Friendship!!

There were two teachers assigned for taking our sports classes. Mr. Sanjay who took  the boys’ sessions and a young, lanky teacher with curly hair named Ms. Chitralekha, for the girls. I was most relieved that mercifully, the boys (who obviously had to be perfect at every sport) and the girls played separate games in each class.This feeling of relief was short lived and only lasted until I saw the girls in my class actually play! Most of the girls were really proficient at every sport!! During my first game of hockey, I just stood in the middle of the field,  lamely holding  the smallest and slightly damaged hockey stick in my hand. (This broken stick  was the only one left after the girls had attacked the bunch and taken the good ones). I remained in the center of the field keeping well out of the way of the violent, running girls and the middle aged bulky, dark hockey instructor who was  dressed in a dark blue track suit. His name was Mr. Yadav. Except for a few, all the girls were playing fiercely and after the first 3 minutes, the captain of my team, a tall girl with a long plait whose name I knew was Gaganpreet, took my hand and led me to the corner of the field and told me to stay there for the next 45 minutes! It was the same fate with football, basketball and cricket when I encountered them for the first time. There were a few girls who seemed not to have picked up the game and they just stood on their team’s side of the field and hardly ever touched the ball. I was determined not to be included in this category and tried harder and harder with each game and by the time my first month at the school had passed, I had managed to rectify  my lousy reputation and  at least the teams were beginning to pick me for their defence position after the star players had already been picked! The one exception was Basketball, which I never managed to enjoy till the last day of my time at school because of my inconveniently short height! On the whole, I was settling down well and playing basketball once a week was not going to hold me back!

August had arrived by now and it brought my favourite Monsoon season along with it! The microphones with long stands had been introduced in Assembly which made the news, announcements and Mr. Gajendra’s singing, audible through the deafening sound of the rain and thunder. It was very dark inside the school building during that season. but the hard rain lashing on the glass window-panes all around made a noisy, lovely sound. The classrooms got darker and seemed dingier too, forcing us to feel sleepy and daydream during the lessons.

 For the activity class, we were divided into the three groups consisting of randomly selected students. The first group went to Mrs. Vandana , (a stern looking lady)  for Arts, the second one to Mrs. Anuradha Solanki, (who seemed to be really popular with the girls) for dance and the third group to Mr. Gajendra for Music! Each term, the groups rotated and moved to the next activity. This way every child was involved in each activity. I was in the third group for my first term and went to Mr. Gajendra for music. He was a very friendly and pleasant person and referred to me as “Naya Ladki” (The new girl!) as he said he is not good with remembering names. To this day, he continues to address me by this very name. During the first few classes, he had arranged us in the choir and made us sing songs. All the students seemed to know every song well and sang with enthusiasm. Mr. Gajendra had the singers chosen and the latter were given the high pitched portions of the songs to sing. There were three star singers in my group- Natasha who, everybody said resembled me a lot with her short hair and spectacles, Pratisha , the same bossy girl who had questioned me on my first day  and Saloni, an ever smiling, short girl with very wavy hair! Mr. Gajendra had once asked me to sing a line on my own but I was very coy and politely requested to be let off saying I had a bad throat! Today, however, instead of asking us to sing, we were asked to select a musical instrument each, which we would be learning to play,before we moved on to another activity. I immediately ran and picked up a pair of tablas and made my way to the back of the room. Mr. Gajendra seemed to be amused by my choice and pointed it out to me asking why I had not picked up a simpler instrument say, like a flute! Smiling, I just shrugged my shoulders casually and moving away, muttered to myself – “To keep my asthma under control!” In my opinion, it was a pretty lame joke but to my absolute amazement, Pratisha trotted towards me and ruffled my hair saying- “Sooo funny!”. Other students- Natasha, Saloni, her very fair best friend Sakshi, a boy named Arshad, a tall girl named akanksha  were all laughing too! I grinned at all of them and winked but going back to my instrument, I scratched my head and wondered what exactly I had said to amuse them so! That day, in the lunch period, I was invited by Pratisha and her friends to sit besides them.  Elated, I joined them at once , but also tried not to look at the faces of my old friends sitting at the other end of the table. They were the people who had been really nice to me at the time when nobody would even speak to me, and now, they were also the people whom I had just selfishly deserted for the new ones!