(Emmadee's daugther narrates)
In those early years of my teenage life, when I was the most surrounded and felt so lonely, I had fallen in love with a boy. Judging by one's age, at 18, anyone could be an adult, a young man. He was indeed an adult, on the edge. I believe that someone is considered a man or a boy depending upon the way he acts, he talks and his maturity. Did I know Yetish that well to judge him? No. I only knew superficial details about him. Otherwise, he was a total stranger to me, as I was to him. But what I knew with great conviction, was that I loved him.
(Emmadee's daughter stops narrating, pursued by a bear~ W.S)
In Emmadee's era, "love", "infatuation", and "sex" were nonexistent and above all- taboo. In the generation of her daughter, these are now the common language. Nowadays teenagers fall easily in love in high school and fall even more quickly out of it. When Emmadee was studying, she never thought of love and its baggage. The ideal obedient daughter who would just study and always do her best. When Emmadee completed her studies at high school level, in other words, when Dhananjay had refused to pay for her higher studies, she was offered a job at the high school itself as a teacher. She was a brilliant student and thus this offer was plausible. But that, of course seemed unacceptable to the jealous brother who planted seeds of suspicions in Dhananjay's mind. Why was the brother jealous? Allow me.
Emmadee had to sit for her School Certificate Examinations, and at that time education was not free of cost. Her brother, envious of her intelligence tried his best to prevent Dhananjay from paying the examinations' fees. Emmadee's brother had sat for these examinations at least four times and Dhananjay still kept paying for him. Dhananjay had realised that he should pay for one sitting for Emmadee, it was his fair distribution of school fees. And undoubtedly, Emmadee passed at her first trial itself.
(Emmadee's daughter narrates)
I loved him but I did not want him to love me back. It is fairly easy to say that we were both the best of each of our worlds, but it is also true to say that our worlds were far apart. My mother and I have different attitudes and completely opposite ways of thinking, but I do follow her rationale behind not having the time to fall in love. Besides, I was young and dumb. Yetish was not a first love, Yetish was a first crush. I found in him the perfect mate, but at the end of a day, I came to my senses and knew that no one is perfect, it was just his image that attracted me, not the real him.
