It's a strange relationship

He was nine and I was nineteen when we met for the first time. Wearing specks with lens as thick as an old man's, he would smile at me from under it. Sitting right under my nose he won my heart with the first ever comment he made. In all my glory I was delivering a speech on how I am gonna be a different kinda teacher for my li'l ones and inorder to ensure they synced with my idea, I told them to take me in whatever form they wanted," a friend, aunty, or mother!" Too much for my glorious speech. This li'l guy put an end to my speech with his cute innocent remark," stepmom miss?"


Since then he has been very close to my heart. Somehow I always felt that motherly love for him. Now, don't get me wrong here people, I never intended to become his stepmom, not at any cost. But every morning as his smile greeted me I felt that exulted feelings only a mother is capable of feeling. I was his class teacher for two years. In those two years we got very close. I wasn't biased, I was good to all my students but this particular li'l boy somehow took a larger chunk of my heart for his home.


Occasionally I visited his mom and sister too and his li'l sister who was barely a toddler developed instant liking to me. Even she would squirm," Miss, Miss!" whenever she saw me. Such was our love.


After those two years, we drifted apart. I left that place. After joining that new place I never got any mails from him but I knew he would think of me for I thought of him a lot. I would talk about him to anybody who was all ears for my blabbering.


After a decade we met again. Well, not physically. We met in FB. He had somehow found me. That proves he had never forgotten me too. Chatting for the first time, we caught up on the lost years. He told me he is in an Engineering college in South India and told me about where all he had been in a decade's time. I told him about my kids and the schools I had served. We promised to meet when he came for vacation. That was agreed.


Call it our destiny, he is currently in the same place I had to be in owing to some untoward circumstances. Again we meet in FB and too excited to know we are in one state,we exchange our phone numbers. He calls me immediately after I punch my numbers. "I don't know what to call you, Miss or Madam?" is the first line he says in his not the voice that I remember. And we both feel the connection that we have always felt.

Dear Ugyen, this is for you. I am immensely happy to have talked to you yet at the same time deeply sorrowed by the present state you are in. My li'l one, this mother of yours mothered you before I mothered my real kids. I know God knows my motherly love for you and this love will turn into sincere prayers to get you back to the Ugyen I always remember, smiling cutie pie, as I always called you.