“If you’ll give me
her number, I’ll call and tell her to take it from me when school
reopens next week.”
“I don’t have her
number. Where does she stay?”
He gave me her
address.
“That’s not far
from school. I’ll tell you what, I will pick up the certificate
from your house tomorrow morning and give it to her.”
“What! Why should
you go out of your way for her? Forget it, she can take it when
school reopens.”
“Oh no, it’s for a
very good reason,” I said, “she’s got a heap of Tintin comics at
home and I am thinking she will have to let us borrow a few if I do
her this favour, what say?”
“You are so evil,”
he said with admiration.
And so I met her
this morning, at her house. It’s a fine first-floor house with
fancy furniture and paintings, and I was thinking marrying her
wouldn’t be such a bad thing if I were compelled to.
Well, I was
prepared to give a false name and scoot if anyone but she opened
the door, but it turned out she was all alone at home. And was she
delighted to see me! We met very properly at the door and I handed
her the certificate to make it clear to any prying eye that this
was purely a business visit, and then she asked me inside.
As soon as the
door was shut, she threw her arms around my neck and showered
kisses. Well, 20 kisses can’t make you more pregnant than one, I
thought, and let her. And when she was calm again, I told her:
“I think you are
pregnant.”
“What!” she said
ruffling my hair. She was looking so grown up after just a month.
“You must be pregnant,” I said slowly, gloomily, “I kissed you on
the lips and we hugged before the holidays”.
“Silly boy!” she
said laughing out aloud, “I am not pregnant, I just started having
my periods”.
“What’s that got
to do with your being pregnant?” I said.
And she laughed
till there were tears in her eyes.
“You are just a
boy” she said patronizingly, and I didn’t like it. Our affair was
going to end sooner than I had planned. But still I felt
responsible for what I had done and tried to explain it to her one
more time.
“Don’t worry your
pretty head about it,” she interrupted me, “I am FINE. I am NOT
pregnant. I KNOW.”
Nobody talks to me
like that, nobody. I left her then, but I played really well today.
I just hope Argentina would play as well as me and reach the
final.
***~~~***
Beside the
yellow doorframe of class 6-B in Chandigarh’s Sunrays School is an
ancient switchboard with a large, time-blackened Crompton fan
regulator as its centrepiece. Below the regulator are eight Anchor
switches: three for fans, four for lights, and exactly in the
middle, one for the three-pin plug socket.
The socket is
never used. When the school was built in the late 1970s, that
socket was a luxury, but the school provided it for those times
when a cassette player would be needed in class for a rehearsal or
a lesson. That day never came because music and activity teachers
preferred the spacious hall on the ground floor for practice.
What nobody knows
is that the socket has been useless since one winter afternoon in
the year 1989 when it was used for the first and only time. The
mouth of one of its smaller holes is just a little black. It was
burnt by a lightning bolt that shot out of it when... But I must
start at the beginning.
***
January had
arrived after the Christmas break and students had returned to
school shivering and blowing clouds of vapour in the morning. Boys
would stick a pencil between their lips and pretend-smoke. Some
mornings were so foggy that water droplets seemed to fall out of
the air, and navy blazers turned white with a film of tiny
droplets. It was a time to stay indoors and trace names on the
misty windowpanes. And when nobody was looking, boys and girls
traced hearts pierced with arrows and the initials of their secret
sweethearts. It was a new thing they had learnt.
The students
always felt older in January, for though the final exams were still
two months away, the next class seemed a lot closer than it had in
April the previous year. They became freer with the teachers, and
the teachers became more indulgent. Those last three months of the
academic year were always the most pleasant, and fast-paced. Every
week brought some activity. Sports day, annual day, quiz,
exhibition, this or that competition, and finally the exams.
First up that year
was the science exhibition, in two weeks’ time. Rachna Ma’am, who
taught 6-B science, said the class would have to make two science
models and she very coolly gave the class one whole period to plan
what they could be. It was one of those occasions when the
classroom door has to be shut for fear of drawing the principal
upstairs with the noise.
