They collided and fell, hard.
“You alright?”
“I am. You? It was a bad fall.”
“Yeah! But don’t you hide. Your face tells you are hurt. Tell me.”
“Eh! Look at your face. It is worse than it normally is. You are hurt. Let me see it.”
“I said I am fine. And my face? At least it is better than yours. Yours seems to be a smashed pumpkin!”
“You are so short and your face so distorted that you resemble a seventy-year old grumpy granny stuck in a child’s body!!!”
“How curt!”
“Wait! You are not even a girl. You have more facial hair than me.”
“Oh, no no no!!! It’s the other way round. You have more of female hormones than me!”
“That’s not even poss…”
“Which is why you are not a man enough to accept that you are hurt right now.”
“I AM COMPLETELY ALRIGHT. Totally fine. But you are not okay.”
“I am also good. I am okay.”
“Okay then”
“Okay.”
A guffaw ensued by both of them. Ah! Childlike purity in those high-schoolers! Certainly a sight to behold.
They helped each other get up, dusted themselves, picked up their bicycles and continued ahead; still laughing.
The truth was- both were hurt, bad.
But the truth also was that their pains were already half-cured in each other’s loving and caring presence.
Or maybe there wasn’t any pain at all because they didn’t feel any.
He, unmindful of the scratches on his shin, and she, oblivious to the grazes on her elbow, bantered and dissolved into laughter all their way through…
Sucheta Writes 