While Sanju was an awkward teen, Sameer was a charmer. Everyone wanted to be his friend. He rode a motorbike at twelve, played football with older boys, and listened to rock bands like Linkin Park and Coldplay. Both girls and boys envied Anu for the special status she enjoyed with Sameer.

Sameer was the first one to invite Sanju into their group. That should have made him get accepted easily, but it did not happen that way. Most of the time Sameer went off to play football and Sanju was stuck with Anu, two other girls and two boys who did not like him at all. He did not know the games they played or their inside jokes but he had tried to fit in. After a week of making efforts, he stopped joining them.

‘Anu, why isn’t Sanju coming to play with you guys?’ Sameer asked her when he remembered Sanju after a month.

‘Ask him. You know, he goes to NAFL! May be that is why.’ NAFL was a school for the rich kids with high IQ. Everyone else in the neighbourhood went to KLE or Vani Vidyalaya or some such.

Sameer somehow took to Sanju. It was a classic case of opposites attracting each other. He made sure to visit him once a day. ‘He is super smart, Anu. He reads books on astronomy in his passtime!’ Sameer filled her with details about Sanju. ‘He is not coming to play here because he is going for tennis classes in the Vijayanagar club.’

That was how it was between Anu and Sanju for at least three years. They never met, they never talked, but Sameer gave her accounts of Sanju. How he was working hard to get into an IIT, how he assembled a computer with parts bought from SP road, how he was building a website. Was Anu impressed? Of course, she was! That was mostly because if Sameer liked someone or something, he made sure Anu did too.

Then one evening, Sanju and Anu spoke to each other. She still remembered everything from that evening vividly. That was the summer vacation of the ninth standard. Most kids in the neighbourhood, including Sameer had gone on vacations to their grandparents’ or cousins’ houses. She had discovered Georgette Heyer in the neighbourhood library and was devouring all her books. Of course, Mills & Boons too had just happened but she had to hide those from her mother.

She met Sanju at the library and he smiled making her almost drop her books in shock. She never thought Sanju would be the kind to smile at girls! That evening she only picked Georgette Heyer and no Mills & Boons. Somehow it was important to her that he did not think of her as frivolous. He had waited for her to take her books and they walked back home together. He had taken Isaac Asimov.

‘Do you read a lot?’ Sanju asked.