REBELS.

Adolescence is a chaotic phase of life.

Tantrums and mood swings and cheek and rebellion is, in my opinion far from being called cute . Neither party is happy. Teens are unhappy about almost everything and parents are unhappy because of the teens, period.

Mrs. Bhan’s departure was a time of supreme turmoil for us. We were angry and sad and confused and scared. This was a massive adjustment to make in our carefree young lives and we could not absorb it at all. “We” being- the girls!

On a slightly different topic-

Males’ way of bonding or “Bromance” as it is nowdays called, simply fascinates me. Think about it..

They may call each other all sorts of filthy,offensive swear names in the world but how they manage to not take it personally I cannot imagine. They hardly fight:  simply because they hardly talk in such detail.They’d rather play PsP for hours!  If they are unhappy, they let out their steam by packing a punch and are pally the next hour. Discussion is not a regular term in their dictionary.

The beauty of it is that how completely oblivious they are of their friendship. No “Best buds” or “ Friends forever” or “Awesome foursome” for the boys. For them, it’s merely having fun with the people you hang out with on daily basis. If they are happy, they don’t gush. If they are sad, they grimace…and then they move on in both the cases respectively. I am not advocating their way of bonding and let me assure you, I love the companionship I have with my girlfriends.. but let’s admit it, in some cases this sort of approach may help things a great deal.

Talking about us women ….we are a bit different than that, and if we speak about the teenage girls??  KA-BOOOOOM!

Me and my gal-pals went on for hours over the phone droning about the new Pride. We were convinced that it would be sheer disloyalty towards Mrs. Bhan to even consider accepting the new person in her place. My mom made me hang up the phone and lectured about accepting the changes that come in life with good grace. I sulked till dinnertime.

“Look!” Venky said to me , next day in the bus“ Even I am sad that Mrs. Bhan left but didn’t she say that her grandchildren need her. She wants to be with her family, what’s wrong with that? Makes sense, doesn’t it?”

“Puuuuhleeeeeeeease”  I retorted with narrowed eyes “One- you don’t look sad at all and twoooo- You are so naive. Don’t you know that she said that to us because  she had to tell us something atleast . She doesn’t mean it! There must be some other reason I am sure which she was unable to share with us. Think about it!”

“You watch too much soap operas on tv, is what I think!” he muttered.

As we crossed Mrs. Bhan’s office, we saw Mrs. Ghosh hurrieng down the banister  struggling with a heavy carton in her hands. She stopped every few steps to adjust her pretty jade green sari pallu over her shoulder.

 I ran towards her and immediately blurted out fearfully “ Are u leaving too?”

She blinked and then smiled gently “ No silly!’ she said “ I am just taking my things to.. ah, “ she hesitated “ Mrs. Bhan’s office. I have been made the vice-principal of the school.

I let out a breath of relief and after congratulating her,proceeded towards my class as Venky stopped to help Mrs Ghosh with her things.

Sakshi, Pratishtha and Khushboo were sitting at the front desk somberly whereas Avtar, Aniket and Amitayu were playing ball with balled up hankerchiefs as usual.

“ You guys are so heartless!” I snapped “ Don’t have feelings at all!”

“ Shut uuuuup!” Avtar said lazily “ What do you want us to do. It’s happened, get over it. There must be a good reason why Mrs Bhan had to leave. We will write to her and meet her again soon but please just get normal, you girls.”

Without answering I went over to the girls and were soon joined by Sonal who looked grim as well.

Mrs Ghosh came over for the attendance and she looked a bit flushed as it was her first day as a VP. We did not know if we were curious to go to the assembly or dreading it but soon we found ourselves standing outside in the verandah for the assembly, looking at our new head-master.

He had a pretty striking personality, that we couldn’t deny. He was in mid fifties and was easily over six feet in height. He had peppered wavy hair,light eyes and a  breezy smile . He was dressed impeccably in a crist navy blue blazer over a white shirt and khaki pants and beamed at all of us as he came forward to address the assembly for the first time after the hymn.

“ Helloooo!” he said “ My name is Mr. Arun K. Verma and as you may have guessed, I am your new headmaster..”

The teachers smiled encouragingly at their respective classes but the students just stared apprehensively at this newcomer, silently checking him out.

