework but still had hope.
We walked to the canteen.
I don’t know whether you people understand what walking beside a girl like that feels like. It is not walking. It is floating. It is like your slippers become wings. Every fellow in the corridor saw me. Some looked jealous. Some looked shocked. Some looked like they were calculating how this useless Krishna achieved this national-level miracle.
Ajay passed near me and whispered, “Dai, don’t spoil it in five minutes.”
“Go die,” I whispered back.
We sat in the canteen. She ordered lime juice. I ordered coffee, then changed to lime juice also because suddenly I believed couples should drink similar things.
I know, I know.
Idiotic.
But love makes even lime juice philosophical.
“So,” she said, “you saw me that day?”
“Yes.”
“And from that day you are walking around like sad poet?”
“Who told?”
“Whole college knows.”
“What?”
“Ajay told.”
I turned slowly.
There he was.
My daemon.
My childhood friend.
My relationship destroyer.
My unofficial press release department.
He was standing near the samosa counter with an innocent face.
I wanted to throw hot bajji at him.
“Don’t get angry,” she said. “It was funny.”
“Funny?”
“Yeah. He said you saw me once and started behaving like Karthik Calling Karthik. Rain feeling, moon feeling, breeze feeling, all feelings.”
I closed my eyes.
My reputation had been murdered and served with coconut chutney.
“Actually, he exaggerates,” I said. “I am a very normal person.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“Then why did you check panchangam before talking to me?”
The lime juice entered the wrong pipe. I coughed like an old Ambassador car.
“How do you know that also?”
“Rajam mami is my aunt.”
At that moment, I understood God has a sense of humour.
Very bad sense of humour.
Rajam mami.
The same Rajam mami from whose house I saw panchangam. The same Rajam mami who told me, “Thursday evening after 4:30 is good for new beginnings.” The same Rajam mami who gave me sundal and asked why I was looking nervous.
That Rajam mami was her aunt.
I wanted to resign from life.
“So,” Shreya continued, “you saw auspicious time to talk to me?”
“No. Actually, I went there for… general calendar knowledge.”
She laughed again.
“You are mad.”
“I know.”
“At least you know.”
We both became silent.
For the first time, without the crowd, without Ajay, without my inner Krishna making flute music, I properly saw her.
She was not some Radha descended from Brindavan. She was just a girl. A real girl. With a lime juice straw between her fingers, a little kajal smudge near one eye, hair falling on her face, and the kind of confidence that made me feel both brave and stupid.
“Why me?” she asked suddenly.
I was not ready for this question.
“Because…” I said.
Because your smile made my blood forget its duty.
Because for one week I walked under the sun thinking it was your face.
Because when I saw you, all the girls I had liked before became chapters, and you looked like the title.
Because I am twenty, foolish, hungry for love, and still believing life will become cinema if one girl smiles properly.
But I did not say all that.
I said, “Because when I saw you, I felt familiar.”
She stopped playing with the straw.
“Familiar?”
“Yes. Like I was searching for someone without knowing whom I was searching for. Then I saw you and felt maybe it is you.”
I know.
Too much dialogue.
But it came honestly.
She did not laugh this time.
That scared me more.
“Krishna,” she said slowly, “you don’t know me.”
“I can know.”
“One time is enough to like a face. Not enough to know a person.”
There.
She said it.
The first sensible statement in my entire love history.
I looked at my lime juice. The ice was melting like my heroism.
“You are right,” I said.
She looked surprised. Maybe she expected me to argue like usual boys. Maybe she expected me to say love is pure, heart is true, destiny, fate, moon, all nonsense. But for some strange reason, I did not want to perform in front of her anymore.
“I don’t know you,” I said. “I only know the feeling I got after seeing you. Maybe I am in love. Maybe I am in love with the idea of love. Maybe Ajay is right and I am some serial lover. But this time I don’t want to run away in the middle saying she is not my girl. I want to at least know before deciding.”
She was quiet.
Then she smiled.
Not strawberry terrorist smile.
Small smile.
Human smile.
“That is better,” she said.
“What is better?”
“This. Talking like a human.”
“Usually I am also human only.”
“Doubtful.”
We laughed.
For the next thirty minutes we spoke. Not like lovers. Not like strangers also. Somewhere in between.