Realizing that
homework would not be checked, no questions asked and no lesson
taught in the next 40 minutes, the class bubbled with excitement.
The ‘pet’ students, show-offs, lobbed ideas at Rachna Ma’am, each
one less practical than the one before it, and under the cover of
this intense fire, the others chatted and giggled.
Finally, with five
minutes remaining for the period to get over, it was decided that
one group of sparks would make a large thermocol model of the water
cycle. That group had the class’ best artists and craftspeople. The
other group, which had mostly boys, waved disdainfully at the idea
and declared that they would make a moon rover.
“A what?” ma’am
said.
“Moon rover,
ma’am,” said Manu in a respectful but confident tone. He was the
alpha boy, the class monitor, and not much loved by students, but
teachers liked him.
For once, Rachna
Ma’am wasn’t happy with the working of her favourite’s mind. She
didn’t believe in the concept even before it had been explained to
her. There wasn’t much science in a model of the moon’s surface
with a dune buggy stuck on it, she thought. No concepts, nothing to
demonstrate, the chief guest would move on without asking any
questions and Mrs Sengupta’s section would probably bag the junior
trophy.
“No, Manu, that
won’t do. It might look attractive, but what science principles
will you explain with it? It will look like a toy. Think of
something more SCIENTIFIC,” she said, “like the water cycle model.
Why not show waste recycling, or the digestive system?”
Manu felt his face
burn. Ma’am’s “like the water cycle model” remark had offended him.
It meant that the other group was smarter, and Manu couldn’t stand
praise for anyone but himself. He swallowed, took a deep breath,
and tried once again.
“Ma’am, we will
make a working model. A moon rover that really runs on the moon’s
surface. It’s a difficult project, not just a toy,” he finished a
touch vehemently. Rachna Ma’am thought awhile. A working model,
well, that would be nice. No other class would make something so
fancy, and the trophy would be theirs for sure. But … what if the
children failed to pull it off? That would be a disaster.
The class bell
rang but she didn’t stir. There was pin-drop silence in the class.
Manu was still standing with his hands crossed behind his back and
his palms moist.
A knock at the
door shook them all out of their thoughts. Shreya opened the door
and there was Bhardwaj Ma’am, the Hindi teacher, waiting outside.
Rachna Ma’am sprang up, took her bag off the chair and with a smile
towards Bhardwaj Ma’am started for the door. “Okay, Manu, you boys
make it, but you will have to work doubly hard. I want to see it
ready in a week, all right? And keep a plan-B ready,” she said as
she disappeared from sight.
***
Manu pumped the
air with a clenched fist and looked around for approval. His
friends, Samar, Rohan and Raj also looked delighted. There was a
lot of planning to do in the tiffin break after the Hindi class.
And they would have to rope in some more classmates for the project
to make it more representative of the class. Manu was thinking of
Neha, his secret crush of six years. She could draw and colour
really well, and would be a big help in finishing the project, but
more than anything he wanted an excuse to be with her, talk to her,
make her laugh and be her friend, and if he acted fast, made sure
she didn’t join the water cycle camp, his wish would come true.
The whole class
rose to wish Bhardwaj Ma’am, and when they sat down, Manu brought
out his Hindi book just like the others, but bent over it he
dreamed of Neha and his moon rover whirring about on a rutted
path.
As soon as the
bell rang, the two teams pounced on their talented classmates for
help. Join us, join us, they pleaded. The room was emptying fast as
the students filed out with their tiffin boxes and water bottles.
Manu saw Neha slide out of her corner row seat and Ginny from the
other team move towards her. They were best friends, and there
wasn’t a chance of Neha refusing Ginny’s offer. “Neha,” he called
desperately, the blood rushing to his face and his eyes opening
wide, “we need your help. Please”. Please wasn’t a word Manu wasted
on his classmates, and simple Neha flashed a puzzled, helpless grin
at her approaching friend. The haughty boy looking at her
hopefully.
Ginny took Neha’s
hand and pulled her along confidently. But Neha said, “A moment,
Ginny. I will help you, Manu, let me know whatever you need”.
