KEDAR
✨

Her face turned pale and she looked shocked. I smiled and slowly settled down on the floor in the balcony. She kept looking at me and I tapped next to me signalling her to sit down and she slowly settled down next to me.

I pulled out my phone and went to my music library and began playing my favorite.

The Beatles!!!

In my life by The Beatles began playing on my phone and a smile adored my lips and she looked pleasantly surprised looking at me. She softly asked...

'Music??? And you???' and I chuckled saying

'They are my favorite band. Their songs gave me confidence, they unknowingly spoke my story, it's like their each song is made for me!!!' I said and my eyes wandered towards the sky. We both kept looking at the star studded beautiful night which shone bright with the bright moon tonight as I began...

'I was always the tallest child in my class. Initially it was great, I was chosen for the basketball team, I was the first choice for every sports activity but gradually it started turning out to be an obstacle. I was always made to sit in the last row, always became tree in plays and school recitals yet I was considered the cute tall kid. Everybody thought I was very cute but then puberty hit me and I started growing taller and fatter.

I couldn't understand why I would feel so hungry. I started eating food three times my normal quantity and I was always hungry. I loved everything. Veg...non veg... fried to sweets...salads to home cooked... barbecued to baked...I loved food in general and that started bringing major changes in my body.

I gained weight. A lot of weight.

Initially it didn't bother me because I was tall and mom dad thought it's fine because I was still a growing up child. A pre-teen. Slowly people around me started noticing and pointing out my weight gain. But my parents thought it's completely normal and never let any kind of insecurities enter my system but what they didn't know was there is a world outside home too and although for my family I was a cute and handsome growing up child for the world I became 'Fatso'.

Along with that name came other synonyms like dinosaur, fat cat, Indian elephant and what not!!! Hahaha...

Bullying with a combination of racism!!! I had fantastic classmates.' I said and she looked sad but I smiled and continued

'Along with time my eating habits worsened along with my looks and so did their taunts got innovative and uglier.

I had acne problems. I tried everything like a growing up kid from face creams to face packs to home remedies. Nothing worked and I couldn't stop eating. I tried but I was hungry. I didn't realise how worse was my diet until one day I was called upon by my sports teacher who told me that I wasn't good enough to continue as the basketball team captain.

My legacy of 5 years was taken away from me suddenly one day and that was the day I realised I have to start working upon my self. So...I started eating healthy food and started exercising.

I began hitting the gym when I was 15. I switched from unhealthy junk to healthy food. Homemade healthy food. My mother waa very co-operative and explained me I'm a growing up child and my body changes every other day and it's ok to have acne, pimples or marks on my face. But my college mates, kids of my age group did not understand this logic.

Why??? I don't know.

I was been put down everyday for my weight issues, I was been called names for my marks and pimples and although I wanted to work upon these problems their remarks would break my confidence every single day until I met Isabella. We were 16.

Isabella Lopez one year senior to me who had shifted to California after her mother and father filed for a mutual divorce from each other and she was here with her mother and her sister Camelia.

We met each other in school and like any other boy in the school even I had a huge crush on Bella. She was beautiful. But what I liked more about her was her kindness. The day I saw her feeding water and bread to a hungry puppy outside our school was the day I admired and respected her humanity more than her beauty. She wouldn't talk to me ofcourse I was the odd one out. The tall and fat one who did not have any sense of dressing up nor was I easy going with girls. I was a shy one. Always running away from them.

Bella was the first one I spoke to ever in my life. And it was because I saw her crying after school. She had chosen German as her language and she had scored a C in the subject and she was scared if she wouldn't qualify for the scholarship that year because it wasn't easy for her mother to manage everything all by herself.

That day I spoke to her for the first time only because I wanted to make her smile. My father was an influential businessman and also was one of the college trustees so I took Bella to him. She was hesitant but seeing her grades dad offered to sponsor her education that year. Bella's mother was overwhelmed and that day Bella and I became friends.

Years passed. She would come home, mom would cook her favorite food but she hated spicy Indian food. Her pallette couldn't adjust to it so I learnt to cook food for her because aunty was already doing two jobs and Bella hated cooking and would skip food. So gradually I took it upon me to cook for Bella and Camellia. Afternoon I would take food along with mine and dinners would be handed over to them by Neil.

We gradually became too close to the girls. I had started liking Bella but I was always afraid to tell her although she had grown very comfortable with my family. I didn't even confess my heartfelt feelings to her even after Camellia and Neil declared their relationship. I was scared. To add on too many things were changing too soon in our lives.

