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.