“ I know it is overwhelming for everybody that your headmistress had to leave on such short notice and I am sure you are missing her a lot”  he continued “ but I am sure that you and I would be able to be become good friends very very soon as well.There are going to be some tiny changes in the school schedule and the way things would be run but over all Pride would be the same joyful place that it has always been and which has been loved by all of you all these years. ”

Mrs Ghosh stepped forward and said “ Let us all give him a round of applause children.”

There was some lazy clapping.

“ He has an impressive background record”  Sakshi said as we filed out of the foryer towards our class “Mrs David was telling that to one of the teachers .”

“Whatever!” Pratishtha said,shrugging .

The new day began and ironically my first class of the day was English Literature with Khushboo.

“ Who do you think would be taking our class?” Khushboo inquired.

“Dunno!” I said, as we proceeded towards the library where Mrs. Ghosh had told us to go (we used to have our class in Mrs. Bhan’s office when she used to take them)  “but whoever it is, it’s gonna be pretty tough to fill Mrs. Bhan’s shoes.”

The library was empty except for Mr. Rajesh and Ms Payal, a cheerful young teacher in her early twenties who taught junior classes. I grinned at Mr. Rajesh and he narrowed his eyes at me in warning to behave.

“It’s so much fun to mess with him” I chortled.

As we began to take our seats to wait for the new teacher, Ms Payal looked up and smiling,waved at us.

“Yoohoo! Khushboo and mallika!” she called out “Over here.”

Raising our eyes at each other, we made our way towards her. Really? Ms payal? She was a junior teacher. English literature was my favourite subject and my heart sank as I thought of the fun lessons we had with Mrs Bhan.

“Goodmorning!” she said with a broad smile “ I will be taking your literature classes and I thought today, you guys should just get me acquainted with your syllabus and the method by which Mrs. Bhan taught you during her lesson.”

“Okay!” we said quietly.

We spent the next half hour explaining how much syllabus we had covered and how we read each lesson aloud while underlining the difficult words as we came across them. We looked them up in the library or at home and discussed the meanings with Mrs. Bhan  during the next lesson. Also, how Mrs. Bhan used to explain each chapter in detail to us and then gave us different assignments be it research, essay writing or the character-sketches based on the contents of the chapter.

Ms payal was pleasant and friendly. She had attended a few of our English lessons in the past with Mrs Bhan and Mrs Ghosh but we had never interacted much with her. Today we had a good time with her and it wasn’t as difficult to face as much I had imagined it would be. She went over our earlier assignments and marvelled at how advanced the level of assignments was. We were covering three books simuntaneously- The Heavens’ lake by Vikram seth, Tess of the Durbevilles by Thomas Hardy and The Tale of two cities by Charles Dickens. Ms Payal decided to take up Tess of the Durbevilles first and we were to read the next chapter once by ourselves before our next class.

“ She’s nice!” Khushboo said, as we made our way to the class. I could not disagree to that and kept quiet.

The rest of the day passed of at the regular pace. Maybe we had envisioned that the  school would seem drastically different now that Mrs bhan wasn’t here but that was not the case. Even though, there was not one moment when we didn’t remember Mrs Bhan that first day, it was not as horrid  as we had thought. It felt almost the same.

Sonal, Sakshi, Prati and I had double lessons with Mrs David after the recess and she could not be cajoled into giving one as free.

“Pleeease ma’am!” we chorused.

“NO!” she cried “ This is your Board year and it’s my responsibility that your syllabus gets completed in time. We have lots to cover and I am not going to give away whole periods away any more. Last fifteen minutes maybe if you girls behave.”

Giving up on the hope, we opened our Commerce notebooks and Mrs. David began reciting notes for us to write. By the end of the second lesson, we were mentally exhausted (and sleepy!) of all the complex profit-making knowledge.

We then had a class with Mrs Ghosh and with Mrs Bandi each and we knew better than to ask them both for a free period. We hated Monday for the obvious reasons but moreso this year, as the timetable consisted of all the heavy subjects in one day.

Lunch time was a relief and after bidding goodbye to Mrs Bandi (she was a visiting faculty) the four of us headed towards the lunch room.

“Hope there’s something good for lunch today!” Sakshi commented, stiffling a yawn.

“Maybe Rajma or Idli-sambhar!” I said.

We reached our table and joined the boys who had arrived before us. We flopped down on the bench and I heard Pratishtha groan just as I spotted the infamous “pizzas” in the bowl.

“No no no noooo!” she moaned.

“Doesn’t it always happen?” Sonal cried “ whenever we are hoping or looking forward to something good happening, complete opposite happens!”

