The year was 2004- nearly halfway into the noughties. Only no one was calling them that yet. I don’t think the name for the decade that followed the nineties really ever caught on while we were living them. It was the summer break at school and I had just turned 17. I was not the glamorous 17 that all the teen movies and Lindsay Lohan and MTV wanted you to believe. I was the awkward 17 at the fringes of the teen social microcosm. I suspected then that I was allowed to remain even on the fringes and was not a complete outcast simply because the boys at school thought I was hot. Weird but hot. I knew that because girls gossip in the tightly knit teen community. That and the catcalls every time I walked past the basketball court and the love notes surreptitiously slipped under my desk at school. I would have to be Melanie Wilkes to not notice that. I could not wait for the year to be over and be off to college, leaving behind the small, provincial town forever. Summer should have been a respite from school but it was after all Class 12 and board exams. Even our school with exceptionally low academic expectations had special coursework and Chemistry summer classes.

The summer of 2004 was when I read Gone with the Wind for the first time. It was an old hardback edition printed in the ‘70s. I breezed through the volume, but my fate like its heroine’s was sealed from Page 1, when the 16 year old ‘not beautiful’ Scarlett coquetted like a pro with the Tarleton twins on Tara’s porch. Scarlett was a problematic role model- I realise that now although even back then her decidedly sociopathic behaviour gave me a twinge of unease. Nevertheless, I was in love. Scarlett after all had that elusive ‘Gumption’. So did Rhett of course but you know what makes Scarlett an enduring heroine? She could have done without the strong hero archetype that’s Rhett. Even in the end, during Scarlett’s final comeuppance, I knew that she would pull through Rhett or no Rhett. Since it did seem like she wanted him in any case, I believe she would have made him find his way back to her. One day, towards the end of summer break, my mother picked me up from extra classes and as soon as I had changed I walked down to the library. That was also the summer of my faded, denim shorts, and I rarely wore anything else. Sometime during the preceding winter I had finally grown into them. So on that day I was in my blue shorts and a white bell-sleeved, poignantly sheer peasant shirt. Scarlett, inadvertently stymied in the throes of civil war meanwhile was finding her own personal, sartorial zeitgeist, I imagined in taking down Tara’s green drapery. 

I left the library an hour later with the re-issued Gone with the Wind. I felt groggy and disoriented in the sunshine and every time I screwed my eyes shut I saw explosions of white light. I could feel the beginning of a headache and stepped up my pace. I started to run when I reached the narrow, steep steps cut across the hilly pathway. I ran down fast and giddy arriving at the bottom breathless and giggling. My good humour didn't last; Rashi and one of her cronies from the volleyball team, still in their school uniforms stood chatting outside her apartment block, to my left. They had evidently witnessed my manic flight and now grinned at me maliciously. “You really are crazy aren’t you?” said the friend viciously. I didn't really know her. When I had been on the team, she had only been called Nana- evidently a nickname. So I grimaced back and continued walking. But Rashi had stepped out in front of me “Hey, don’t mind Nana. She’s just high,” she said in a conciliatory manner, “Don’t go yet. Everyone’s coming over to the terrace for beer”. “A party?” I asked her mustering as much scorn as I could. “No silly,” she laughed, “we will just hang out, have some beer.” I followed them upstairs and popped into Rashi’s house to call my mother from their phone. When I got to the terrace 5 minutes later, people had started coming in. Rashi’s friend Misha who was in college was home for the summer and I could hear her whining about something to Nana. Someone thrust a tepid pint of beer in my hand. It was warm and bitter. I chugged it down, caught Jatin’s eye and walked over to him. Jatin was Rashi’s boyfriend. But he was sulking alone now and she was not in sight. I had always liked him but I wasn’t about to make a move just yet. Rashi and I weren't friends. I was afraid of her. She had an animal strength about her and could beat me black and blue. She had insinuated as much when Jatin had serenaded me on his guitar at the school social. I had pointed out to her then that his musical choices were entirely his own, but I’m not sure if she ever saw it that way.

“What you reading?” he asked me nonchalantly. I told him. “What’s it about?” he continued although his eyes had turned glassy. “Glue-sniffers who turned into zombies during the American civil war. History,” I told him. “Nice,” he responded, “I like your shorts.” “We should hang out some time,” I replied. I did like him. But I had to leave soon. The party was turning rambunctious and I didn't want to be around when the neighbours turned up. Over the rest of the summer Jatin and I were inseparable. Summer romances don’t last, friendships do. When he was in town last we caught a special Gone with the Wind screening together. 

He hated it. He couldn’t believe Clark Gable’s character was not a zombie.