"Mommys' day out!"

The gloom of approaching half-yearly exams swept over the school like a nasty bout of flu and with a heavy heart, we all dived into the preparation of our studies!! These exams, which were to assess how well prepared we were to face the actual boards coming up in the next few months,  were to start during the last week of November, stretching all the way till the start of the annual yearly function of the school in mid- December. The board classes were never allowed to participate in the annual function as it wasted lots of our valuable time in rehearsals.

 Our time-table had been set keeping in mind how the actual board schedule usually was and thus, considerably long  gaps had been granted between all the exams for us to be better prepared! To my immense relief Accounts was to be our first exam and I was glad that with it being out of the way, I would be able to concentrate on my remaining exams with ease. We now spent all our free periods revising for our trickiest subjects like Accounts and Economics and testing each other to raise our confidence.

“That’s it! I’m done!!” Pratishtha said, shutting her Accounts book close and throwing aside her pen.

We were sitting in the cubical and had spent one and a half hours out of our double free periods in revision.

“What, you have completed practising Consignment?” I asked distractedly, checking my own figures with those of the solved example from the book.

“”No re!” she replied, “I am tired, I mean, let’s take a break!”

“A very good idea!” Sonal said, giving an enormous stretch to her limbs.

“Come on, bookworm!” I said, nudging Sakshi, who was mumbling twelve long points from a Commerce answer to herself with her eyes close and her fingertips on her temples, massaging them.

She gave me a severe look which I was not stupid enough to ignore.

“What shall we do?” I asked my two lesser studieous friends, “Shall we go and try to convince captain Shekhawat into giving us coffee from teachers’ machine?”

“Naah!” Sonal said dismissively, “I'm bored of that coffee.  Look what I got yesterday when we went to Yashwant club for a  dinner party yesterday!”

Pratishtha and I leaned in to look closely at the green paper she held. Even Sakshi opened one eye out of curiosity.

“This , is great stuff!” she said fondly, “It tells us what career would be best for us in accordance with our sun-signs and location of stars at the time we were born. We had great fun with it at the party last night.”

“Wow!! Let me see.” Pratishtha said,snatching the paper from Sonal’s hand. “ Tell you what, I will check what my mom is most well-suited for. It will be fun.”

Pratishtha had a striking looking mother and she helped her husband in the family bussiness with expertise and unmatched aptitude.

“Lemme see, lemme see…” Pratishtha said, scanning the parchment , “Ahh, here it is ! she is most well-suited to be a ….”

“What??” I asked when her voice trailed off, “Say naa!”

“Whhhaaaaat?” Soanl said looking at her dazed expression.

“A…a..” she whispered “ A… Soldier! ”

The ends of Sonal’s mouth twitched and all of a sudden, she began to search her bag for something. Sakshi had  disappeared behind her revision notes and seemed to be shaking very slowly. I pursed up my lips tightly and was controlling my laughter so hard that it seemed that my insides would burst.

“ HAHAHAHHAHAHA!” Pratishtha let out a roaring laughter and all three of us dissolved into heaps of maddening   hilarity too.

“Lets do my mom’s next!” I said eagerly.

“Okay, January 11^th…umm…..” Pratishtha said, wiping away her eyes and once again scanning the paper.

She looked up and said…

“ A …Hairdresser!”

We again let out squeals of deafening laughter and slapped the desk with our fists, tears rolling down our cheeks.

“My mom’s?” Sonal asked.

“A ..Politician!”  Pratishtha let out a bark of mirth and ignoring the noise of our snorting and coughing,  immediately began looking for Sakshi’s mom’s birth date.

We waited with baited breath!

“Sakshi’s mom…” she said finally, hardly able to keep her face straight for even two seconds.. “ ….Entertainer!!”

This was the loud straw! Visions of our perfect mothers in such bizarre new avatars was too much for us to digest and we could not stop envisioning them in green military uniform, A Salon’s black loreals apron with scissors in hand ,in  politician’s starched white collared kurta pajama giving a speech and in a black tux standing on a performance stage of laughter challenge.

“OOOHH!” I gasped, “My stomach is all cramped up….it’s hurting sooo bad!”

“Ahhhaa..ha..haaa..!” Sakshi tried her best to stop laughing, she had gone all red by now and was massaging her cheeks, “ the muscles around my mouth have all stiffened up!”

“What. Are. You. Girls. Doing?” A voice came from the entrance of the cubical and we all looked up to see Mr. Rajesh with a terrorizing expression on his face.

We had forgotten all about the library filled with students next door and also that the loud noises from the cubical carried all the way there.

“Oops!” Pratishtha said, trying her best to compose her expression into something sombre. It didn’t work. It merely seemed as if she had a painful toothache.

Mr Rajesh stared at her odd face and finally shouted, “You girls have all of class fifth B into peals of obnoxious laughter. They don’t even have a reason to laugh. They are just following your voices and the library’s in a mess.”

“Sorry sir!” Sakshi managed to say seriously enough, “We forgot about the library. We will be quiet now.”

Giving us a last exasperated look, he left.

“Ooh.. that was good!” Sakshi said, “ A  great break from the studies.”

“Come on ”, Pratishtha said, getting up and flexing her hands, “ Lets go for a stroll in the football field.”

We packed up our bags and set for towards the staircase across the library where Mr. Rajesh glared at us with narrowed eyes. 

Grinning to ourselves, we were just about to make our way down the stairs when a familiar voice summoned us from behind.

“Wait girls!” Mrs. Bandi called, flipping through her folder and walking towards us.

“Hi Ma’am!” I said as we waited for her to join us.

“Hii!” she replied, in her soft and melodious voice, handing out our test papers, “here are your test-papers. Sonal, your graph had gone slightly low this time because of Shares chapter and Mallika, there’s still scope for improvement. It seems you have stopped trying for better marks now that you cross the passing line, haan?”