She told me she hated people staring at her like she was some trophy. I immediately looked away. She laughed and said, “Not now, idiot.”
She told me she liked old Ilaiyaraaja songs, hated attendance shortage, loved pani puri, and wanted to go to Bangalore after college.
I told her about Stella Mam, Meera, Swathy, and Keerthi.
“Keerthi is a bitch?” she asked.
I became silent.
Then I shook my head.
“No. I was hurt. So I called her that. She was not bad. We were just stupid.”
She nodded.
That day I learned something.
When you speak to a girl you like, sometimes you start cleaning your own old lies.
The bell rang somewhere. College returned to normal size. Until then, the canteen was like a separate country.
She got up.
“So, Knowledge Krishna,” she said, “see you.”
“Tomorrow?”
“Don’t check panchangam.”
“Then?”
“Just say hi.”
She walked away.
I sat there for some time.
Ajay came and sat opposite me with a samosa.
“So? Radha accepted Krishna ah?”
“No.”
“Rejected ah?”
“No.”
“Then?”
I smiled.
“She said hi is enough for tomorrow.”
Ajay stared at me.
“For this only you built full Mahabharata?”
I took his samosa and ate one big bite.
“Yes.”
And honestly, that hi was enough.
The next day I saw her near the library. No slow motion. No weed feeling. No one hundred million drags. No divine thunder.
She was standing with a heavy bag, searching for something.
I walked near her.
“Hi,” I said.
“Hi,” she said.
That was all.
But that was not small.
Some stories don’t start with proposal. Some start with hi. Some start with embarrassment. Some start with a friend destroying your image. Some start with Rajam mami’s panchangam.
For many days after that, we spoke. Sometimes five minutes. Sometimes half an hour. Sometimes only hi.
I discovered she was not my Radha.
That was the first shock.
She was Shreya.
She had anger, sarcasm, exams, headaches, dreams, mood swings, and one dangerous talent of seeing through my drama.
And I was not Krishna either.
I was just Krishna, final year fellow, slightly jobless, over-imaginative, canteen philosopher, part-time lover, full-time confused human being.
But slowly I liked that truth more.
Because Radha in my head was perfect.
But Shreya in front of me was real.
One evening, almost a month later, I asked her again.
“Coffee?”
She looked at me.
“Again?”
“Yes. This time not because of love at first sight.”
“Then?”
“Because of love after some conversations.”
She laughed.
“You are improving.”
“So yes?”
She thought for a second.
“Okay. Coffee.”
This time I did not float.
I walked.
That is how I knew something had changed.
We went to the same canteen. Same cracked table. Same lime juice. Same samosa smell. Same boys acting like they had no interest in us while looking from every reflective surface available in the canteen.
But something was different.
I was calmer.
She was quieter.
Maybe second coffees are more dangerous than first coffees. First coffee is drama. Second coffee is truth wearing normal clothes.
“So,” she said, stirring her lime juice, “do you remember now?”
“Remember what?”
She looked at me for a long second.
That same small disappointment returned to her face. The one I had seen when I said her name for the first time.
“You really don’t remember, do you?”
I froze.
“Remember what?”
She leaned back and smiled without smiling.
“Blue BSA cycle,” she said.
My heart gave one weird jump.
“What?”
“Broken red lunch box clip.”
Another jump.
“Temple street. Green gate house. Summer holidays. One fat boy called Suresh who stole your cricket bat.”
The canteen noise slowly moved away from me.
The world did not go into slow motion this time.
It went backward.
Somewhere inside my head, one old door opened.
Dust flew.
A narrow street.
Hot afternoon.
A blue cycle lying near a compound wall.
A small girl with two plaits, running with raw mango pieces in her hand.
Laughing.
Sisi.
Not Shreya.
“Sreya?” I whispered.
Her eyes softened.
“Finally.”
No.
No, no, no.
This was not possible.
The girl in front of me was Shreya. College beauty Shreya. The girl every fellow was smoking with her name. The girl I had compared to Radha and turned into a national emergency inside my heart.
But the girl in my memory was Sreya.
Small Sreya.
Neighbourhood Sreya.
Summer-vacation Sreya.
The girl who used to steal raw mango from my plate and run away. The girl who called me “Kichu” because she could not say Krishna properly. The girl who laughed “sisi” whenever I got angry.
