Short story: Love in the time of an 11 year old.

If someone asks me about the first time I fell in love, I would point to Donna. Or maybe it wasn't love, just an infatuation, the beginning of my own adolescent feelings of attraction towards the opposite sex. But how does one know. Maybe one does not know, it can only be felt.

It all started when I was eleven years old. The words ``Cable TV'' were just being heard in our apartment complex. Nobody could believe it. You could watch TV without the mind numbing consistency of the Doordarshan (the state run TV channel). Everything was rationed, lest it corrupt the nations kids, lead them to morally unhygienic places. So when people tuned into these new TV channels which could show songs all day, movies all day, nothing but crap all day, they were just surprised. I was lured away from the regular games like window-breaking cricket, knee-bruising football into this TV box shaped black hole.

Moviesmoviesmovies, that was all they showed. My mom let me get sucked in as she didn’t have to deal with the neighbors' broken window panes or applying dettol on my knees. They came one after another these movies, just to keep me glued. Just as though there was a Darth Vader sitting somewhere controlling my mind with these moving images. I didn't want to do anything except watch these movies. And there were so many of them.

Would I ever be able to watch them all? Would the Darth Vader let me do it? Oh, he probably would have, if it was not for my mom. On a summer sunday, I was glued asusual watching a stereo-typical Indian movie with its characters reduced to caricatures. This one was about how bad rich mean fathers don't want their daughters to fall in love with good poor big hearted boys. Like any movie there were fights, songs, dances, crying mothers and the traditional rape scene. This particular movie was no different from the ones I watched before, except for the particularly grotesque rape scene. The problem is that while Darth bombarded me with these movies, my mom still kept monitoring me. Lest it corrupt my childhood. So while I was devouring this rape of a scene, she almost ran up to the TV and switched it off and shouted at me. ``What is wrong with you. Why are you watching this dirty picture.'' I was locked up in my room while my mom and dad brainstormed the remedy to my corrupted childhood, correct me from my virulent path. Darth was probably pulling his mask off or murdering one of his Generals in rage. He had lost an effective disciple in me. Poor old Darth, to this day I sympathize his loss.

My dad came up with the brilliant plan, now on I would be shown only one movie a week and that would be chosen by my parents. So after a week of brainstorming, my father had a flash, he found the movie that would repair his son's corrupted soul. I sat on the floor, starved of my supply of movies. He walked into the drawing room with his face glowing. And like a magician he asked me, ``Guess what movie you're going to watch today .......''. The eleven year old me didn't care. I felt like screaming at him. ``Just shove it into the VCR. Please dad, let me watch those moving images again. Please stop this torture.'' But I did blurt out ``I don’t know''. My father like an announcer on a TV show said ``IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIts ............ a Wonderful Life, Starring James Stewart and Donna Reed.'' He put an end to my torture and started the movie. It was an old black and white movie. Darth would never have approved.

But for the first time I saw something beyond those images. It was a woman, a beautiful, naive and completely vulnerable Donna Reed. The divine Donna playing the ``Buffalo girls won't you come out tonight'' singing Mary. The Mary, who would fall in love with George.

After the movie, I was in a daze. I knew profoundly this was not a movie Darth would choose. Mary talked about loving George. But what was love. Could I feel it? George was a man and he felt it. But I was only a boy, an eleven year old boy. How come I don't feel it for anyone? Thus started my hunt for the Mary of my life, the divine Donna Reed.

I found her in the unlikeliest of people. A few weeks into my search she descended on me as an uncomfortable visitor. My mom had spoken of her cousin who was coming from England. The cousin who married an English woman. So my mom made some of her best dishes for the guests. Yummy fried rice, gravy chicken curry, fish fry, potato fry, curd and ice-cream all on the same table. My mouth watered so much I almost forgot the idea of Donna for a few minutes. But only for a few minutes.

In she walked with my uncle. Blond hair, blue eyes wrapped in fair skin wearing a blue shirt and black jeans. She came in and said a sweet hello to everyone. She bent down to me and said ``Hello young man. You look mighty smart. Im Donna, you can call me Aunty''.

The reader might consider the writer a pervert. ``How could you fall in love with your aunt. Man, now that is gross''. But I was only eleven, I didn't know whom to love and how much to love. It just came to me, like a cool wind.

I probably would have tried to control myself if she didn't say it. What did she say...... She said to my mom while shaking my hand, ``You have such lovely kid''. For a minute I could only hear my heartbeat. Did she actually say I was lovely. Deduce it, shorten it, do anything with it. But did she use the word "love"?? The divine Donna in love with me????? Could this really be happening? I ask for it and I find it? Its so simple, she was right there with her blond hair, big blue eyes, blue shirt and black jeans.

But blond hair and blue eyes have other relatives to visit and planes to catch. She left the next day and I never saw her again. She walked out of my life, just like that. I never tried to stay in contact with her. It all happened so fast. At eleven, while other kids nursed bruised knees and ankles, I nursed a wounded heart.

Years later, I watched a movie which said ``Time has passed, and I have loved many women. And as they've held me close, and asked if I will remember them, I've said, ``Yes, I will remember you.'' But the only one I've never forgotten is the one who never asked.... '' Every relationship eventually becomes a shadow in eternity.