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 11th…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.
No comments:
Post a Comment