Pooja

“Is it really her?” I had asked myself. I had watched her in surprise. I know she recognized me and I know this not because she smiled at me but her attempt to act indifferent was forceful. I didn’t smile at her. Pooja the most beautiful girl in my upper primary skill, two years senior than me, someone for whom there used to be regular gang fights. She had picked no one for herself, she was arrogant moreover there were no boys in the entire school whose smartness and look matched her. She dressed well, looked stunning, spoke softly but she was arrogant. She knew the fact that she was the most beautiful girl in the school. She had very few friends may be they were jealous of her or may be she didn’t want to have friends who were not beautiful. Those were not the days where a boy will go in front of a girl and propose to her at least the movies didn’t have such scenes where the hero would propose the heroine that way. It was the time of love-letters. Every next day we used to hear someone giving her a love letter. They said she would tear those letters before those who wrote it. She looked at boys with scorn but she had friends who were boys, the ugliest looking ones, those who seemed to have come to office straight after depositing the rags they have collected wandering around the city in the school. Why she had them, I don’t know. She returned home with them and sat with them in class. It used to be a risky business for boys to have her as a friend because her suitors might catch them anywhere and beat the hell out of them. Her admirers beat other admirers and there used to be frequent fight after school. Mine was not age to evaluate beauty and more than that she was senior, her admirers used to get regular beatings.
When I saw her today she was not what I expected her. Her body had grown out of proportion as if the flesh in her body wanted to burst through her kurta. Her face that would embarrass the full moon in a clear night had patches like the ones women usually get during pregnancy. Her hair which used to be well combed and tied rested on her shoulder like the Medusa’s hair. Her lips drooped; they looked bigger and uglier.
Whenever I used to read stories of fairies, and angels I always thought they must have looked like her. When they told stories about mermaid princess I assumed probably she was one when mermaid princess really existed. One of her classmates had said that she will get the most prosperous man around and he will get luckier to have her around. It didn’t look thus. I would not have been surprised had I seen her in a car and ignored me like I ignore the beggars in the streets of Thamel but no she tried to ignore me because of shame because of guilt. A bus came on, she disappeared inside it and I walked on with pity.
Why is beauty so ephemeral? To expect good, to expect better is no crime. Why would she feel for every guy who fell for her? What had happened to her? I kept pondering. I wondered what had washed away her beauty. How could time be so cruel to that mermaid princess of mine? Was it her arrogance; the ignoble air of self-centered attitude? Does behavior influence one’s physicality?