Of Course, It's Butterfingers Again

by Khyrunnisa A

  ‘And how he declared we have to stay back for extra classes for a month before exams,’ added Eric.

  ‘Not to mention how he cancelled the athletic meet to hold surprise tests,’ continued Kiran through clenched teeth. That particular cancellation rankled.

  ‘Silence! No whispering!’ Mr Jagmohan took on the role of a snapping turtle. ‘Let’s finish with the assembly before I make an important announcement.’

  ‘I told you!’ Kiran mouthed to those around him as the school anthem began. The formalities over, Mr Jagmohan cleared his throat and bellowed into the mike, ‘All right, children, what day is 5 June?’

  ‘Wednesday!’ Aarav, a class II boy, shouted shrilly.

  ‘Is he conducting a surprise low-IQ quiz?’ whispered Amar.

  ‘No, Thursday!’ screamed Deepak of class IV.

  ‘A ho-li-day!’ trilled the ever-hopeful Isaiah of class VII.

  ‘World Environment Day!’ yelled class VII’s Alvin, the Mr Know-All of middle school.

  Mr Jagmohan, whose face had begun to darken with annoyance when he’d heard the first few answers, went back to its former shade at Alvin’s response. Nodding his head in approval at the boy, for he believed in immediate acknowledgement of merit, he said, ‘Very good, Alvin, that’s what it is. As everyone ought to know, 5 June is World Environment Day. This is a day through the celebration of which the United Nations makes the whole world aware of the importance of the environment and the responsibility of everyone towards preserving and saving it. It was in 1972 that . . .’

  He droned on about the history of World Environment Day in a monotone that lulled most of the students into a state of semi-consciousness. A sudden silence, indicating that the information bulletin had come to an end, stirred them back into existence. He paused. The bulk of his audience looked back vacuously at him. Irritated by the response, he glared and continued. ‘This year is special; India is hosting the global World Environment Day. Schools have been asked to celebrate this day in a meaningful way. We get just two days to prepare for 5 June. But so what? Two days means forty-eight hours—in other words . . . er . . . twenty-four thousand . . . er . . . about several thousand minutes and . . .’

  ‘It’s 2880 minutes, sir,’ Alvin shouted. He was a senior-level topper at abacus maths, who loved to display his mental-maths skills. ‘In seconds that would be—’

  But this time Mr Jagmohan wasn’t pleased and cut him short. ‘Enough! Don’t interrupt me. That’s exactly what I was going to say!’ The students tittered.

  Mr Jagmohan cleared his throat and continued. ‘On 5 June, Mr Madhav, the director of zoos and a renowned environmentalist, will visit every school in this town to find out how it is observing World Environment Day, and a shield will be presented to the school that makes the best effort. We’ve decided that classes VII and VIII should involve themselves completely in the programme while the junior classes can plant saplings, clean out weeds and keep the surroundings tidy. The senior classes will be in charge overall. I’ll be coming around shortly to discuss this. Now go to your classes.’

  ‘Work, work, work!’ grumbled Eric as the students strolled forward. ‘We get back to school and there’s a pile waiting. When will I get to the senior classes? I’d love to be in charge, which, of course, means doing nothing.’

  ‘Wonder what torture he has planned for us,’ commented Amar when the students reached the class.

  ‘You don’t have to wait too long,’ said Kiran. ‘Princi appears to love us; he has followed us here.’

  ‘Oops, so he has!’ exclaimed Amar, turning to look and ramming into a desk that almost toppled over. Mr Jagmohan frowned with displeasure at the familiar sight of Amar performing acrobatics to set fallen furniture right and waited with a frown till order was restored.

  ‘Sit down, please!’ he commanded. ‘To continue what I was saying at the assembly . . . we must think of something specific to do. The efforts should be shared. Mr Shyam and I have been thinking we could have students prepare charts, make presentations, craft meaningful models and create small posters that can be stuck on trees, the walls of classrooms and so on. By the way, I hope you know that every year there is a different theme for World Environment Day. This year, it is “Beat Plastic Pollution”.’

