The second morning felt different. The sun hadn't changed, and the van still rattled with the same metallic groan, but my world had a new rhythm. I woke up before my alarm, the heavy grogginess of a 10th-grader replaced by a sharp, electric anticipation. I wasn't just going to school; I was going to her.
When I stepped into the van, she was already there. Our eyes met, and that "shift" from yesterday locked into place. We talked again—easier this time, as if the silence of the previous afternoon had been a bridge we both needed to cross. We laughed about a neighbor's loud dog and complained about the weight of our bags. It was simple, it was light, and it was perfect.
But the moment that changed everything happened at the school gates.
Usually, the walk from the van to the school building is a mechanical process—a sea of white and blue uniforms flowing toward the entrance. I was walking with my friends, but my mind was lingering on the seat I had just left. Suddenly, I felt a pull to look back.
I turned my head, and there she was, a few paces behind. She caught my eye and, with a small, shy smile, she lifted her hand and waved.
It was just a wave. A five-second movement of fingers in the morning air. But to me, it felt like she had handed me the keys to a kingdom. In that one gesture, she wasn't just saying "Goodbye"; she was saying, "I see you. You are different from the others."
I stood there for a split second too long, my heart hammering against my ribs. I realized then—with the clarity of a lightning strike—what "love" actually was. It wasn't the big, dramatic speeches from the Hindi films we watched. It was this. It was the way a simple wave from a girl in a Marathi medium uniform could make a boy feel like he was walking on air in the middle of a dusty schoolyard.
I walked into my first lecture, but I didn't hear a word the teacher said. I was busy replaying that wave in my head, analyzing the angle of her wrist, the curve of her smile. I was finally realizing that the poets weren't lying. There is a madness in it, a sweet, quiet madness that makes the most ordinary morning feel like a miracle.
The afternoon, however, brought a different kind of quiet.
The van hadn't departed yet when school let out, and the usual chaos of the dispersal meant we didn't get a chance to speak. We sat in our usual spots for the ride home, but the air was thick with the heat of the day and the presence of too many other students. We didn't talk. We didn't need to. The wave from the morning was still vibrating in the space between us, a silent pact that didn't need words to be real.
When I finally reached home, the house was quiet, but my mind was a festival.
I didn't feel the exhaustion of the school day. I didn't feel the stress of the 10th-grade syllabus. I just sat in my room, a wide, uncontrollable smile spreading across my face. I felt... happy. Not just "good," but a deep, glowing kind of happy that starts in your chest and warms your entire body.
I looked at my reflection in the window. I looked like the same boy, but I knew I was moving toward something. I was falling, and for the first time in my life, I wasn't afraid of the ground. I was convinced that this was pure. I was convinced that this was real.
I thought about the "physical steps" the world talks about, but they felt lightyears away. Why would I need anything else when a single wave could make me feel this powerful? I was content to stay in this feeling forever—the feeling of being "seen" by the girl in the purple-tinted dawn.