Chapter 1 : First Encounter
A 10-year old Keshav was stunned by what he had got while he was doing household chores that included cleaning his father’s almirah . “Whoa!!! a diary?” he said to himself. “Might be my father’s, can’t wait opening it” he thought. He removed the clip, and opened the diary, wanting to read what all had been written in it, his mind wandering about what the subject matter could be, a diary-entry of all days, a collection of bills of the house, a telephone directory, or something else.
As and when he opened the diary, it literally meant something else. The opening lines read :
“To the one whom I admired, to the one who shaped my future, to the one whose generosity always felt was pulling me towards her”.
These lines were written at the center of the first page, so Keshav thought they might have been written for his mother. But as he flipped the page, a name caught his attention, a name which he hadn’t ever heard, a name which his father never used in front of him, a person who he didn’t know; the name was :
Annuviti.
Keshav’s curiosity was on his peak. He wanted to read more, but then, the lunch time happened. Keshav thought the best place to hide this diary from his parents’ sight was to put it in his school bag. At the table, his father, Vishal, asked about his homework which had been pending and his exams which were round the corner. His mother, Radhika, though, was feeding him lentils and roti lovingly; and requested Vishal not to talk about these things when having lunch. Keshav hurriedly finished lunch, and started breathing a little heavily, his sigh signifying something in his mind, which he usually did when he had some pending work left.
He hurriedly went into his room and started reading the diary from the very beginning. It read : “Day 1: Vaidyanta College of Pharmaceutical Sciences, New Delhi, 2021. Today, a person caught my attention. Not like I focus on things all the time, but still, I did focus on a woman. I might not say a girl, because now I know she’s elder to me. She stood fine at one corner, easily visible in a group of people because of her gracious smile, beautiful eyes, calming and polite voice (of course, guessed from the way she was talking to all), and her jolly nature. She was blonde-haired, brown-eyed and slightly chubby, which is why her beauty might not have interested many, but other characteristics of her that I mentioned, surely would. This was 24-year old,Annuviti, or I should say Prof. Annuviti. And NGL, A 19-year-old me was attracted to her at the first sight.”
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