"More Characters!"

As the bus entered the gates of the school, I heard the first bell of the day ringing, instructing the students to get back to their respective classes before assembly. Vyankatesh and I disembarked from the bus along with the other children and made our way to our class room. As we entered the main building, we passed a short, thin man in a green uniform with oiled hair,a thin moustache and a broad grin, carrying a load of heavy books. “Good morning Gopal Bhaiya!” I greeted him, “What work are you completing early in the morning today?”. In my opinion, Gopal bhaiya was the lucky mascot of our school . I had always believed that he was the busiest person in Pride! He had been there since the day it had been born and everyone, be it teachers, students or the headmistress herself, was hugely dependent on him! He was in charge of photocopying the worksheets for teachers, for giving medicine to the ill students, for arranging Mrs. Bhan’s office and bringing her tea, for ringing the bell after every class, for taking the memos from one class to another, for monitoring the other didis and bhaiyas and a million of such daily chores. He completed all of them to perfection  and always with a warm smile ! He was the most polite and soft-spoken person you could ever meet and was adored by everyone at Pride.

 “Good morning jee!” he replied, “I am on my way to library to put these new books on the shelf after which I shall go and ring the bell for the assembly. You all should go to your classes quickly or you will miss the attendance. Jaaiye, jaldi jaaiye( go quickly!)”

 As we turned towards the corridor, I heard my name being called from behind “Maaaaaaaaaaluuu!!!” I turned to see Sonal and Sakshi trotting towards me. Vyankatesh proceeded towards the classroom as I stopped walking and waited for my friends to join me. “Hii!” I said, “Where’s Pratishtha?”

 “She is just coming,”  Sakshi answered, looking over at her reflection on the glass door of one of the classes and fixing her hair, “She is getting her hair plaited by Sunita didi. She woke up late today as usual!” We reached the classroom and pushed the door, only to find it locked from inside. “ Oh  no!  Not that stupid password thing again! ” Sonal said, rolling her eyes. Inside, Aniket came rushing to the door and with a broad grin said “Password please!” He was a very tall, lanky boy with a deep voice and a very spontaneous sense of humour. He could mimic all the teachers, students and television personalities. He and a couple of other silly boys had invented this ritual of entering the class by saying a  password which, by the way was to be changed every week. Funny as it had seemed in the beginning, it was now getting on our nerves.

 “Raul Gonzalez  Blanko!” we said in unison, in most bored voices.

“Well done girls!” he said.

 “Yeah Yeah, we are absolutely proud of ourselves!” I muttered sarcastically. As we proceeded towards our desk,, we heard a commotion at the back of the class. Before even turning round, I knew it could be none other than Avtar and Amitayu.  Avtar was the boy who fitted the description of Harry Potter to the last hair, with his round spectacles and untidy mass of hair. He was a great football fan and talked only about the teams and jerseys and the star football players. His favourite pastime was teasing the girls and singing funny, outdated songs which made everyone laugh. Amitayu was a different matter altogether. When I had first arrived at the school, it had taken me at least six months to interact with him. He had been one of those kind of boys who do not make friends  with girls and are usually confined with the men-folk. But as time  passed, we had started talking to each other and I had found that despite his tough exterior, on the inside, he was an extremely sweet and caring person. The only scary thing about Amitayu was his temper! If ever he flared up,he was like an angry bull, with red eyes and uncontrollable behaviour. We constantly advised him about anger management but that was one thing which he thought was beyond him. At this particular moment, he was thrashing around the tables and chairs in mock violence and Avtar was covering him with an imaginary camera made up of his rolled up right-hand and  the circled palm of the left-hand being the lens!  “Yes, ladies and gentlemen, please pay attention. This species can be very very destructive and dangerous! It is seldom found in other parts of the world but we have managed to capture one just for you to seeeeeee!”

“Give me a break!” I said, turning back to my desk.

“Have a Kit-Kat!”,Pratishtha’s voice could be heard as she entered the class, her hair plastered in a tight plait.

“Hee Hee! Wow Pratishtha!” Sakshi  giggled, “Don’t you look smashing!”

“Arrey! Sunita didi plaited it too tightly, “she said, pulling at the end of her braid. Sunita didi was a shy, very dear maid who assisted Gopal Bhaiya in his chores. “What do you know, its hurting also! I say that’s one hell of a Discovery channel going on at the back of our class!”

We settled down at our desks and waited for Mrs Ghosh, our class teacher to arrive. “Hey fatso!” I  jumped and squealed at loud exclaimation near my ear. I picked up the class duster and threw it at Avtar.

“What??” I shouted at him.

“...Be good fatso! Otherwise you are not going to get this from me.” I looked at his hand to see what he was holding up. It was a cold-drink cap with the Indian cricketer- Rahul Dravid’s picture inside it. “Eeeeeeeeee!!” I jumped up and shouted “Gimme, gimme gimme gimmeeeeeeeeeee!” Laughing, he flung it at me and took his seat just as Mrs. Ghosh entered the class and closed the door. We had been assigned just one class teacher after the previous year when more than half of our class had moved to various other schools. When our senior batch had reached class tenth i.e the year of the board exams, there had been some delay in the allotment of affiliation to Pride. Some people were anxious by this happening, but Pride was soon granted ICSE Board and our board year went off very smoothly and well .

However, After the ICSE year, many students left for different schools, leaving a total of nine boys and girls in the class 11th. Even-though the strength of our class had diminished rather dramatically , we bonded well and had a lot of fun. The boys- Avtar, Amitayu, Vyankatesh and Aniket had chosen the science stream. Four of the five  girls, Sonal, Sakshi, Pratishtha and I , were in the commerce stream. Our ninth classmate, Khushboo,  was the sole taker of the Arts stream. English language  was compulsory for everyone and was taught by Mrs. Ghosh. At first it seemed weird when just nine of us were left in our class, but we slowly adjusted and then became very comfortable in our smaller  group! We were the only batch having such a low strength. Classes junior to us all had a good average strength of 25-30 students!

