The Small Town Girl

By Rajshree Chouhan

Juhi, a small town girl, has a crush on her classmate Arjun.She believes in happy endings and that Arjun is her prince charming. She has big dreams for her future that includes being a Radio Jockey. Juhi has everything planned until she receives a call from a stranger, on her sixteenth birthday. She unwillingly falls for him and soon, dismisses her feelings for Arjun as ‘nothing serious’. She is happily living her fairy tale with Rajeev before Arjun confesses his love to her.
The story revolves around the love triangle and Juhi’s dreams which when broken, she breaks up with the love of her life andasks him to wait for her for four years. Why doesn’t he fight forher? Do they meet again? Have their lives changed in four years?Set over a period of six years, from a small town in Rajasthan toDelhi, this book is sure to make you nostalgic.
Rajshree Chouhan is a small town girl who was introduced to the worldof books when she was seven. Apart from being a vivid reader, she is a fitnessenthusiast, an amateur photographer and a nature lover. She believes in followingher heart and that explains why she took six years to finish this book.You can follow her on Facebook or write to her on [e-mail]

• Language: English
• Publisher: Notion Press
• Release date: Aug 27, 2015
• ISBN: 9789352062614

Book preview

The Small Town

Girl

RAJSHREE CHOUHAN

Notion Press

Old No. 38, New No. 6

McNichols Road, Chetpet

Chennai - 600 031

First Published by Notion Press 2015

Copyright © Rajshree Chouhan 2015

All Rights Reserved.

ISBN: 978-93-5206-261-4

This book has been published in good faith that the work of the author is original. All efforts have been taken to make the material error-free. However, the author and the publisher disclaim the responsibility.

No part of this book may be used, reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

For the sixteen year old me,

for believing in happy endings,

for never giving up.

For being capable of unconditional love.

Adieu.

Acknowledgement

I would like to take this opportunity to express my gratitude to the people who saw me through this book. There have been many, over the period of six years. Thank you, for always being there with the encouragement, support and the honesty.

Twinkle, for being the brutally honest friend that you are. The Gang of Girls, you know who you are and how much I love you. I’d like to thank Avinash for reading every draft and encouraging me. Utkarsh, for being an amazing friend. My students, for inspiring me in their own little ways.

Most of all, I’d like to thank my husband for being the best friend and supporting me. My mom, for fighting for me and with me. Without you, neither this book nor I, would have been possible.

The Small Town Girl

By Rajshree Chauhan

Prologue

24th August 2014

It was a Sunday and unlike every Sunday, Roshni had been working in the kitchen since morning. The kitchen looked like a mess with all the containers open and Roshni trying to figure out the names of the spices looking up at the google images with her phone in one hand and her hair tied up loosely. I had never seen her so enthusiastic about cooking. I had hardly seen her enter the kitchen in the last 5 years after we moved to Delhi, let alone cooking. Today was a special day indeed. I could see that in her eyes, they twinkled the way they used to when I gave her an extra chocolate for doing my homework those days. Roshni was still the same girl, the only person who had remained the same. The rest of us grew up. To see me getting engaged to the love of my life was a dream for her and she didn’t know I was doing it for her.

You dumb-head! Stop looking at me like I am a ten year old and you’re my mother, help me find laung, she shouted as she noticed me looking at her with the smile that a mother has on her face when she sees her daughter trying to help her in the kitchen, half proud-half scared.

Laung-da-lashkara? I asked with a mocking smile.

Not funny! Please yaar!, she said with a puppy face. She looked like she was on a mission today. The entire kitchen was her ‘work area’ and I was her assistant.

It’s probably there in that shelf, I said pointing towards the highest shelf on the iron rack where we usually stored spices. Our kitchen was a very tiny one unlike the rest of our 2 BHK flat. Ours was one spacious flat with a garden view from the balcony that had earned us the jealousy of our friends when we moved here 2 years ago, after finishing college. We could afford it as Roshni was working with a multi-national firm that paid her well for I-don’t-know-what. I had a job too, the job that I had always wanted. I was a celebrity.

You fool. Come here and help me. You don’t deserve to be so tall if you can’t help people get them the stuff they can’t reach in the kitchen, she said and I suddenly realized, I wasn’t a celebrity after all, not for her.

I helped her and came back to my room. I was cleaning the house since morning and I had found some old pictures. The pictures that Roshni had clicked on our first day in Delhi, the ones that she secretly clicked when I went on a date with a guy from college, the ones that she clicked when Arjun and I were so drunk that we didn’t know why we were crying. Roshni has always been in love with photography, I remember her bunking school just to go somewhere with her camera and force me to bunk school as well so that she had someone to click pictures of. She says that I have a photogenic face, trust me, it’s not a compliment when she adds, You look better in pictures than in real.

Life had changed a lot. Or probably, I had changed. I didn’t know it was going to change so much, I didn’t know I was going to change so much, I didn’t know a phone call would change everything, I didn’t know I would hate someone I loved the most and fall in love with someone I hated the most.

