The Perfect Love Letter - 1

Before the advent of e-mail or the SMS, we boys used to write love letters on paper (sometimes scented paper or those with the romantic watermarks). I couldn't construct a coherent sentence in that girl's presence; my knees never stopped shaking when I was talking to my first crush. She would ask me questions, make fun of me, and chide me in her Alanis Morisette voice and I would watch helplessly as mangled, phonetically impossible sounds escaped from my mouth: 'hrppgkkt?' 'hroonkjlt!' 'aaa ba err!?'

I decided one fine winter evening that I had to write to her to get the message across. And of course I swore to myself that I'd start wearing only full trousers and burn all my half pants. My folks thought that I was too young for the trouser. I was only 15 they said. While most of the boys in my class had started shaving, I was frantically applying ghee, Olive oil, curds, and what not to my face and sent a little prayer every night before bed 'make that ****ing mooch grow!'

My baby-boy image was, according to me, the biggest stumbling block in my amorous pursuits. So, there I was utterly confused; consumed by love and with no facial hair. To make things worse, competition for her heart came from boys that had ample facial hair and of course bulging biceps and bicycles (BSA Mach 1 with small balloons attached to the rear wheel; he used to circle her house and the cycle made that awful noise 'tapa tapa dapa'.) AND, and... I was all of four feet five inches. I sat in the first bench with the other midgets and stood right at the front in the line during school prayer. There you have it. A frail midget with no facial hair wearing half pants. I wasn't exactly setting the heartbeats of the girls racing. Most girls (the 'cho chweet' types especially) thought of me as a kid brother, while some went as far as 'I am your aunty.' Now, 'the' girl made it clear that we were 'friends.' Add to the list my pathetic scores. D.K., the first ranker, was short but the girls loooovvvvvvved him. And, he had some facial hair. So, there. How was I going to win her heart? The score, even before the match started, was Love-4.

After consultations with my super juniors (who were of my height and except Suri, who was born with a beard, no one had started growing facial hair) I decided to write a love letter. That was the only way; it appeared then, that I could get the message across. The first thing I did was analyze her personality (audience research if you will). 'What kind of a person is she?' 'What kind of movies moved her (QSQT did. Big time)?' 'Is she receptive to humour?' 'Is she the emotional, melodramatic type or the cold, calculating, practical type?' 'What songs does she hum and what lines are her favourites?' The list was comprehensive and we thrashed it out and created a persona that was practical, emotional, humour-loving, musically inclined, and apathetic to romance. Score: Love - 2678.

However, we figured that Indian movie music was too, um, poetic and used a lot of exaggeration. Enter: Everlasting Love Songs (ELS) Volume 1. I listened to the songs on ELS 1 but I couldn't figure out a single word. I tried cracking 'Waiting for a girl like you' by Foreigner but gave up after some 1000 attempts. 'Don't you think it'd help if you used ear phones?' someone suggested. So, I bought a pair of 'TAKAI' ear-phones and promptly threw them in the trash can. The TAKAI ear-phones made any singer sound like Donald Duck. I didn't give up though. When I went to Chennai I visited every music shop worth its name asking for the lyrics booklet. One good soul told me I should try and get a song book from Higginbothams. Unfortunately, I hadn't too much money to buy these books. They were selling at about 100 bucks each and ELS songs did not figure in them, the song books only had the current music. Back to square one.

I was restless and could not sleep. My competition was growing too. One of the contenders now circled her house in a TVS 50. I don't know why but I never gave up on decoding the ELS songs. One night, when the whole house was sleeping and my dad's snoring was rupturing the silent night, the sound 'Ritfeesooright' from the Foreigner song, decoded itself in my head: it was 'it feels so right!' Eureka! What a fool I had been. One phrase after the other, the American lingo fell in place. I know, I know what you are thinking 'Why couldn't you google for it?' Dear reader, in 1989 the google creators had just started growing facial hair and were probably pursuing girl friends in high school. So stop showing off.

Anyway, I had the lyrics of the Foreigner song but I could borrow only a couple of lines. I couldn't use 'this heart of mine has been hurt before' I mean, this is my first crush you see. My second project was 'If ever you are in my arms again' by Peabo Bryson. I finished decoding the whole ****ing album but it wasn't helping. I mean these guys were singing of holding and kissing and making love... no way I could use those terms. I mean the Hindi, Tamil, and Telugu movies always glorified 'pure' love as one in which the involved parties didn't even hold hands before the marriage. The hero just wanted to keep staring into her eyes and was willing to spend his life doing that and wanted to do the same in his next births. I mean WTF!? That's when one of the veterans of love-letter writing unknowingly gave me a brilliant idea.
And, that will have to wait until part 2. I promise that I will finish this story. Mother promise!

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