Diya

The first time I ever saw Aman he was reading a book while the world around him was going crazy. The college cricket team was four runs away from beating our long-standing rivals, KC College. His friends were half laughing, half exasperated with him. With two runs to go, they took his book and flung it out into the crowd. As the winning ball touched the boundary, the crowd went mad. He had to scramble through screaming, jumping, dancing people, searching for his book.

When he went past me, I tapped him on the shoulder. ‘Here,’ I said, handing him the book I had rescued from between the dancing feet. He took it and said something. I couldn’t hear it. The screaming of the crowd wiped away all the words between us. Shrugging, he took my hand and kissed it. Then he walked away.

I began to notice him around college. He always had a gang of friends with him. While they fooled around, passed remarks and shared jokes, he always had his head in a book. They teased him about it all the time, calling him ‘Masterji’, ‘Kaviraj’ and ‘nerd’. He would just look up and smile and go back to his reading. He only ever paid attention when someone took his book away. From time to time, his friends would lose patience with him and there would be a passing match in the canteen with Aman’s book.

He was surprisingly popular. Everyone seemed to know him, calling out to him as he passed by. I watched him quietly, trying to push back the memory that edged into my mind each time I saw him—a young boy casually taking my hand and kissing it in thanks.

I was alone in the canteen one day, drinking a cup of coffee, when he stopped in front of me. ‘I see you’re a reader as well,’ he said, looking down at the book I had in front of me.

‘Not like you,’ I said shyly. ‘That must have been a really interesting book if it kept you from watching the match.’

He looked down at me and smiled. ‘Yes, it was,’ he said. ‘Here. Why don’t you try reading it.’ He dug around in his bag and handed over a battered book. It was Palgrave’s Golden Treasury of Poetry, the second-year English text.

I laughed. ‘A textbook?’

‘That doesn’t make the poetry any less beautiful,’ he said.

He was right. His favourite poems were underlined in pencil. When I handed the book back to him, I had underlined mine.