Chapter 1

26th October 2007

It was my sixteenth birthday and like every other sixteen year old, I was waiting for my friends to wish me at midnight. I was on the terrace as I didn’t want my mom to wake up. My cell phone’s screen being damaged, I had learned how to recognize all my friends’ voices without knowing who was calling.

It was a beautiful night. I was waiting for Arjun to call me and be the first one to wish me. While I was waiting for his call, I also imagined him there on the terrace with me. We would sit next to each other, holding hands, looking at the beautiful moon and then he would ask me if I wanted to be his girlfriend, I would say ‘Yes’ and he would kiss me. It had always been like that, on all my birthdays and other important occasions. This was the dream that I knew would come true sooner or later. I had never imagined my life without Arjun and I knew that he would someday, propose to me.

Arjun was a family friend. We knew each other since we were born. Fun fact, I have seen him naked. Well, it’s just a fact. I don’t remember anything as we were too small, so no fun. As we grew up, we started talking less to each other and more about each other. The whole class knew we had a crush on each other but neither of us accepted it openly. Arjun’s mom was my mom’s best friend since college and she loved me a lot. Whenever I visited her, she would tell me how much she was fond of me and I would tell her how much I was fond of her son – in my mind off course!

It was 12:12 already when I heard, ‘na hai yeh pana, na khona hi hai’, that was my ringtone. I loved Shahid Kapoor and all his movies. Moreover, ‘Jab We Met’ was going to be released that day, on my birthday! I had to fall in love with that movie and it’s songs.

I picked up the call, hoping it to be Arjun.

Hello, Happy Birthday! an over excited voice came from the other end. I was still hoping it was Arjun.

Thank you! Sorry, may I know who this is? I enquired, keeping my fingers crossed.

Stop it Jia! I know I’m about 15 minutes late. Sorry baba, just got home from work, said the voice.

By that time I was sure it wasn’t Arjun as –

1. Arjun’s pet name was ‘Baba’ and he hated it.

2. He didn’t have a husky voice.

Husky voice didn’t appeal to me much then. I loved Arjun’s voice ONLY.

All my friends were instructed not to call me before 12:15 on any occasion as that right solely belonged to Arjun ever since I could remember, though he had never called me. An arrogant and uninterested me said, Excuse me, who is Jia? Who are you for that matter? Where did you get my number from? I could ask more questions but then I realised it was 12:15 already. ‘By the time he finishes answering these questions, it’ll be 12:20, I shouldn’t ask any more’-I calculated.

That was how I normally reacted to strangers/wrong numbers/friends-trying-to-make-a-fool-of-me/anybody except Arjun (obviously!).

I’m sorry, Jia is my sister. She changed her number yesterday. She texted me with her old number and I guess I’ve copied it wrong. I’m really sorry to bother you so late.

Really? Is that all you have to say? I know you guys very well but let me tell you, I’m not that type of a girl. You’re sorry? You should be sorry.

We small town girls are like that, even if we like someone and he approaches us, we think he’s a jerk. If we don’t react that strongly, we feel that the other person might think we’re too easy and speak to every other guy that comes our way.

Excuse me! What ‘type’ are you talking about? he asked.

Don’t try to be smart, you’re not. So you think you’ll call any random girl, start a conversation, strike a friendship and then flirt with her?

We sometimes do that intentionally, even when we know that the guy doesn’t mean to flirt or anything remotely close. We want to make ourselves feel important and hard-to-get. By ‘we’ I mean girls, not all, but most of us.

Look, I don’t know who you are and you don’t know me, so let’s not judge each other. I’ll send you Jia’s number in the morning, you can call her to confirm. I have work tomorrow, bye and sorry again, he hung up.

I suddenly felt upset-

1. No guy had hung up on me before.

2.There was something about his voice that made me trust him.

But then, Roshni called and I got busy. Roshni was my best friend since childhood who helped me finish my homework and my chocolates. She didn’t do my homework without chocolates and I didn’t let her eat my chocolates unless she did my homework. We were made for each other! What she or anybody else didn’t know was that I hated chocolates. I would give her my chocolates anyway, even if she didn’t do my homework. And why wouldn’t I pretend to be a chocoholic in front of her?

Despite the fact that our mothers were sisters and they didn’t like each other, they never let that create any differences between Roshni and me. We never realized that we were cousins. We were always in our own world where nobody else mattered.

Happy Birthday my coochiee coo (I hated these adjectives), you’re sixteen now! she wished me.

The pitch of her voice dipped from 100 to 0 (100 being the highest and 0 being the lowest) as she completed her sentence. I knew something was bothering her. I decided to ask as I didn’t want to put the phone down and die of boredom, Why so sad baby? (she felt more comfortable sharing stuff when I called her baby/sweety/coochie coo).

Juhi, you’re sixteen already! she sounded as if I was sixty, I’ll be sixteen in a month too.

Now I knew what it was all about. We had this rule that said – ‘If you have a boyfriend before sixteen you’re a whore and if you don’t have a boyfriend when you’re sixteen, you’re a loser.’

So what? Even I am single! You still have a month, I tried to make her feel better.

"You have Arjun. I don’t have anyone! Even Pratham is flirting with that Radhika these days. I’ll die