“No Ma’am” I said earnestly, “I have a problem with shares too ..”

“Okay, get these papers signed from your parents as usual and I will see you all in the class tommorow!”

We were all busy scrutinising our corrected papers and waved her goodbye distractedly.

“ Hey, listen girls!” Mrs. Bandi retreated and walked to us “ someone just said downstairs that Mrs. Bhan is leaving the school. Is this true?”

Our heads snapped up and we stared incredulously at her.

“What?” Sonal exclaimed, frowning, “Who said that?”

“A couple of teachers in the staff-room were talking to each other about it!” Mrs. Bandi said anxiously.

The four of us looked at each other and burst out laughing.

“Today is a funny day!” Pratishtha said, shaking her head.

“People here will believe anything!” I said, rolling my eyes, “Ma’am, these are just silly rumours. I mean, Pride Education without Mrs. Bhan?? Come- ooon, is that possible?”

Mrs. Bandi was still looking anxious so Sakshi draped a hand over her shoulder and

led Mrs. Bandi towards the library with a meaningful look at me behind her back.

Taking the cue, I followed both of them to the library’s entrance and nodded to Sakshi.

“Forget it ma’am!” she said, grinning, “ let us show you something interesting in the library.”

By now, we were in the midst of library’s  double doors. I could see Mr. Rajesh observed in some paperwork at his desk. Luckily, He did not see us!

“Ma’am  look!” Sakshi said, pointing to nothing inside the library.

“What?” Mrs. Bandi peeped in the library with a blank expression on her face.

“Look Ma’aaaam!” I said, pointing too, “right there?”

Mrs. Bandi walked a little more into the library looking here and there for something which was apparently very interesting.

“I can’t see anything!” she said, puzzled.

“Just walk two steps more and you will see it ma’am!” Sakshi said.

Now Mrs. Bandi was fully in the library. Mr. rajesh looked up and sensing trouble rose from the table and started heading towards us.

“NOWW !”  Sakshi bellowed.

Both of us grabbed each door and slammed them shut loudly, cutting out any sound coming from within. 

Library’s doors always remained open and we had always wondered what fun it would be to bend the rules a little and slam them shut.

“RUUUUN!”  both of us shouted and we four ran down the stairs, laughing and looking over our shoulders just in time to see the doors open briskly and two faces looking at us – Mrs. Bandi’s confused one ( we wondered if she guessed that there was no interesting thing in existence!) and Mr. Rajesh’s red, furious one.

“Mrs. Bhan leaving Pride…” I thought to myself as we ran, smirking  “Hah! Where did these rumours originate from???”

And we had forgotten all about this fragment of someone’s imagination in the next two minutes when we once again indulged into the magic piece of paper which showed us our career destinies.

   

That 'F' word!

The day began on a bad note! It was a chilly morning and I was running late. As I ran towards my bus-stop at a top speed lest I missed my bus, my toe tripped over a stone and I grabbed the first thing which was within my reach : an arm of a passing lady. I fell hard on the concrete road anyway and heard the unfailing sound of the cloth ripping. I landed hard on my knees and I felt my brand new salwar tear and the harsh surface cut my flesh. Slowly, I rose to my feet and dusted my self. My fresh ‘out- of- laundry’  kurta was now dusty in places and blood was trickling from my knee which was exposed due to the tear.  I was about to resume my run to the bus-stop when a hand grabbed the back of my bag and stopped me from moving. I turned to look into the narrowed, brown eyes of a stern looking woman who was eyeing me with disdain.

“Where do you think you are going?” she inquired in an angry, high-pitched voice.

It was the lady whom I had grabbed to break my fall. She was an extremely fair and stout lady with curly black hair . She had a torn sleeve too from where I had grabbed her arm and  looking at her fuming composure, at once I knew that I couldn’t have chosen a more sterner person to annoy!

“Oh right!” I said, looking over my shoulder to check whether the bus is approaching or not, “See, it was an accident aunty. I am really very very sorry!”

I started towards my stop but again she blocked me.

“Don’t you have any manners?” she said, “You tear my clothes, almost push  me on the road which by the way, could have broken my leg for all you care and u have the cheek to just walk away with a mumbled apology and a sneer on your face.

I blinked at her.

“Sneer?” I thought, “ God, who was this person?”

“Look Madam!” I said “I am really going to miss my school-bus if you don’t let me go. I am really , really, extremely, genuinely, truly ,actually sorry!”

“So now you are being sarcastic haan?” she said, “ Go, you have already spoiled my mood on the morning of my new job”. Letting me go, she walked away, muttering under her breath, “Teens  nowdays have no manners at all!!”

I ran past her and reached my bus-stop just in time to see the bus emerging on the corner of the street.

“Oh thank God!” I gasped , clutching the side of my stomach and gasping for my breath. The tear on my knee was stinging badly by now and all the running had made me thirsty.

“Mallika!” Shama aunty exclaimed, coming to my side. “What happened?”

“Nothing!” I said, “Just had a small fall!”

The bus soon arrived and as it came to a halt, I saw the lady whom I had bumped into, walking towards me.

“Good Riddance!” I thought and waving to Shama aunty, hopped quickly onto the bus  to avoid another encounter with the angry lady.

 To my horror, reaching the bus, she followed me and stepped onboard too. Was she coming to slap me now?

I saw as she sat on one of the front seats of the bus and inroduced herself to another teacher.

“Hello! I am Mrs. Das!” she said,  “The new science teacher for senior students.”

“New job!” I thought , comprehension dawning onto me. “She is a new faculty member.”

Catching a glimpse of me, she gave me a look of contempt amd I hurried to the back of the bus to get out of her sight.

