‘Thank you,’ I said to her. Parth elbowed me. ‘Will you ever say anything more than that?’ she teased me with her beautiful smile. It was mesmerizing.

‘Actually he’s shy around girls,’ Parth said and giggled. They laughed at me and high-fived each other.

‘I am not shy around girls, okay? In fact, I like talking to them. By the way, which of my poems did you like?’ I asked, putting on a show of self-confidence.

‘I liked the one . . . umm . . . the one .. .’ she said, squinting in embarrassment.

‘Did you even read my poems?’ I asked as Parth snorted. I looked sharply at him and he dove back into his notebook, trying to control his sniggering.

We all burst out laughing. That was when it all began. Shriya had lied about reading my poems but it didn’t matter because she liked me. We grew closer and often spent time alone, which made Parth jealous. She would ask me to take her to the hilltop and we’d sit there for hours while I recited my poems.

At the same time, Parth helped Shriya with her studies. They would sit for hours in the classroom, slogging over maps and graphs. He helped her score better marks in all the subjects and over time, we became a tight-knit trio.

We always chose the last row in class so that all three of us could sit together. Shriya and I always defended Parth against the occasional ignorant bully who would try to make fun of his disability and so no one messed with him. Though we were envious of his intellect at times, we knew that our journeys were different.

Shriya told us about her dream to pursue modelling. She had won almost every local beauty contest, but her parents were against her going to Mumbai to chase her passion. Parth advised her to focus on her studies and trust that the rest would eventually fall in place.

It was 2001. I vividly remember one night when Shriya and I were sitting on the hilltop. No one was allowed off campus after 9 p.m. but a few students knew about a secret path that led there. The seniors would go there to smoke up and juniors like us would go there to nurture our budding romances.

That was the first time Shriya held my hand. I was dizzy with that intoxicating feeling of first love and wrote a few words for her.

A love so precious, a love so new

A love that comes from me to you . . .

We ran back to our dorms that night, our faces aglow with love. Parth asked me why I was smiling so much but I didn’t tell him. I thought he already knew that Shriya and I liked each other.

Shriya had become even more gorgeous by then. Boys from the senior sections came to our class to try to get a glimpse of her while most of the girls in our school were jealous of her.