  ‘Mr Jagmohan, is chewing gum made of plastic?’ asked Thomas.

  ‘Er, I’m not too sure,’ Mr Jagmohan ruminated, chewing his underlip. ‘But, plastic or not, it’s uncouth to chew gum. I hope no one here does that.’

  Kishore quietly transferred the gum he was chewing to a piece of paper, Ajay swallowed his and Arjun stuck his stick of gum under his desk.

  ‘Here are some themes of the previous years.’ Mr Jagmohan consulted a paper. ‘In 2012, it was “Think, Eat, Save”.’

  ‘I like the eat part,’ whispered Eric to Kishore.

  ‘In 2015,’ continued Mr Jagmohan, ‘it was “Feeding the Planet”.’

  ‘I’m hungry already,’ whispered Kiran to Amar. ‘I wish someone thinks of feeding me.’

  ‘Stop it! No more whispering!’ Mr Jagmohan was exasperated. ‘I am talking about something very serious. I wonder how many of you are aware that our planet is dying. Amar, do you know last year’s theme?’

  Just that morning, Amar’s environment-conscious parents had made their displeasure regarding a tree being cut down in a neighbouring house very clear. Mr Kishen had snapped, ‘Everywhere people are mowing down trees thoughtlessly. Nature is being destroyed. No hope for the future.’

  Playing for time, Amar made a wild guess, mumbling, ‘Um . . . er . . . people . . . nature . . . the future . . .’

  ‘Exactly!’ Mr Jagmohan looked surprised. ‘“Connecting People to Nature”, that was the theme. Can’t believe you are actually aware of environmental issues. You have more sense than I thought. In every piece of coal, there might lie hidden a diamond. What did you say—“nature is the future”? Good slogan. I’ll put you in charge of making the smaller posters, on A4 paper, with catchy slogans. Not just on this year’s theme but on environmental issues in general. Kishore and Minu can help you. Children, Mr Shyam will divide you into groups and tell you what is planned for each group. Put your hearts into your work; I will also do something to save Planet Earth.’

  The saviour of Planet Earth left the class, pleased with himself.

  ‘All in two days! What’s Princi thinking of?’ Ajay complained.

  Amar looked visibly dismayed. He wanted to practise in the evenings for the football match in the colony on Saturday. Now he wouldn’t be free till Thursday.

  That evening Amar surfed the Internet for matter about World Environment Day, the problems plaguing the environment and what should be done to save the earth until he felt something needed to be done to save him, especially his head and his eyes. That night, he had nightmares about oceans, dead fish, bare trees, a blazing sun shining down on skeletons in the desert . . .

  He went bleary-eyed to school the next day and dozed through the lessons. ‘Thinking,’ he told Miss Philo when she pulled him up, ‘of slogans.’ He picked Kishore and Minu’s brains for more ideas.

  On Wednesday, Mr Jagmohan gave him a sheaf of A4 paper that he rolled and shoved into his already bursting bag. When he took it out in the evening to make the posters, he was dismayed to find the papers crumpled. Worse, they wouldn’t straighten, curling back into a roll the moment he let go.

  After several failed attempts, his face brightened. Ironing might help, he thought. For Amar, to think was to act. He placed the papers, curved side down, on the ironing board and had just begun to press them when his mother shouted that Kishore was on the line. He had called with some ideas for slogans and Amar went off to write them down.

  Sniff! Sniff! An unpleasant, acrid smell made Amar cut the call and rush to the ironing board to discover that the iron had burnt a hole right through the papers!

  Dismayed, he walked into the kitchen, where his mother was frying cutlets. ‘A cutlet or two might inspire me. Food for
thought.’ When he popped one into his mouth, he noticed the paper on which his mother had placed the fried cutlets to soak up the oil. Why, the size was just right for his purpose.

  ‘Ma, do you have any more of these papers?’ he asked, his mouth full of cutlet.