“Don’t even ask!” I muttered at Venky as he raised his eye-brows at my dirty form.

Reaching the school,I told him to proceed to the class and I walked towards Gopal bhaiya to ask for the first-aid box.

“Mallika!” he said, even before I could say anything, “Mrs. Bhan wishes to see you in her office before the assembly.”

All my worry about my injury vanished on hearing this information and I turned and made my way towards the headmistress’s office.

“May I come in Ma’am?” I asked at the entrance of her room.

Mrs. Bhan was sitting on her desk, looking over some papers. Today she was dressed in maroon cotton salwar-suit and her spectacles were perched up on her nose and hearing my voice, she looked up from her work.

“Ah, Yes Mallika! Do come in!” she said, removing her glasses and closing the file of sheets.

“Good-morning Ma’am!” I said.

“Morning Mallika!” she said, “Please sit down!”

Looking at Mrs. Bhan’s grave expression, I could make out that she had  surely not called me to bestow accolades on some task which I may have done..

“You called me Mrs. Bhan?” I asked, sitting gingerly on the chair across her.

“Yes!” she said, “To tell you the truth, I was very disappointed when one of the teachers complained about you to me yesterday.”

I was completely taken aback. As far as I could remember, I had not crossed any teacher in the recent past and my academic graph was going on well too. Mrs. Bandi had appreciated my effort at studies,just two days back during her class.

“I am sorry I don’t understand Mrs. Bhan!” I said, puzzled.

“Well” she said, “ a junior teacher has complained that a couple of days back when you might be in the field during the lunch break, she heard you saying the offensive ‘F’ word on the top of your voice.”

“WHAAT??” I exclaimed, bewildered.  My voice had gone all squeky. “Mrs. Bhan! I swear thats not true! I have never even uttered this word out of my mouth, let alone shouting it out in front of everyone on the field and I wince when I hear the boys of our class saying it sometimes. My friends can vouch for me that I never ever use bad language. And using such a bad word is completely out of question! Please believe me Mrs. Bhan! I didn’t say it.”

Mrs. Bhan was listening to me in a serious manner and I could not make out whether she believed me or not.

“Ok Mallika!” she said finally, “ I did ask her if she was sure it was you or not and she seemed be be sure that it was indeed you she saw. So, if it is true, please take care of it in future and well, if it is, according to you, untrue and you didn’t do it, then it’s fine!”

I could see that I had failed to convince Mrs. Bhan and realised that she must deal with students covering up their wrong deeds in such a manner everyday.  So, it must be difficult for her to believe me.

I got up and slowly made my way towards the class with my head bowed low. Indignition bubbled inside me like hot lava. It was so unfortunate and unfair! I wondered which teacher had mistaken some other misbehaving student for me. I had always been close to Mrs. Bhan and I grimaced when I considered what she must have thought of me after hearing this false accusation.

“Hope the new teacher from my bus doesn’t complain about me too. What a morning!” I thought.

As I reached the class, I was annoyed to see that the door was not open ajar as usual but was just a tad bit open. Moodily, I pushed it and stepped in the room when something fell hard on the top of my head. It was the class dust-bin which Avtar, Amitayu and Aniket had kept on the top of the door so that it falls on the top of the person who enters the room.

On top of my dusty clothes, and torn knee, I now had strewn bits of papers and other garbage all around me and I looked up to see all my class-mates roaring with laughter and pointing towards me.

Hot tears filled my eyes and I ran out of the room towards the wash-room. The day was beginning to be a torture and it was not even assembly time yet. Reaching the washroom, I locked myself in a cubical. I could not stop crying!

Okay, to make things clear, I am definitely not a cry-baby who starts howling at drop of the hat but whenever I cry, I am unable to stop for some time. This is one of the things which I loathe about myself. I have always wished to be one of those people who are strong and do not cry in any situation but I suppose every girl has  hidden taps inside her eye-lids which cannot wait to go off. This is so unfair too!!

On the sound of people entering the washroom, I tried to get a grip on myself and took long gulps of air to steady myself. I wiped my tears and stepped out of the cubical. Sakshi, Pratishtha and Sonal were standing outside, apparantly at a loss to say anything. I passed them and went to a washbasin to wash my face. As I wiped my eyes with a towel, I saw that the person staring back at me from behind the mirror had red, bloodshot eyes and nose which was an alarming bright shade of pink.

“What happened Maalu?” Sonal asked, gently.

“Nothing!” I snapped.

“Something must have happened for sure!” Sakshi said, stepping towards me. “You never lose nerve on practical jokes .On the contrary, you laugh the loudest on them. Today your mood is not right and you have  torn and dirty clothes too. What happened?”  

“Well, I am having a lousy day!” I replied waspishly “and you guys are doing nothing to make it better. Just see how a person’s mood is before you hurl a dust-bin at them. Just leave me alone.”

“Come on Maalu!” Pratishtha said angrily “You know that we all play such jokes on each other everyday. Sonal, amitayu and I, we all have had the same prank played with us too. How would we know that you are not in a good mood? It was an innocent incident. You are over-reacting!”

“Fine then!” I snarled, “I am the one who is at fault right? That’s why I am telling you to leave me alone! Go away!”

“Fine!” she said, starting towards the entrance of the loo “We can talk when you come to your senses, if you ever do.”  

“You can go too!” I shouted at Sonal and Sakshi after Pratishtha had walked out “ Don’t let me waste your time.”

Both of them followed Pratishtha and after a few minutes I walked out of the washroom and went to join the class for the assembly.

