The Indian summer morning was still clinging to the cool shadows of the night when the familiar honk of the van echoed through the colony. It was the start of a new chapter—the beginning of my 10th-grade year. In the world of a student, 10th grade is a mountain we are told we must climb, a year of gravity and "seriousness." But as I stepped out of my house, the weight of the board exams wasn't what was on my mind.
The van driver, a man who knew the rhythms of our lives better than we did, had mentioned it casually the day before. "Pruthvi is starting morning school from tomorrow," he'd said. "She'll be in the van with you."
I knew Pruthvi. We lived in the same colony; we went to the same school. She was a grade below me, in the Marathi medium section. We had crossed paths a few times at colony functions or near the gates, but we were like two stars in different galaxies—visible to each other, but never colliding. She was just a face in the crowd, a name I knew but a person I hadn't yet "seen."
Then, the van door slid open.
The air inside the van was stale, smelling of old seat foam and the faint scent of diesel, but as she climbed in and sat down beside me, the atmosphere changed. It wasn't a loud explosion; it was a subtle shift in the light, a sudden clarity in the air. She was wearing her school uniform, her hair tied neatly, and for the first time, the "colony girl" disappeared, and she appeared.
My heart didn't just beat; it shifted gears. It was that strange, terrifying, and beautiful moment where you realize that the world you woke up in is not the world you're going to sleep in.
"Hi," she said.
Her voice was soft, but in the quiet of the morning van, it sounded like a melody. I had expected the usual awkward silence that exists between seniors and juniors, but she didn't seem to follow those rules. She didn't look at her feet or out the window. She looked at me.
"So, 10th grade starts today?" she asked, a playful glint in her eyes. "Are you prepared for all the 'big talk' the teachers are going to give you?"
I found myself smiling, the nervousness of the new term evaporating. "I think the 'big talk' started weeks ago at home," I replied. "But yeah, first day. It feels... different."
"I'm just glad to be in the morning batch now," she said, shifting her bag. "The afternoon sun was too much. Plus, now I get to see the sun rise from the van window."
We talked. It wasn't a deep, philosophical debate. We talked about the teachers, the change in timings, the subjects she was nervous about in 9th grade, and the pressure I was feeling for the boards. But it wasn't the content of the talk that mattered; it was the rhythm. There was an ease between us, a natural bridge that formed over the gap of our different mediums and different grades.
I watched her as she spoke. She had this way of moving her hands when she was making a point, a small "hehe" laugh that punctuated her sentences—a sound that I didn't know then would become my favorite sound in the world. For those few minutes, the rumbling of the van on the uneven roads of the colony felt like the smoothest ride of my life.
I had always been a boy of thoughts, someone who observed the world rather than jumped into it. But as she sat there, mere inches away, I felt a pull I couldn't explain. It was as if a string had been tied to my soul and she was holding the other end.
Every time the van hit a bump and our shoulders brushed, a jolt went through me—not a physical one, but a mental awakening. I found myself noticing the way the morning light caught the edge of her profile, the way she tucked a stray hair behind her ear, and the way she seemed completely unaware of the effect she was having on me.
I realized then that I didn't want the next stop to arrive. I wanted this road to stretch on forever. I wanted the driver to lose his way, to take us on a detour through the entire city, just so I could hear her talk about her Marathi poems or her fear of Geometry for a few more minutes.
But the world doesn't stop for a shifting heart. The van slowed down as we approached the next stop where the other students were waiting. The bubble we had created—a small sanctuary of two on a bench seat—was about to burst.
"Well," she said, looking out the window as the first of our friends began to climb in, "at least we have the whole year of mornings ahead of us."
She smiled at me—a real, genuine smile that reached her eyes—and then turned to greet the newcomers. I sat back, my bag heavy on my lap, feeling like I had just discovered a secret map.
I looked out the window as the van roared back to life. The trees were the same, the roads were the same, and the school building waiting at the end of the trip was the same. But everything was different. I was no longer just a 10th-grade student worried about his future. I was a boy who had just met a girl in a purple-tinted dawn, and for the first time, I understood what the poets meant when they wrote about the heart being a "wild thing."