Asha is my girlfriend, my first and only... And I'll eventually marry someone else. 

Well you see, our love story started off just like most love stories start off these days, thanks to the ever-busy and innovative apparel, hair-product and sunglasses industries that have led to men not shaving as much and women not plaiting their hair anymore. 

So, one morning I was seated on a cracked plastic stool outside a tea stall in the park that I frequent, when Asha walked in through a wicket gate at the other end. She was the quintessentially uninteresting girl who usually accompanies the interesting one that would eventually bump into the interesting guy that people like myself would accompany. And so, she caught my attention. She walked past, sat on the bench opposite me and ordered a cup of coffee. She was dressed in a red and purple dress with polka dots, was attractive, chose the right drink and her wavy,loose hair did a good job of making her look beautiful. I sat staring, unable to take my eyes off her.

Just then, she turned my way and found me staring shamelessly. Her nose twitched, she quickly stuck a hand into her bag, pulled out a pile of tissues, placed it on her lap and sneezed before she could take one anywhere close to her face. As if that wasn't enough to disarray the tissues, a mild breeze picked up. The tissues flew, no floated, in front of her face like dancing angels or ghosts or something, and she tried hard to catch them all like an innocent girl tries to catch butterflies, and failed. And that's when Cupid's arrow swished and struck me in the rear. 

You see, it is usually not this way right? The girl is usually dressed in white or some drab colour, but the stuff that fly around, like books or flowers or biscuits - they are usually bright and vivid. But in this case, the girl looked like a two-legged butterfly while the papers were death-white. That was enough to rob me of my sanity. And then as we knelt down to pick up the tissue papers, by convention our heads bumped and I instinctively used a tissue to wipe her forehead. 

"Sorry, I haba bad cod," she said and I for my part said, "I know. Your nose looks like a lipstick."

Funnily enough, she smiled, said I was funny and I said she was cute, I paid for the coffee and it took off that way. I even wrote a poem "Honey, I love the way you Sneeze," as a tribute to the sneeze that was the ironical good omen. 

But then, I should've been careful. If the proven bad omen (the sneeze) turns out to be a good omen, a good omen will turn out to be bad. And so, when she was enduring some rough weather, I walked up and used a quote - stuff that usually works - and said "Honey, One day, I am going to hug you so tight, all of your broken pieces will stick together." I didn't stop with that and continued with, "and that day is today." I hugged her with all my might - true to my word - and ended up breaking a piece, I mean a rib, instead of helping the broken stuff inside fuse.

I now have finger imprints on my cheek and my poem for memory, as I sit wondering if it was cupid's arrow that struck me or if it was Loki's scepter.