The rest of the day was as bad. I kept brooding the whole day and my three friends did not try to talk to me again, contrary to what I had expected. As I calmed down, I felt lonely and sad when I saw  the three of them talking to each other in the usual manner but turned my face in the other direction when they glanced at me. As we went to the main class for Mrs. Ghosh’s lesson, the boys kept on pretending to shake with fright when I passed them and I was glad that they had not taken offence on my outburst but seemed to find it funny! On the way back to home, I pretended to sleep in the bus in order to avoid Venky asking me questions. Overall, it was one of the worst days of my school life. Started with an injury, scolding from a new teacher, outrageous untrue complaint against me to Mrs. Bhan herself , made a fool of myself  by crying over a petty matter and picked a fight with my best friends. By the time I reached home, I had developed a throbbing head-ache and I slept the afternoon away to forget the happenings of the day.

"The Change!"

Our worst nightmare came true when Mrs. Ghosh announced in the class that our uniform is indeed going to change from our smart , collared white T-shirts and jeans to Navy blue and White salwar- kameez. This change was for the three senior most classes  i.e the girls belonging to the tenth, eleventh and twelfth grades. We assumed that the reason was inappropriate tight-fitted jeans worn by some of the girls. We were scandelised by this information and fiercely defied the idea when Mrs. Ghosh announced it. But it seemed that this decision was final and there was no convincing Mrs. Ghosh or Mrs. Bhan about it. On the contrary, all the teachers seemed quite happy with this change and dismissed our pleas saying we would soon get used to the new uniform as the days would pass and insisted that it would be much more comfortable than the jeans. We groaned when we saw the sample of our uniform. The ‘Kurta’ was Navy-Blue and stand-collared with slanting lines running down the front . The ‘Salwar’ was white in colour. Speaking of myself, I , who had been a tom-boy always, had never ever worn an Indian attire all my life. I was dismayed thinking that I would look like a clown in Salwar-Kameez and Sakshi wailed that we would all look like Thirty year olds.

Finally, when the dreadful day came, I felt miserable as I turned to and fro standing in front of the mirror and threw a pillow at my sister who was laughing openly. I thought I  looked really very silly! I headed towards the bus-stop after my mother had assured me that I looked nice and not at all silly.

“Heyyy, what are you wearing?” Shama aunty asked even before I could greet her. Arkam was gawking at me in polite puzzlement.

“The new uniform!” I said, sulking, “Looking stupid, am I not?”

“No, you are not looking stupid!” she said, smiling “but the jeans looked smart, why did they change it?”

“Yeah, you are from the USA,” I said, “ofcourse you would like jeans better. Probably because some girls used to wear tight-fitted jeans to school which is ofcourse not right.”

“So where’s the “chunni”? she asked.

“There’s none.” I replied “ I suppose its modern form of Salwar-Kameez, so that we don’t have to fumble and mess around with a chunni!”

After Shama aunty’s reaction I got more panicky thinking about how children in bus would react when they see me in this uniform. I was the only senior-most girl who travelled by this bus and a couple of tenth and eleventh graders who also took our bus boarded it after a couple of stops than mine.

As the bus pulled in around the corner as usual, my heart started to beat wildly. It was just like the first day at a new school.

I ushered Arkam towards the sidewalk and waved to Shama aunty who gave me a thumbs-up. As I got on to the bus, I saw children nudging each other and laughing as I passed them. Heads turned and gossiping girls stopped talking as I moved further towards the back of the bus, eager to reach my seat and slunk as low as possible on it. One plump girl with a round face, who was obviously the most well-mannered child on the bus, smiled at me and said “Happy Birthday to you!”

“O lord!” I thought to myself, “They all think I have worn this thing for my birthday!”

“It’s not my birthday!” I said coldly and loudly, so that everyone could hear, “IT’S THE NEW UNIFORM! For the senior girls.”

“Ohh..okay!” the plump girl said, taken aback, “ Its….ummm..nice!”

She looked as if she thought I had lost my senses and didn’t remember that this wasn’t the school uniform.

Thankfully , I reached my seat and sat at the window-side where usually Venky sat.

“You are looking nice!” he said, suppressing a smile.

“Yeah right!” I said waspishly, “ You can smirk . I hope they change the boys’ uniform too!”

“Yeah! I hope they change it to Pink and yellow saree ” he said, corner of his mouth twitching.

I tried to stop myself from smiling as I looked out of the window.

“Or to Dhoti and vest!” he said.

I pursed my lips to suppress the laughter which was bubbling in the pit of my stomach.  

“Or to Green ‘lehenga’!” he said, grinning.

This was too much for me. I burst out laughing so loudly that even conductor bhaiya stopped scratching his ear to look at me.

The vision of Venky, Avtar, Amitayu and Aniket in flowing green lehengas with diamond shaped glass-work on themwas too much for me to handle and I visualised them playing football wearing this attire, stopping every now and then to get their skirts out of their foot’s way to kick.    

“HAHAHHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHA!” I howled with laughter ,holding the stitch in my stomach and gasping for breath.

“Enough yaar!” Venky hissed at me, looking at children staring at us.

When finally my laughter had subsided and I was wiping tears away frm my cheeks, Venky laughed and said, “Don’t worry! You are looking nice!”

I smiled and punched him on the arm.

He was really a clown! Venky always knew how to say the right things to make people around him laugh. I loved having him as a friend. We found out that we could share much more with each other than I could with my girl-friends and when do boys ever share anything with each other other than sports and good-looking girls! But both of us talked at lengths about Rahul Dravid whom I loved, Maria Sharapova whom he loved, school talks, mentality of girls, mentality of boys,home-work,teachers,cookery and every topic available on the earth. He had even instructed me through making aloo-parathas over the phone some days back when I was struggling with the process, alone at home.

We could easily confide in each other our deep-most secrets and confessed that we both haven’t been fortunate enough to have a liking for anybody other than our favourite sport stars.