Ginny disliked
Manu wholeheartedly but she loved Neha too much to resent her
decision. Neha was still her best friend, but she flashed angry
eyes at Manu as she went by. So the group had increased to six.
Manu, Samar, Rohan, Raj, Neha and Akshay, who could be counted on
to do the hard work.
Next, Manu wanted
a financier because he didn’t want to spend his pocket money on the
project. And though he had blurted out the brilliant sounding plan,
he didn’t have a motor to run the rover with.
They trooped into
the ground together through hungry corridors smelling of aloo
parathas and mango pickle, and settled under a mango tree to hold
their council of war. Manu spoke slowly. It was still a half-baked
idea and he had to flesh it out as he went along. “It will be
easy,” he said, “once we have a motor to run the wheels”. And then,
it occurred to him that he didn’t have any wheels. “Any of you have
an old toy lying around at home?” he asked. Neha had a younger
brother and there was a boxful of his broken cars and planes at
home. “I do,” she said and Manu glanced at her with worshipful
eyes. He was going to marry her someday, once he had passed out of
school and college, and found a job, and told her how he had loved
her from the time she joined Sunrays in Class I.
“Thank you, Neha,”
he said in his most gracious voice to make sure she would remain
friends with him once the two weeks and the project were over. “So,
we will carve tracks on a thermocol board to run the rover on, and
that’s it. You guys can make the board look like the moon’s surface
and Neha can paint it nicely,” he said.
“What’s nice about
the moon’s surface?” Rohan asked. He was an Air Force boy, thin and
handsome, and Manu valued him as a comrade, but he hadn’t grown up
with them. He joined the school only a year ago, and wasn’t in awe
of anyone. He also had this annoying smart-alecky streak. “It’s
pitted like Raman’s face,” Manu replied to a burst of cruel
laughter.
Samar was Manu’s
oldest and most trusted friend in that group. He was also the most
sincere student in class, always standing first, term after term,
year after year. He wasn’t short but a bit chubby, so the boys
sometimes called him Fatty, which was unfair but he didn’t mind.
Samar could be counted upon to do a good job and Manu told him to
make the rover.
“How?” said Samar.
“Just join the wheels to the motor,” said Manu. Everybody looked at
him doubtfully. “Doesn’t it have to look like a rover?” said Samar.
“Sure, it cannot look like anything else,” Manu replied. “But how
will we do that?” Samar shot back. Manu didn’t have an answer to
that so he told everyone not to worry, that he would show them how
everything was to be done, that they only had to arrange the
materials and then they could get cracking on the project the next
afternoon after school hours.
“You get the
thermocol sheet, Akshay,” he said to the quiet boy who was looking
quite lost. Akshay woke up and nodded. “Neha, please get your
paints tomorrow.” The ‘please’ wasn’t lost on the boys although
Neha, if she noticed it, dismissed it without feeling. “Rohan, will
you make a cardboard rocket with an Indian flag on it?” Rohan
nodded. “Raj, you work with Samar on the moon rover.” Another nod.
“And what will you do?” It was Rohan again, asking for a whack. “I
will be everywhere,” Manu declared grandly while his mind was
grappling with Samar’s question: how to make their moon rover look
like a moon rover? Perhaps, Rachna Ma’am was right, he had come up
with an impracticable idea.
He would get
around every problem, Manu promised himself and suddenly walked
away from the group in the direction of Vikram, who was shying
stones at a squirrel. “Hey, you will bust a head, Vikram,” he said.
Manu disliked Vikram, a slovenly boy whose shirt always hung out of
his trousers and those trousers slipped down too far every time he
bent to reveal a bit of his butt crack, drawing guffaws from boys
and giggles from girls.
Vikram absolutely
hated Manu although he dared not show it. He wasn’t a good student,
his handwriting and colouring were awful, and he barely scraped
along from one class to the next. But he wanted to be part of a
science project and knew that nobody would ask him. Taller and
heavier than Manu, he had an urge to slug Mr Snooty on the face,
but he was afraid. “Will you join us?” said Manu, and Vikram wasn’t
sure he had heard right.