Sharad had lost
his heat and offered his cycle for the final, but Manu refused
because he wasn’t accustomed to the bigger wheels and the different
saddle height, bent handlebars and calliper brakes. Besides, his
trusty old cycle had just proved its worth.
As the afternoon
progressed, the school building’s shadow on the field became
longer, the breeze turned cold and all the athletics events wound
up one after another. Then came the junior girls’ final cycle race,
and after that it was time for the junior boys. This time, Manu
found himself in the last-but-one lane. On his right, in the last
lane, was Sandeep, one year his senior and riding a heavily
modified cycle. On his left were other seniors. Manu was the only
boy from class 6 and he had all the cheers from both sections. This
time, he felt calm and confident.
“On your marks.”
Everyone bent over their handlebars.
“Set.” Backs
stiffened.
“Go.”
Manu never really
got off the start line. Sandeep lost his balance, and as Manu was
passing him on the left, collided with him. Neither boy got hurt
but the front wheels of both cycles were bent. The race was over
for them. Manu cursed Sandeep in disgust, and sensing a fight in
the air, the teachers quickly drew them apart. Manu sulked the rest
of the evening. He had to walk home dragging the cycle because of
the bent wheel.
He couldn’t forget
the disappointment but the long weekend helped him to get a grip on
his feelings. He got the wheel fixed, and then buried his nose in
books for the final exams that were just weeks away.
***
There are
students who don’t like exams but for Manu they were a pleasant
time. Partly, it was the season. March is warm, but not too warm in
Chandigarh. The days are longer, so there’s more time to play. You
can play from afternoon till late evening. It’s also a good time to
study. The feet don’t chill, the fingers don’t freeze, and the
palms don’t sweat either. Riding to school in the cool mornings
with no bag and only a writing pad and pencil box pressed under the
clip of the cycle carrier felt like going on a picnic.
But Manu also
liked the final exams because he knew his subjects well. When other
students burnt the midnight oil, he merely browsed his books to
make sure he remembered what was in them. The only subject he
crammed was social studies because there really was not any other
way of remembering all the history dates. Since he did not practise
maths like Samar, he invariably made some silly mistakes and lost a
few marks, but he still managed to finish in the top five every
year, and his folks were more than pleased with his results.
To him, each final
exam was a milestone crossed on the way to the next class. Six,
five, four, three, two, one. The subjects were maths, science,
social science, English, Hindi and Sanskrit. On returning home
after each exam he tossed that subject’s books into the loft, and
looked with satisfaction on his depleting shelf. But only after
consulting those books to see whether he had made some outrageous
mistake that day.
The last exam day
was a time for celebration. Boys stayed on in school till late to
play, the girls mostly headed for each other’s houses to chat or
stay over. They would not meet for two weeks till the next session
started. Then came Holi, a riotous time, and after that the summer
picked up. On the last Saturday of the month, all the students
trooped into their classrooms with parents in tow to find out how
they had done in the exams, and which section they had been
assigned to in the next class.
Manu stood fourth
that year, which earned him a pat on the back and the promise of a
new bicycle. A racing cycle. He was being moved to section A in
class 7. “Am I the only one?” he asked Uma Ma’am, his class
teacher, but she said some of his friends were going too. The
sections had been mixed. Because he was among her best students,
she let him have a look at the list of students going to section A.
It was an alphabetical list, and Manu quickly jumped to ‘N’. No,
Neha was staying in section B. That’s all he wanted to know, and
was very sad. It was the first time they wouldn’t be studying
together. It had taken him years to befriend her, and now she would
just drift away. It was so unfair, even cruel, but what could he
say or do?
The joy of
starting a new class was missing when the students walked into
their sections on the first day. The reassignment of sections meant
that half the class did not know the other half. There was a
visible division in the centre, with students from 6-A occupying
the leftmost row and those from 6-B the rightmost. Instead of a new
class’ loud babel there was just an indistinct hubbub.
The students
wondered who their new class teacher would be. They all knew Roy
Ma’am who taught maths and had been class teacher the previous
year, and when they saw her walking towards the classroom they
quickly settled down in their benches. But ma’am left in a moment
after taking her notebooks from a locked cupboard. The suspense
continued for half an hour and then, a new teacher, an unfamiliar
face, walked in. She was very young, very pretty, very hep with
bouffant curls and high heels, and her dupatta draped in the style
of the latest Hindi movies (English movies weren’t so hot
then).
Many boys fell in
love with her at first sight. Even those who didn’t out of loyalty
to their secret crushes, like Manu, took a keen interest in her.
The girls studied her style approvingly, and made mental notes. By
afternoon, she was the talk of the senior wing. The bigger boys
found excuses to walk past 7-A and peep inside, causing much
heartburn among her own possessive students.
She was a maths
teacher, her name was Radhika, and she allowed her class the
shocking liberty of calling her by her first name. In fact, she
insisted on it. When the older teachers heard of it, they were
horrified, and pouted reprovingly. And since they turned against
her, it was clear that her stay at Sunrays was going to be
unpleasant and short. But she wasn’t bad as a teacher. In fact, she
was a very good teacher. She knew the subject well, was patient,
and did her best to clear doubts. She marked notebooks so
thoroughly that every page bore a lot of neat red handwriting.
The new teacher
and her spellbound students soon formed a warm bond. She demolished
the old section lines the very first day, by ordering everyone to
sit in the order of their roll numbers. A nudge was all that was
needed. By the second day everybody knew everybody else, and the
class was as noisy and as full of friends as any other. But that
did not mean the old friendships were forgotten. Before the school
assembly and during the tiffin break, the students made sure to
spend time with those friends who had been assigned to the other
section.