By the time bus passed through the gates of the school, I had stopped worrieng about the uniform and was eager to see my friends in this new attire too. As we disembarked from the bus, I saw Sakhi, Sonal, Pratishtha and Khushboo standing on the steps at  entrance of the main building. They were all in the new uniform. As I reached them and we checked each other out, we burst into heaps of laughter, pointing to each other and slapping each other on backs. How different we looked!  The foyer was filled with senior girls wearing the new uniform. Most looked sad about it like us and to our surprise, some looked happy about it!   

As we made our way towards the class, we again started complaining about the uniform change.

“Whyyyyyyy did they change iiiiiiiiiiit?” Sakshi whined.

“I want our old uniform back!” Sonal pouted as we all nodded.

“It was so much trendier….WHHOOPS!” Pratishtha ran into another girl on the crowded corridoor and their heads banged together.

It was Sarika, a bulky tenth grader with rosy cheeks and twinkling eyes. We liked Sarika a lot. She was a very sweet person with a great sense of humor. She was cheeky to the core and she was one of the junior students, we had a very good rapport with. She was forever struggling with her overweight problem and we felt bad for her when her classmates teased her and called her ‘fatty’! She was in the new uniform too.

“I am so sorry, Sarika!” Pratishtha  apologised, rubbing her head.

“No problem Didi!” Sarika said brightly, giving all of us a broad and welcoming smile.

“My! my!” I said,smiling at her “Isn’t somebody in a good mood today!”

Indeed Sarika was looking overjoyed. She was beaming and we had never seen her in such high spirits before.

“Of course, I am !” she said “ Don’t you just looove the new uniform?”

We all gaped at her and Sakshi looked as if she might just hit her.

“Love this thing?” Pratishtha asked, astonished. “Are you serious Sarika?”

“Ofcourse I am!” she replied, still grinning.

“What…how…WHAAT??” I stuttered.

“I know that all of you must like our old uniform better!” she said, lowering her eyes.

“Yaa-haa!” Sakshi shrieked.

“Well….” Sarika bit her bottom lip before going on “You …you all are THIN, aren’t you?? You are not fat like me! I hated it when girls in my class teased me about my bulky  figure. I didn’t want to play any outdoor games because I would be too self-conscious running around in jeans. I was always making excuses to miss the games period. But this, (she pointed to herself) makes me feel good! It’s loose and airy and comfortable! Now I can run around and play hockey just like all of you. I can stand for the assembly knowing that people standing behind me are not making fun of me and my back .I am sorry that you don’t like it but it’s the best thing that could have happened to me.”

And giving us a radiant smile, she bustled towards her class, calling out cheerful greetings to everybody around.

We all looked at each other and slowly began to smile. We had all been selfish and silly! This was a really nice thing to have happened to Sarika and all the girls who had felt self-conscious about their figures.

“It’s… ummm… nice, isn’t it? Sonal asked.

“Yes, it is!” Sakshi said, in a tiny voice.

“ITS GREEEEEEAT!” Pratishtha bellowed, as usual alarming us with her over-enthusiasm, “Come-on! We looove our new uniform!”

“Hear! Hear!” We shouted as we walked arm in arm towards our class.

Passerbys, students and teachers  glanced at us and looked on in confusion but we just smiled. Once in the class, we laughed at the boys’ comments on how we looked and told Mrs. Ghosh that indeed the new uniform was very nice.

There are little lessons hidden in everything that happens around us and we were glad to have learnt and grown with this small incident of our lives. It was okay really, the new uniform!   

The Sequence Box!"

“Relax Maaluuuu!! It will be fineee!” Sakshi scolded me and hit me on the back of my hand to stop me from biting my nails.

It had been three weeks since that fateful day of the Accounts test and it had, at last invigorated my commitment towards the subject. After getting a sound scolding from my mother on the same evening, I had tear-fully begged her to give me one last chance to improve at the subject before she sent me off to a tutor. She had finally agreed but had nevertheless made it clear that the next class-test would be the deciding factor. I had eagerly accepted!

Such low marks had shaken up my morale  pretty badly and I actually began to visualise myself failing the board exams whereas all my classmates passed with flying colours. After crying over the frightening and awful thought overnight, I dived head-first into the dreaded subject from the next day. First of all, I prepared a time-table for myself scheduling my time -division for each subject for all the days of the week. Just like my three friends, I began to  grant two hours to Accounts each day at home. At the commencement of my newly- started endeavour, I understood the extent till which I had foolishly ignored the subject and how I had a long, long way to catch up with the syllabus.  I began by going through the solved examples of each chapter, illustrated in our text-book and practicing them myself once I understood them. Whenever in doubt, I asked Sakshi to clarify it who I observed, seemed to be a natural whiz at the subject. Mrs bandi had more than once suggested to her to try for CA once she passes out from the school. Thus, Sakshi was a great help whenever I got stuck with a problem and slowly but positively, I was finally beginning to get a grip of the subject. I had also, at last started to pay my full attention to the matter which Mrs. Bandi taught in the class and once she was convinced that I was finally trying to improve in Accounts, she was pleased and encouraged me to approach her during free-periods for any kind of help needed.  I accepted to myself the fact that the written practice indeed makes a person good in subjects like Math and Accounts and I was determined to do well in the next test so as to avoid a tutor after school. By now, I had begun to perform satisfactorily at the class-assignments and home-work if not exceptionally well. But I awaited the next class-test as it would tell me (and my Mom!) where I really stand. So when Mrs. Bandi had given the date for the test, I had slogged myself for three days to prepare for it. I was relieved, if not ecstatic once it was over. It had gone  reasonably well this time and I was happy that I had given it my best effort. It had consisted of two questions from ‘Depreciation’, one from ‘Consignment’ and two question (one theory and one practical) from ‘Shares and Debentures’. As we had matched our answers after the test, I was delighted to find that one of my answers matched with Sakshi and another one with Sonaland I also knew that my theory question had turned out well.  We laughed at the fact that we all had a different figure for the answer of the consignment question. It indeed felt good that this time, I was eagerly participating in discussing the test rather than avoiding it as I had priorly done for a long time!

