The face

        He was busy searching for his pen. He had to hurry up to school. This was although a routine practice for a procrastinator like him, but, he really didn’t want to be the last one to be at prayer. He was the lead of prayer orchestra. Hell, he couldn’t find it and rushed to his father’s shelf to grab a new pen and shoved it into the depth of bag. 

        He was gasping for breath by the time he reached school compound. The prayer was about to start. It was a primary school. It always caught his imagination how organized the queues of students looked when they stood for prayer in the first hour of school. Everybody looked so fresh and neat, he wondered if everybody’s mom were so particular on keeping a handkerchief. That’s something which he never understood.

        As he rose on to the stage, he could see a new face in the front. Holy jeez it was fifth standard girls’ queue. His heart skipped a bit. He froze there. Such beautiful eyes, he had never taken time to appreciate any face ever before. The rest of the prayer was like eons for him. He couldn’t help but steal a glance at her face every now and then. His headmaster later introduced the new girl to the school on the stage. 

        Today after fifteen years, he thinks about it and wonders what that was. His perceived and institutionalized common sense says it was a hormonal burst. Huh. It’s quite fascinating to summarize a whole bunch of feelings in a rational term. 

        But then, he thinks the feeling that day doesn’t need any name to be justified in this day. Others may not have encountered this. That doesn’t make his struggle to get back into stream of normality by adjudging the naïve experience. 

        He had finished his cup of coffee by now. He closed his eyes for a moment while a smile brewed on his lips.