It wasn't easy for Isabella's mother to run the show all by herself so Bella decided to do modelling. She was pretty and did not have contacts and my father was a rich and influential businessman. So she would often ask me or mom to talk to dad to get her modeling offers but dad was a man of principles and somehow he never liked Isabella at all however I had a few influential friends and I introduced Bella to them and gradually her modelling career took off.

Everyone knew how I felt about her except her. Fear of loosing her friendship never let me speak my heart out.

I was popular in my college for two prominent reasons.

Good marks and bad looks.

Hippo...Rhino...Dino...Fat Giraffe...Gourd...AcneMan...Hulk!!!

There were all possible innovative names given to me and as time passed although my friendship with Bella grew stronger, crowd of people bullying me became bigger. I was a huge boy but still I was scared of even a tiny cockroach. I didn't have the guts in me to confront anyone. In simple terms people called me a dummy. A p*ssy!!! But all that would go away when I would spend time with Bella. She would keep encouraging me to concentrate on my studies and my career.

I was initially thinking she cared for me. She started gaining more and more attention from people and became the most popular girl in the college as her modelling career flourished. Everyone told me that she wasn't good but for me she was the same old Bella.

We joined the same university and although she wanted to pursue modelling as her career she wanted a degree in management. She was although my senior, I helped her complete her assignments. Initially it was me helping her to...but gradually she got busy with offers and pagents pouring in and I started doing her assignments.

I didn't understand how things were rapidly changing between us. From helping each other, to helping her to doing her things to turning her slave.

I never realised until one day Venkat told me about how he heard Bella putting me down infront of everyone in cafeteria. But I was blinded by her love that I didn't even trust Venkat. Because Bella was a friend for 8 years and Venkat was a friend for only 2 years. I was a commerce student so I weighed everything in numbers until and unless it was Bella.

There nothing worked. I didn't even realise how I turned her puppy until it was Bella's send off party. Her last day in college. She was going to Pennsylvania for higher studies and Neil pumped me up to propose her.

I still remember I got my most expensive tuxedo all the way designed from California's best designer. I got a facial done, hair done from the finest spa to make sure to look like the man of her dreams when I ask her to be my girlfriend but what fell on my ears when I approached her shook me to the core.

She had worn a Scooby-Doo tshirt under which she had put a balloon to fake a big tummy. She had stuffed two strawberries in her mouth and had applied made dots on her face with a black pencil and was walking in a weird way.

Initially I didn't understand what was happening but then she enacted to read books, write assignments and pretending to pick pasta with her hands and stuff it in her mouth.

That's when I heard ..

'I am the Pumpkin Nayak!!! Hahaha...I look like a pig, eat like a hippo, burp like a rhino!!! Guess who I am!!!'

And I had tears in my eyes. She had made me a laughing stock infront of all my seniors, juniors and my classmates. Everyone was laughing at me and everyone thought that she was a great mimicry artist but here it had shattered my confidence levels.

The friends whom I introduced her to were now laughing at her. Correction. They weren't my friends. She wasn't either.

One of rich brats asked her
'That was awesome girl!!! I thought you are his girlfriend!!!' and she burst out laughing

'Are you kidding me? That pumpkin will need to find a soup bowl for himself!!! He is nice but he cannot be my types. I mean look at him and look at me. If I'm a moon he's like the craters on that moon. He is rich because his father is rich but then Richard is richer, succesful and also from the fashion world. That potato can never compete with him.'

When another one said 'But I heard he is going to propose to you soon!!!'

To which she laughed out loud saying 'If he doesn't want to make a fool of himself he won't propose me!'

'But haven't you took his favours???' asked a girl with them and she snapped back saying

'If I took favours from him, he outshined because he was MY friend in the university otherwise you think anyone would even look at that fatso?' and that broke me badly.

She also called me a fatso. I was still swallowing her words when Venkat stood up against her and tried to show her a mirror. Venkat whom I ignored was still fighting for me.

Venkat was also a good looking handsome man but he wasn't cunning like her. It killed me that I ignored a gem like Venkat for a selfish woman like her.

I simply went and hugged Venkat tightly and Bella was shocked seeing me. She tried to talk to me but I didn't want to see her face.

I went home and hid my face in my pillow and burst out crying.

But was that was alone my breakdown??? No!!! It was just the beginning.

I didn't go to university after that. I had enough attendance to give my exams and for the first time in life I got a Grade C in all my subjects.

I distanced myself from everyone. From there began my destruction.' I said with a chuckle and she held onto my bicep.

Just the beginning.