So today was the day we were supposed to get the results of our test and I had been a nervous wreck throughout the morning. All my friends had laughed at me at the recess-time when I hardly touched my food and Khushboo had checked my fore-head for temperature when I had not teased her once during our Literature class.  The bell for accounts class had just rung and we were in the same class where I had cried my eyes out after the last test.

Finally, mrs. Bandi walked into the class. She had the answer-sheets in her hand rolled and tied up and I realised that I was as excited as I was nervous about the marks.

“Stop it!!” Pratishtha hissed at me and I took out the tip of my finger, raw from chewing, out of my mouth.

“So girls! Ready for your marks?” Mrs Bandi asked, the corner of her mouth twitching as she glanced at me.

We nodded and I thought I would faint with nervousness when she began to pull up the scrunchie from the roll of answer-sheets.

“Sakshi, you have outdone yourself this time..24 and a half out of 25.” Mrs. Bandi said, handing out the answersheet. We all clapped and Sakshi pouted for losing half  a mark.

“Pratishtha, 23 out of 25…very very good! And sonal- 19 marks…you would have crossed Pratishtha  if you wouldn’t have got confused at the second last step of the Depreciation.”

Finally, she turned to me and I could guess nothing from her expression. I had thought that I had done quite well but now as I looked at Mrs. Bandi, I did not feel so sure. Maybe I had messed up all the questions after all!

 “Dear tutor!” I thought with  a grimace, “Here I come!”

“Mallika, can you guess how much marks have you scored?” Mrs. Bandi asked me.

“No ma’am!” I replied meekly.

“Well! Mallika has scored…” she said, turning to her other students.

I lowered my eyes and sank in my seat until I heard….

“18 AND A HALF OUT OF 25!” Mrs Bandi announced in a loud voice, smiling broadly at me.

It took half a minute for information to sink in my system and as my friends yelled- “MAAALUUU!”, I jumped up from my seat and began dancing all around the class.

“Nooo tutorr!” I sang, waltzing with Mrs. Bandi as she laughed, “Ahh sweet freedom!”

It did not bother me that I had still got the lowest marks as compared to my friends. I thought it was a good thing because if I would have crossed even one of them, I would have definitely had to be carried away to the hospital on stretcher after having passed out from plain shock!  

So when I reached home that evening and my sister opened the door,  I walked into the house with a trot of a king, with my head held high, my hands at my waist and my face-expression converted in a conceited smirk with my right eye-brow raised!

“Call Mother, you  slave of mine!” I bellowed at my sister, pointing my finger at my Mom’s room.

In answer to my command , she kicked me hard on my leg and stuck out her tongue.As I began to kick her back, Mom came out of the kitchen, with a spatula in her hand.

“What are you girls doing?” she asked, glaring at us.

At once, I regained my royal composure and thrust the answer-sheet (which I had carried in my hand all my way back from school) in her hand.

“I believe I would need your signatures on this, Mother!” I said, grinning at her down my nose.

She had a look at the paper which had been placed in her hand and her face immediately broke in a delighted smile as she came and hugged me.

“That’s my girl!” she said and it was a great to feel that her sweet and proud smile was all because of me, until she added- “Next time, I want even better marks than these!”

I rolled my eyes  and went into the kitchen to get myself a snack. After having worked hard for this test, today I was relieved that I had finally passed it and had done well. I was determined to maintain my new graph in Accounts but for a couple of days as a reward, I could relax and enjoy!

All was well again!

..........................

“I am bored!!” I said , stretching.

It was almost end of September and the wind was gradually turning quite chilly, especially in the mornings and evenings! It was our free-period before the recess and Sakshi and I were sitting on a single bench right outside the entrance of the main building. Today, we had moved it a bit to the right so that we could sit and imbibe the warm, pleasant morning sunlight. We were sitting and admiring Sonal’s new sequence box which she had left in our possession for this period. Sequence may be defined as the small glittery little things which are nowdays  used in abundance to decorate the dresses. Sonal, Sakshi and Pratishtha used them a lot in their Fashion Designing class and had also started using them on the greeting cards which they prepared for occasions like b’days and friendship days etc. So, Sonal had ,the previous day, purchased a large plastic box which had sixteen compartments each of which was now respectively  filled with sequences of several different varieties. She had shown it to us and we had ‘ooh-ed’ and ‘aah-ed’ over the neat and organised way by which she had arranged her sequences in the box  in accordance to their colour, shape and size. Currently,  she was in the library to do some research for her fashion-designing project which was due for submission in two days.

“I’m boooored!” I repeated while I tapped the lid of the closed box rest-lessly with my fingers.

“Tell me on which song should I perform a special dance to entertain you!” Sakshi snapped as she took the box from my hands to stop the racket I was creating.

I began to flex  my arms to get some exercise until a small figure came out of the building,clutching lots of books and  passed us without even noticing we were there. It was Mrs. Sharma, a frail and thin lady teacher who took the subjects ‘Hindi’ and ‘Sanskrit’ in the junior classes. She seemed to be carrieng around 50 notebooks in her bony hands and was walking very slowly so as to avoid losing her balance. Sakshi and I smirked at each other and getting to our feet, tip-toed slowly towards her until we were walking right behind her.

“On the count of three!” I whispered to Sakshi and she nodded, “One…Twoo..Threee!!”

“SUUUPRABHAAT!!” Both of us shouted at the top of our lungs and jumped back as Mrs. Sharma let out a scream- “EEEEEEEEEEEEKKKKSSS!” and promptly  dropped all the books at her feet.