The girl who once tied a yellow thread around my wrist and said, “Now you are my best friend forever.”
Best friend forever.
I had forgotten forever.
“You…” I said slowly. “You are that Sreya?”
“That Sreya only,” she said. “Now spelling changed. Shreya. Modern update.”
I wanted to say something funny. Something clever. Something heroic.
Nothing came.
Because suddenly this was no longer love at first sight.
This was worse.
This was love before memory.
This was some old promise returning in a new dress and asking, “Do you remember me?”
And I had failed.
“I didn’t recognize you,” I said.
“I noticed.”
“I’m sorry.”
She shrugged.
Girls do that when they don’t want to show they are hurt. Shrugging is the female version of putting Fevicol on a crack.
“It’s okay,” she said. “People forget.”
“No,” I said. “I mean… I remember now. Slowly. Your house was near the temple street?”
“Green gate.”
“Your father had a Yamaha?”
“RX100.”
“You used to eat only the white part of boiled egg?”
She smiled.
“And you used to eat my yellow also.”
Suddenly the whole college disappeared.
I was not a senior. She was not junior. Ajay was not daemon. No Radha. No Krishna. No Bhagavan background score.
Just two children sitting between memory and adulthood.
“How did I forget you?” I asked, more to myself than to her.
“You shifted house. Then school changed. Then life happened,” she said. “Simple.”
Simple.
That is how adults explain heartbreaks of children.
Life happened.
As if life is some municipal lorry that comes and takes away people from one street to another.
“But you remembered me?”
She looked away.
“For some people, memory is stubborn.”
That line hit me.
For one whole month I had walked around saying I had seen a new girl. My girl. My Radha. Destiny. Love at first sight.
But destiny was laughing at me from the beginning.
It was not first sight.
It was second sight.
Or maybe thousandth sight, from a life I had carelessly packed and left behind.
Ajay came near us slowly, as if he had smelled old gossip from five tables away.
“Sreya?” he asked.
She looked at him.
“Ajay?”
Now it was his turn to become statue.
“Dei,” he whispered to me, “Temple street Sreya ah?”
“Yes da.”
Ajay looked at her, then looked at me, then looked at the sky.
“Onaku mattum than macha indha madhiri nadakum.”
Only for you, bro, things like this happen.
This time I did not argue.
He was right.
Shreya folded her hands.
“So, Krishna. Now that your memory has returned from foreign trip, what do you want to ask me?”
The Mahabharata again stood behind me, but this time silently.
No conch shell.
No flute.
Only one small boy inside me holding a broken red lunch box.
“I wanted to ask your name,” I said.
“You already know.”
“Then I wanted your notes.”
“I am from Computer Science.”
“I know. Knowledge has no department.”
She laughed.
Sisi.
This time I remembered.
And that laugh did not make me float.
It brought me back to earth.
Back to the street.
Back to the green gate.
Back to the girl I had forgotten and somehow found again.
After that day, something changed in the way I saw her.
Earlier, I wanted the whole universe to stop and announce that she was mine. Now I only wanted to sit opposite her, listen properly, and not say anything stupid for at least ten minutes.
Of course, I failed in the seventh minute.
But she laughed.
And maybe that is love also.
Not only eyes locking and the world moving in slow motion.
Maybe love is also one person laughing at your nonsense and still not leaving the table.
I don’t know whether Shreya became my Radha or not. Life is not cinema, and Blogger readers are not fools.
Maybe she did.
Maybe she didn’t.
Maybe some girls come to teach you that wanting someone is easy, knowing someone is difficult, and respecting someone is the real test.
But I know this much.
On that December evening, when the sun looked perfectly round like her face and the breeze rolled over my face, I thought love was a storm.
Later, sitting in the canteen with two lime juices, I realized love may be something smaller and more dangerous.
A simple hi.
A second coffee.
A girl who says, “Don’t check panchangam, idiot.”
A laugh that says “sisi.”
A memory that waits patiently in the corner until your foolish heart grows old enough to recognize it.
And a boy who finally learns that losing Radha is not the biggest conspiracy of the 21st century.
Losing yourself while chasing Radha is.
So this Krishna did not find Radha that day.
He found Shreya.
Actually, no.
He found Sreya again.
The girl he had forgotten.
The girl who had remembered.
And for once in his life, that was more than enough.