"PART-2"

                                           PART- 2

“ Maa!! I am leaving!!” I shouted from the doorway, swinging my bag over my shoulder and stuffing the left-over stack of toast in my mouth, as I ran down the stairs of my multi-storeyed building towards my bus-stop!

 “ Have you taken the house-keyyyyyys??? I have a meeting in school, today,” my mom shouted after me from our balcony. I shouted back in the affirmative and proceeded towards the crossroads at the end of our street where my bus would soon arrive to pick me up! Shama  Aunty was already standing on the stop with both her boys. I had settled down well in Pride after the first few months. To my delight, as I had anticipated, all the popular girls had befriended me and I had soon, very comfortably moulded myself as one of their number. Today, I was a confident, smart and a blooming eleventh grader and the past three years at Pride had been like a dream!

 I had come to love my school more and more with each passing day and felt that I was meant to be at this place more than anywhere else. It was a model school! The kind you read about in books, but in reality such schools don’t exist. The teachers were just like your friends. They conversed with the students ,not as strict and distant members of the faculty, but in the midst of piles of laughter, sitting on the front desk before Assembly, sometimes even asking if anybody had a spare piece of candy which they could enjoy after classes! The workers like the maids and bus conductors had strictly to be addressed as ‘didis’ and ‘bhaiyas’.  I soon learnt to exchange with them the same respectful greetings which we were expected to share with the teachers.

Pride was  a large, warm, happy family where everyone was equal and close to each other and of which I had also become a proud and prominent member! I had three very special best-friends too. Sonal-  a loving, helpful girl with long hair and hazel eyes. We had started calling Sonal “ mumma” because she was always so caring and homely by nature, taking care of us and fussing over us all like a mother. We used to tease her that she would be a perfect wife someday as she was flawless in all the house-hold chores like cooking and tidying up. Another one was Sakshi – a sweet looking, extremely fair girl with a gentle voice who was basically an introvert. Shy around most people,  with  us, her close ones, she would be a mischievous prankster! And lastly was Pratishtha, who had initially seemed extremely bossy and snobbish but once I got to know her well, I realized that she was harmless! In fact she was one of those people who unintentionally make people laugh with their entertaining remarks. Pratishtha was a jovial soul who could be as absent-minded and forgetful at times as she could be brainy and smart. She was not at all ladylike , rather she was rough and tough and tom boyish in her mannerisms! All in all, I made these three great friends and our rapport with the rest of the class was good as well! Thus, our so called ‘gang’ was popular and liked and cool  and we had great fun at school!

“Hi Shama Aunty, Good morning! Hi Arkam! Hiiiii Shhufeeee!” I said, cuddling Shama aunty’s young toddler, as I arrived at the bus-stop and placed my heavy bag on the tiled pavement by the road. I had befriended Shama Aunty in the tenth grade when she had started coming to the bus-stop to drop off her elder son Arkam.

Shama aunty was a beautiful lady who was  just twenty-seven! She was born and brought up in USA ,had married early and shifted to India with her husband. She was always dressed in a black burkha and had the prettiest and most charming face with lovely features. She spoke English with a heavy American accent, but her Hindi was also fluent and delightful to hear! She had two sons- Arkam, the elder one who was a shy, chubby boy with spiky hair. He had joined class 4th in the senior school the previous year and his very cute younger brother Sufiyaan looked just like a fluffy bunny rabbit! I had found a great friend in Shama Aunty as the age difference between us was not very vast and had also visited her place many times in the evenings for long, fun chat sessions. Today she was fidgeting with the zipper of Arkam’s school bag and turned to smile at me as she finally finished her task.

 “Hi  Mallika! I thought you weren’t gonna come today. I was just about to send Arkam to ask.”

 “Naah! Just got a little late,” I said, “ Wouldn’t want to miss school . I had never imagined that someone can actually like their school, but to my surprise I just love mine! By the way, I saw you and Arkam near Anand Bazaar yesterday!”

 “Yeah!” she said, “ I had taken him to see the doctor. He has a touch of cold.  Oh! Here comes your bus now! Maybe you can come over to our place in the evening. I am trying a new chicken recipe today and i know how you love non-veg.  Arkam don’t run beta!”

I promised Shama aunty that I would be there and picking up the school bag, ushered Arkam towards the edge of the road. We both waved bye to Shama Aunty and Sufiyan and hopped onto the huge yellow bus! I was the only Eleventh grader who took the bus on this route so I usually chose to sit alone on a back seat, but today as I advanced towards the back of the bus, I saw Vyankatesh too onboard. He was a dusky, lanky boy from my class and was sitting on an empty seat, with a gigantic blue bag on his lap. He was chewing gum as usual, gazing out of the window. He was known all over the school for his wit and great sense of humor!

 “Hi Vyankatesh!” I exclaimed, plopping onto the empty seat besides him, “How come you are travelling by this bus today? Missed your usual bus?”

 “No no!” he answered, “ We have shifted to a new locality in Anup Nagar. I will be taking this route from now on!?”

“ Great!” I exclaimed, “ So missing Arshad?” I asked, referring to his best friend of many years who had recently moved to Canada.

“Verrrrrry!” The forty-five minute journey to school passed well with Vyankatesh keeping me company. We had interacted in the class numerous times with everyone else but it had always been casual one line exchanges like “Pass the ball!” during the mixed sports sessions, or arguing about the subject in the class group discussion but today, we really talked at length to each other for the first time and we had good fun laughing together at the stories Vyankatesh told me about the science- whiz Arshad’s cockroach collection!