We burst into laughter and slapped our hands in a high-five, doubling over with hands on our stomachs.  After getting over the initial shock, Mrs. Sharma joined in.

“You girls!!” she exclaimed with a twinkle in her eyes as we helped her gather the scattered notebooks.

We had long since christened Mrs. Sharma as “Suprabhat” as she always replied to our good-mornings with this word, encouraging children to use Hindi language in their day to day talk too. Eventhough she had never taught our class, she was a good sport and always mingled and laughed around with us.  

“Wasn’t that fun?” I asked Sakshi, as we made our way back towards the waiting, lonesome bench.

“I know!” she replied, sitting on the bench “Mrs. Sharma is such a delicate, little thing. She scares easy. I bet I wudn’t have dropped the books had I been in her place.”

“Tell me about it!” I said, still standing and playfully shifting Sonal’s sequence box from one hand to another. “How dificult it is to hold OOOOOOOOOOONNNNNN……”

I fell heavily on the hard, uneven concrete floor as a running fifth-grader banged hard into me on his way to the play-ground. Sonal’s beautifully organised box left my hands and after taking a big leap into the sky, fell with a thrash onto the floor on my right , its colour-ful contents strewn all around and all over me!

Covered from head to toe in glitter, I looked up at Sakshi’s face. She had her hands cupped on her mouth identical to those of Sushmita Sen when she had been crowned Miss World. The thought would have been funny in any other situation but now, looking at each other, we waited for hell to break loose.

“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” Both of us shrieked at each other, coming to our senses at the same time.

The sequence which Sonal must have taken hours to organise carefully in different compartments according to their shapes, were now lieng scattered on the ground. The whole heap now consisted of a uniform colour, that like a cocktail prepared with all the various available flavours, chocolate being signified by dirt and tiny pebbles.   

“MMAAAAALUUUUUU!” Sakshi shouted, shaking me hard, “What are we going to doooo! Sonal will kill both of us!”  

“Relax!” I said, wishing I would feel the same confidence as I was commanding Sakshi to have. “ There are still ten minutes left. Let us try to separate the sequence. Maybe we can manage to do it before the bell for the next class rings.”

As there was no other alternative to our crisis, we started to separate the tiny, little, monstorous things accourding to their colour and size.

It was impossible! As impossible as finding a needle in a hay-stack. As impossible as Mrs. Ghosh singing a hindi song. All the sequence had mixed with each other in such a way that even if we  tried for 10 hours, we would achieve little out of it.  Still we kept on at our task, praying for a miracle to happen somehow.

“TTTTTTRRRRRRRRRRRRRIIIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNNNG!”

The bell for the next class rang leeringly all around us. Sakshi and I looked at each other and instantly, began to pick handsful of fallen sequence in our fists, (dirt and all!) and started throwing them into the box. We paid little attention to the  students starting to come out of their respective classes, who leaned to see across our bent backs in a puzzled manner before heading to the next building.

Half an hour later saw Sakshi and myself sitting in the last row of the class. We had a double lesson with Mrs. Ghosh and today we were listening to her with such rapt attention that she herself was becoming more and more suspicious of us with every passing minute. Pratishtha and Sonal who were sitting on our either sides were occasionaly stealing glances at us, but we looked straight ahead, our heart-beat still not running at a normal pace . We had managed to put most of the scattered sequences in the boxes beforre Sonal returned from the library and in order to avoid confronting her, we had ran towards the class-room at a record-breaking speed, bumping into many people and shouting hurried apologies over our backs.  Thankfully, by the time Sonal and Pratishtha had arrived at the class, Mrs. Ghosh had already started the lesson. So, now here we were, sitting quietly at the back of the class with angelic expressions on our faces, Sonal’s Sequence box, tactfully hidden in the cubby-hole between the two of us.

The rest of the day passed slowly and Sakshi and I stuck to each other till the last bell rang. Sonal and Pratishtha had repeatedly asked us what we were upto but we just laughed and waved our hands in dismissal and avoided all their questions. We sighed in relief when the last bell of the day rang and Shoved the sequence box back in Sonal’s bag and zipped it before rushing to our respective school buses.

“Both of you have been upto something today, havent you?” Venky asked me as I flopped down beside him on the bus-seat.

“Rubbish!” I snapped at him, “Sakshi and I havent been upto anything!”

“Who said anything about Sakshi?” he grinned at me.

A Valuable Lesson!

Bang on the first day of September, I got a nasty blow which shook me from head to toe!

“Well done Sakshi! You have again received the highest marks – 22 out of 25.  ” Mrs. Bandi said, who was handing out the corrected answer-sheets of the Accounts  test which she had taken last week.

“Pratishtha, 18 out of 25 and Sonal, 17 and a half out of 25” she said , handing out their corrected sheets and smiling at them, “Not bad at all! I can see both you girls are putting good effort at the subject now.”

I was sitting at the far end of the desk and now, hearing the marks my friends had achieved at the test, my eyes lowered and I slunk further in my chair thinking of my soon-to be announced marks.

 Okay, so I was not really working as hard in accounts as my friends were.  The only time I half-heartedly  practised it, was during 45- minute single free-period everyday which my three friends had jointly alloted to the subject so that we could study it together and help each other. The three of them had also vowed to give Accounts two hours at home everyday without any break as it was the most tricky and scoring of all the other subjects. I knew that it was high time I tackled the bull by horns and start working on it seriously but till now I had not paid much attention to warnings by Mrs. Bandi or my Mom or my friends.

“ How bad can it be!” I thought everytime I heard the reproaches, “Board exams are still far far away and there are theoritical questions in exams too. I am good at theory, am I not? I can always scrape good marks in them. So there’s pleeeeenty of time to work on the practical portion!”

