Fatema Rajkotwala

My Love, at 12 Fatema Rajkotwala

Look back and recall. Which was your most dramatic, eventful, and emotionally packed phase of life? If I am not mistaken, you just rated the point when you had not yet completely left your childhood but were thrown unaware into adulthood! The time of transition from a child to an adult, the phase of confusion, of awkwardness, of superfluous, touchy ego, the phase of adolescence! What if someone promises to recreate this very intimate switch of your life? To intricately focus every feature of your growing-up awkwardness, of your sight of the first shooting pimple, and above all, your first experience of the fluttering feeling in the stomach, shooting pain in the heart, that sweet pain named love! Interested to indulge in some brimming nostalgia? Good for me, for I just won my first reader! Every adolescent contemplates that what he/she is experiencing is exclusive to him/ her; however, the truth is that the set of feelings that form his/ her core are shared not only by this person's own peers but also by the billions who passed before and the millions to come! Although each individual's emotions are special, I, as an author, have made an attempt to explore the general hue shared by those special people called the teenagers! The novella tries to catch the growing-up nervousness and excitement and finally the coming to terms with oneself via the three main characters, Javed, Manju, and Ajay.