Girls

I don't remember my first interaction with a girl of my age but I do remember looking at girls differently than boys since my earliest memories. Reason, they wore skirts! They had longer hair. Their smile was more attractive. They didn't play sports... basically many reasons. Moreover, I never felt comfortable when some girl used to join us in our quest to destroy imaginary enemy camps and kill all the imaginary terrorists. We had to run, use firearms, girls couldn't do that!
Anyways, bottom line is that I knew from Day 1 of my existence that girls are different than boys, nobody had to tell me that. Sure, in childhood I had some female friends too and even though my best friends were boys only, being in a girl's company felt different. It just happens, it always happens.

During my teenage years, girls started looking attractive and I became conscious. I wasn't sure why it happened and wasn't sure how to behave with a girl, so I preferred silence and speaking only when spoken to. This way I spent my teenage years falling in and out of various one sided infatuations.
College days were fruitless too. Not too many girls around. Besides, my self-conscious nature didn't allow me to talk to even those girls, and it got worse with every next day. Earlier I was hesitant, then I even started stammering a bit while talking to a girl, along with high heart beat rate and clumsiness. In fact, I couldn't even take a girl's name, I felt so hesitant. I felt a knot in my tummy. I felt a force pulled me back whenever I tried to talk to a girl. I guess I had become like Robinson Crusoe, who has been away from better half of humanity during best part of his life!

In my 5th year in college, I joined Madhapur Toastmasters. Life wasn't going anywhere in those days. Moreover, I always wanted to get over my fear of public speaking and forget forever those failed attempts to finish my speech on stage. I got many opportunities to talk to girls in Toastmasters meetings. Toastmasters are always eager to meet new people and make them feel welcome, be it in our meetings or elsewhere. And interacting with so many girls in person has perhaps helped me be more confident when talking to a girl. And in the process I think I might have made some female friends in Toastmasters!

I got placed in Capital IQ after spending 6 years in college, based only on what I studied in first 4 years! One good thing happened though, many girls joined in the technology team as well. During our orientation, during our training period, and during our tech team outing, I got to interact with some girls. They've been friendly and nice to me but I confess and I feel bad about it, that I haven't been so friendly and nice. Maybe because its not like it used to be in school days, even though we do have lunch breaks, and coffee breaks! I hope interacting with girls becomes as normal to me as it was in school days (before high school).

A person gets some chances in his life to change before taking on the 'real world' alone. I got many chances as I studied in many schools, then stayed in a hostel in college, and now I've joined a company. The irony here is that I've been the ugly duckling because I'm quite the opposite of what an army kid would be like. (army kid = person whose parent, father mostly, is in the army).

But as famously said by Coelho, if you really want something, the whole universe conspires to help you achieve it. And I think the wheel has been set in motion since I joined Toastmasters and later gained momentum when I joined Capital IQ. All I want is to be comfortable while talking and interacting with girls, have some female friends and maybe sometime later, a girlfriend also!