But now, as Mrs. Bandi was soon going to announce my marks for this test, I didn’t feel so sure of myself and my heart was beating thunderously against my chest . The devil who had been feeding me excuses to lay off studieng, had long since vanished from my shoulder.

“Fine!” , I thought to myself, “So what if Pratishtha and Sonal have done well ? I would have managed at least 8 out of 25, which is the passing mark.”

“Mallika!” Mrs Bandi said, turning to look at me with narrowed eyes and a disappointing frown on her otherwise ever-smiling face, “Can you guess how many marks have you scored?

“No ma’am!” I said in a meek voice, hardly daring to look up at her.

“You have received 6 and a half out of 25,” she said, “and I have not been strict in marking this time. Any other examiner would have hardly given you three.”

Sakshi, Sonal and Pratishtha stopped scrutinising their answer sheets to look sideways at me.

Mrs. Bandi shook her head and wordlessly slided my answer-sheet towards me.

My copy was full of  large ‘cross’ signs in red ink which Mrs. Bandi had scrawled right on top of my each attempted answer.  I had not got a single answer correct as they had all been practical ones. It seemed that Mrs. Bandi  had taken pity at me and given me a few marks for the primary steps of each question. My vision became obscured as tears filled my eyes.

I need signatures from your parents on these by tommorow .” she said ,turning her head towards her other three students “I need to submit these in Mrs. Bhan’s office to show the progress you all are making. All teachers have been asked to do this for their respective subjects.” 

My  mother’s smiling face swam in front of my eyes and immediately, tears began to slide down my cheeks.

“Come on!” Mrs Bandi said, opening her copy of the accounts text-book “We are going to start ‘Depreciation’ today.”

As I began slowly hiccuping, I could sense from the corner of my eye that Pratishtha was the first one to notice me crying . She gestured to the other two, each of whom glanced in my direction to look at me. 

As Mrs Bandi finally followed their gaze and saw me crying, she stood up from her chair and came to stand in front of me.

“What use is there in crying now Mallika!” she said, her voice stern and disapproving, “I have been repeatedly telling you to start taking Accounts seriously and you have been ignoring my warnings. You have a long way to catch up with your friends. Look how hard Sonal and Pratishtha are working and they have really improved a lot by practising seriously. You are the only one who has not made a single effort to improve. I am giving you a final warning now. If you don’t start taking your studies seriously soon, it will be difficult for you to pass the Board exams. Now go, wash you face and come!” saying this she turned to the black board and began to write the heading of the new chapter on it with chalk.

I slowly got up and stepped out of the class-room. I had always known in my heart that I should have started taking Accounts seriously since the beginning of the session. I had avoided everybody’s warnings and I knew that I deserved all that had happened with me in the class today. I turned on the tap in the washroom and splashed cold water on my face. The only thought which was going on in my mind was  “I wish I had listened to everyone” .

After wiping my face, I slowly made my way towards the class-room. Mrs. Bandi was dictating the definition of Depreciation and Sonal, Sakshi and Pratishtha were noting it down in their notebooks. They all briefly glanced at me as I entered the room and silently, continued working. It seemed as if I was not even present in the room.

“I deserve it!” I thought to myself as I took out my notebook from my bag and began to write.


 “Your nose is red!! You have been crying Rudolph” Venky said, coming to sit besides me on the long bench, “What happened?”.

 We were in the dining room and it was lunch time.  After the Accounts period, I had kept to myself and my three friends, probably at a loss to say anything had said nothing to me since I had cried. It had been painful to listen to them excitedly discuss their good marks and the test questions with each other as we had walked out of the  class and  I had quietly walked behind them hugging my books to my chest, my head lowered  and struggling not to cry again. 

Todays lunch was probably one of Captain Shekhawat’s best creations! Students were happily devouring hot, small tringular ‘methi ke parathe’ with bowls of steaming  potato and peas curry.
But I could hardly make myself touch my food and I kept on chanting in my mind “I deserve it! I deserve it all!”.   

“Nothing!” I replied, turning my face in the other direction.

“That’s not true!” Sonal said , coming to sit on my other side and setting down her plate of food near mine. Putting an arm over my shoulder, she said to Venky, “She has not fared well at the Accounts test and she has been crying her eyes out since last 2 classes.

“Thankyou!” I muttered sarcastically as Sakshi and Pratishtha arrived with their plates and sat right across the table to face me.

“Whhhaaat??” I yelled moodily at all of them, wanting them to just leave me alone.

“You have cried enough!” Sakshi replied crossly in the same level of volume as mine, “ I think its good that you have got this lesson today. It’s time you start giving our Board studies some serious hard work.”

They all nodded and as I continued sulking, Pratishtha stood up and gave me a whack on the head across the broad dining table.

“Enough Maalu!” she said, frowning fiercely “You will do well in the next test if you are really feeling so bad! Apologise to Aunty and Mrs. Bandi and promise that you will start studieng very very hard from now on. You are good in all the theoritical subjects. If you pull up your socks in Accounts in time, you can fare quite well.”

“She has had a bad day!” Sonal said softly, stroking my head. “It will be fine Maalu. Don’t worry!”

Comforting words from my friends lightened my mood instantly and I nodded and smiled gratefully at them.

“Its okay yaar!” Venky said, patting my head, “If you score well in half-yearly exams in December, nobody will even remember these tests. I have same plight in Physics.”

I resolved inwardly to start working very hard from that day on itself and vowed to promise the same to Mom in the evening.

“Errr…. Maalu!!” Avtar ,who was sitting near Sakshi, said, standing on his place and leaning towards me across the table.

“Such thoughtful friends I have !” I thought. Surely Avtar must have heard everything and was wanting to offer his consolance. I leaned towards him with a smile to listen to his supportive advise….

“If you are not eating your methi parathas, may I have them? There are none left anywhere else on our table!” he asked, grinning sheepishly.