She was one of those pretty, doe-eyed hill girls for whom city boys would invariably pine. I was besotted with her. She had light greenish-blue eyes, a straight, sharp nose and cheeks fair enough to turn red in the chilly winters.

The geeky-looking boy with thick black spectacles I happened to be sitting next to was Parth. He turned to me after the lesson and said, ‘Hi, can we be friends?’ He was the first person to talk to me in that school. I noticed he was in a wheelchair. Though I was initially hesitant to befriend a differently-abled child like him, I realized how inconsiderate it is to undermine people like him. We shook hands and he smiled. It was one of the most beautiful things I’d ever seen.

After class, we spoke for hours. He told me his father had a transferable job and hence they had lived in many parts of the country. Since it became difficult for him to keep changing schools, his parents had decided to pack him off to boarding school. I told him my father was rich but had no time to look after us and discipline my sister and me, so he’d sent me here and my sister to the States.

We had an extremely strict schedule to adhere to in those days. The house sisters woke us up every morning at 7 a.m. by knocking on the door and yelling, ‘Good morning, children!’

We were not allowed to go to the mess in our pyjamas, so we showered and got ready for school before breakfast. The girls ate their breakfast in a separate mess. We were served baked goods, fresh fruit salad, muesli, yoghurt and flavoured milk for breakfast. We had a food comment box where we could leave suggestions as well as a recipe of the month competition. The winning dish was cooked for everyone. Parth would always ask for chhole bhature, which never got selected. We had to attend PT before classes, which made our mornings even busier. Lunch was usually served outside the boarding house and we’d sit on the grassy Boarders’ Lawn to eat. We often saw our ‘big sisters’ around that time. They were like our matrons and regularly checked on us to see if we were doing all right. Ours was Sister Stella.

Parth and I spent our days there together. There was a helper to take him to the bathroom, but I tried to be there for him at all times. So, in all, we studied together, played together and, unfortunately, fell in love at the same time too. That was when everything changed.

I’d always been fairly good at English but had never really been too passionate about it because I didn’t like the way it was taught in school. We slogged through our prescribed texts, memorized the key quotations and rehearsed answers to the essay questions for the exams. It was mind-numbingly methodical and pedestrian. That is when I discovered the joy of writing, frustrated with this dogmatic way of teaching and learning. Writing poetry actually made me feel alive and I delved into this world without hesitation. While I found my passion in poetry writing, Parth’s ambition was to pursue management studies.