***
Neha always
greeted Manu warmly in the corridor, but he felt tongue-tied again
in her presence. He wondered whether he had any business talking to
her now that they were in different sections. He did not want her
to misunderstand him. He even shuddered at the thought that she
would UNDERSTAND him. “Can she guess, does she know?” he wondered
and wracked his mind for excuses to talk to her. Then, suddenly, an
excuse came his way.
One Sunday in the
middle of the month some very important people visited the school.
They were the people who owned all the buildings and the grounds of
Sunrays School. And that was only one of their many businesses.
They had big hotels in the hills and near the sea, and they had
factories whose bread sat on breakfast tables from Shimla to
Chandigarh, and then right down to Delhi. Oh, they were rich
people, and they came in long German cars, for which common people
had only one word in those days—imported.
They came early in
the morning, in the cool hours of late April and walked around the
school, peeping into dustbins and looking at Saturday’s last
chalk-written lessons on blackboards. One of their lackeys walked
at their heels, and so did the school principal while the teachers,
all turned out in their finest silks, stayed a respectful distance
behind. They were very upset to have been called away from home and
family at this early hour on a holiday, but you couldn’t have
guessed their thoughts from their smiles.
The procession
moved up and down corridors, up and down staircases, all of which
had been cleaned and polished more than usual. From time to time,
the lackey bent his head deferentially and noted down what the VIPs
said. And after this long, significant stroll, they all came to the
forecourt where tea was waiting. The teachers, who were bored and
puzzled and tired, looked longingly at the gold-rimmed China cups
and the biscuits on platters, but the principal led them on to the
edge of the orchard that was one of the school’s two playing
fields. The sun felt hot now but the morning breeze was still cool
under the shade of the old mango trees. The troop paused there
while the school’s gardeners hurried up with watering cans and six
saplings—one each for the visitors. The VIPs, who lived abroad,
would “make the memory of their visit everlasting” by planting a
sapling each.
They went in a
group from hole to hole, merely lowering a sapling into it while
the mali did all the pressing and patting before they sprayed a
little water from the can that had been decorated with ribbons.
They were healthy mango saplings with bright green leaves, and each
one came up to the tallest visitor’s knees. As soon as one was
planted, a T-shaped tag with the name of the dignitary who had
touched it was stuck beside it. One, two, three, four, five, six.
In all, it took about 15 minutes, and then, instead of coming back
for tea, the VIPs consulted their watches, and each other, and
disappeared cheerfully from the school in their limousines.
The teachers, who
had held their breath and noise for so long, now chattered eagerly
like schoolgirls, and after munching down the biscuits and
swallowing the tea, which had turned cold, they too disappeared
from the scene.
***
Monday morning
came, and the students found something changed along the path that
bordered the orchard. The saplings had been enclosed in little
cages that looked like old drums whose base and top had been cut
off and the walls had been punctured with long, rectangular
gun-slits to let light and air in.
After the class
returned from the morning assembly, a messenger came to 7-A and
told Radhika Ma’am to send six responsible students to the
principal right away. Manu was among the six, so was his friend
Samar. When they reached the principal’s office they found six
others from 7-B waiting there already, and Neha was among them. The
12 students were kept waiting a long time as teachers came and went
on important errands. The students were supposed to stand quietly
in the corridor but when old friends meet a thousand things demand
to be discussed, so every two minutes a teacher’s stern face peeped
out to “sush” them. Neha was talking to another of their 6-B
classmates, Anisha, a tall, fair girl who was a favourite of the
teachers for her dancing, singing and oratorical skills, but Manu
had never paid much attention to her in all their years together.
Now, too shy to talk to Neha directly, he tried the opening gambit
on Anisha.
“Hi, Anisha, have
you entered for Saturday’s debate?” he said with obviously no
interest in hearing her answer. “And you, Neha?” he added
casually.
Both girls said
‘yes’, and Manu again found himself struggling to keep the
conversation going. Then Samar asked them whether they knew why
they had been sent to the principal’s office, and that started an
animated discussion full of guesses. Manu watched Neha entranced.
Her eyes lit up every time she smiled or ventured a guess shyly.
Her laughter was guileless. Careful not to stare at her, he looked
down at his feet every few moments, but his eyes kept returning to
that sweet face irresistibly.
Then the side door
to the principal’s office opened and they were all asked to troop
inside. There were only four empty leather chairs around the
principal’s desk, so they stood in a neat horseshoe behind them and
waited for the news. The principal smiled and studied their faces
carefully, she knew the more active ones like Manu and Anisha quite
well, and Samar had made his mark over the years by doggedly
holding on to the first rank in every class.
“So, children, do
you know why I have called you here today,” ma’am asked.
“No, ma’am,” they
murmured and exchanged doubtful glances.
“Well, I am going
to give you all a great responsibility.” (At this, they all
straightened their backs and became very alert) “You will have to
look after the six new saplings our patrons planted yesterday.
Remember, these are not just any ordinary saplings. They have been
planted by our PATRONS. And we have to ensure that all six grow up
to be tall and stout trees.”
Manu made a mental
note to look up the word ‘patron’ in the dictionary during the
library period later in the day. Principal Ma’am led them out of
the building to the edge of the orchard and quickly sorted them
into groups of two. Manu was praying to be teamed with Neha but he
got Deepak, a quiet, dark, very thin and very intelligent boy, for
his partner. Deepak usually took the second position behind Samar
in the exams, and Manu had managed to get that far only once.
Neha and Anisha
were in the same team, and their joy showed. Samar was teamed with
Priya, a brusque, fast-talking girl who had been in the other
section till a year ago, and was very much a stranger to Manu and
his friends. But Manu had one consolation—Neha’s sapling was next
to his own and if he timed his horticultural trips right, there
would be lots of notes to exchange.