“ I am damn hungry today but I don’t want to eat this!” I said, annoyed.

“You know” Sakshi whispered “let us not!”

We decided to not eat a morsel of the pizza and sat with our hands folded and our plates clean as the lunch hall around us buzzed of happy voices and clattering utensils.

“What are you all upto now?”Amitayu inquired as Avtar cheerfully gobbled pizzas after pizzas. 

They were thick uneven bases covered with cabbages and capsicum and peas.We turned our faces everytime the bowls passed across us. These pizzas were probably the only item we disliked at our school. Rest of the dishes were always delicious.

“Hunger strike?” Aniket snorted “ As if anybody is going to care.”

Eventually the whole lunch hall emptied around us till the four of us were the only ones left at the table. Khushboo had eaten with her psychology teacher at her table whilst discussing something about their upcoming lesson.

“What’s the matter?” Captain Shekhawat strode over to us.

“We want something else to eat and we won’t leave until you give us something sir.” Pratishtha said fearlessly.

“Why didn’t you have your lunch.” He asked.

“ We don’t like ..uh..pizzas” I said, my head bowed so that I won't have to look at his face.

“We want something else!” Sonal repeated.

Without saying a word Captain Shekhawat strode out of the lunch hall leaving a bunch of puzzled didis hovering around us like bees.

He returned a some time later with Mrs. Ghosh who bustled over to us with a wary expression on her face.

“ GIRLS!” she demanded “ Whats going on? Stop this childhish tantrum right now and go to your class.

“Ma’am, we are really hungry” I said “ We want something good to eat otherwise we are not budging.”

“See girls” she said weakly “I know you all are feeling overwhelmed ever since Mrs Bhan left but this sort of behavior is just not accepted. You are the seniormost students. Everybody had the same food and you are the only ones complaining. That’s not right.Now,come on get up this instant!”

We did not move an inch until we heard a pleasant voice behind us.

“What’s going on here?”

We turned and saw our new headmaster stroding towards us . Obviously, Captain Shekhawat had told about this unwelcome incident in his lunch room to him as well.

To our horror, he sat down at the bench along with us and smiled as if we all were here for a game of poker.

“Captain Shekhwat” he said to the head-cook “ Even I haven’t had my lunch yet. Could you please give me a plate and we could all have lunch together. I hope Mrs. Ghosh wouldn’t mind telling the concerned teacher that the girls would be a tad bit late for the lesson.”

“It’s Ok sir!” Mrs ghosh replied, her lip twitching “I thinking it is their free period.”

Suppressing a laugh, she went out of the lunch room just as didi put a plate in front of Mr. Verma and served us all pizzas.

He was sitting right besides me and I was literally shivering a little. We all avoided each others’ eyes and shoved food in our mouths as quickly as possible, all stubborness forgotten. When Pratishtha coughed due to eating too fast, Mr. Verma silently handed her a glass of water. It was turning out to be the longest half an hour of our lives.

“There!” he said cheerfully, wiping the corner of his mouth with his tissue “I think we are all done. What a lovely lunch it was, isnt it girls? Thank Captain Shekhawat please.”

We all mumbled thankyou to Cpt. Shekhawat who faintly scowled at us in return but accepted the thanks nevertheless.

“Now run along! See you tomorrow.”

We hurried and ran out lest we end up walking out the lunchroom with Mr. Verma. and didn’t stop till we reached the class.

“Whose stupid idea was that?” I snarled as we banged opened the door and stormed inside.

The boys who had a free period as well broke into the heaps of laughter when they saw us. Khushboo had a psychology class and was blissfully unaware of our fiasco.

“How was the lunch date?” Avtar asked grinning and ducked as Sonal threw the duster at him “Mrs Ghosh told us you are dining with Mr. Verma. What did you have? Caviar?”

“It was sooo embarassing!” Pratishtha hissed.

“I was so afraid!” Sakshi said, wincing a little.

“He sat right besides me!” I said “I could hardly open my mouth. God knows how I managed to eat .”

“Who had told u to act oversmart,huh? Serves you right!” Venky said, rocking his chair and juggling three pieces of chalk.

Ignoring him, we settled into our seats and busied ourselves in some or the other work.I am sure all four of us were thinking the exact same thing. How foolish we had been! We would never attempt anything of this sort again. Eventhough he had been nothing more than pleasant with us, we knew that Mr. Verma was the last person you would ever want to get on the bad side of.