  ‘Yes, I have a stock of them,’ Mrs Kishen replied. ‘That’s recycled paper. What do you want it for?’

  ‘To make posters for World Environment Day.’

  ‘What a lovely idea, Amar, to use recycled paper for that! Take as many as you wish.’ She looked at him fondly as he grinned, the burnt paper screwed into a ball in his hand.

  The next day, 5 June, was cloudy and windy. Perfect for World Environment Day! Amar thought when he left for school, the posters propped straight in an old paper bag he had hunted out.

  As usual, Amar missed his school bus and had to walk quite a bit to reach the bus stop. What he didn’t know was that the bag was half-torn at the bottom, and as he jogged to the bus stop, swinging the bag, the rent got wider, the bottom slowly opened up and the contents slipped out. Oblivious to this, Amar streaked to the bus and just about managed to hop on. He realized vaguely that the bag felt lighter but put it down to the lightness of his heart at having boarded the bus.

  Once he reached school, he rushed to his class to show the posters to his friends, except there were no posters. His bag was . . . empty. ‘Oh, but . . . where are my posters?’ He looked comical in his dismay and was shaking the bag, urging it to miraculously produce the posters, when the principal entered the class.

  ‘Let me see your posters, Amar,’ he requested, holding out his hand.

  ‘Sir, I . . . seem to have dropped them . . .’ Amar stammered.

  ‘This is too much, even for you, Butterfingers!’ snapped Mr Jagmohan, who rarely addressed anyone by their nickname. He looked quite disbelieving. ‘How can you drop A4-sized posters? Did you even make them?’

  ‘Of course I did, sir,’ Amar protested, looking miserable.

  ‘Now what? It’s too late to make more posters. Amar, you’re responsible for this and you have to find a solution.’

  Sighting a lot of old, crumpled newspapers overflowing from the bin in the corner, Amar brightened. ‘Maybe we could write the slogans on those old newspapers . . .’

  ‘We? What do you mean we? You’d better do something, anything!’ Mr Jagmohan left the classroom breathing fire out of his nostrils. Amar’s friends rallied around him and, using whatever they could lay their hands on—pens, pencils, crayons, sketch pens, paint—they wrote what Amar dictated, with help from Kishore and Minu. They went around the school and pinned or pasted the ‘posters’ on walls, doors, trees, and hung them from branches.

  Meanwhile, the car in which Mr Madhav was being taken to the schools had to brake suddenly when a piece of paper that had been dancing like a kite decided to descend and cover the windscreen. ‘What’s that?’ gulped Mr Madhav as the seat belt stopped his head from banging into the windscreen. A huge ‘SAVE’ on the paper caught his eye and, getting out of the car, he obeyed the appeal and rescued it. On it was written ‘Save trees, recycle paper’ and an eye-catching cartoon accompanied the slogan. At the bottom was inscribed in tiny letters: ‘World Environment Day (Amar Kishen, Green Park School)’. Another paper was caught on a thorny bush and it said, ‘Walk to work; carbon emission is pollution.’ Feeling guilty, he asked the driver to park the car on the side and walked on.

  To his amazement he saw quite a few environment-related posters lying around or flying about. He decided to find out more about this . . .

  The next day, the newspaper carried the following report under the headline:

  Green Park Wins Environment Day Shield

  Mr Madhav, director of zoos, who led an inspection of the schools in town to decide which school celebrated World Environment Day in the most innovative and effective manner had no problem declaring Green Park School the winner. Not only did the school have a unique exhibition on the school grounds with charts and working models to bring alive the dangers faced by the environment, posters made on old, crumpled newspapers and wonderfully imaginative presentations, there were children planting trees and watering the plants with water drawn from the school well.

  But what impressed Mr Madhav the most was how the children of the school had taken the message to the town. Unique and telling posters on recycled paper were scattered here and there, as if they had been dropped from a helicopter. Mr Sridhar, a resident of the town, told Mr Madhav that he and his friend had come upon the posters lying around. They’d believed that some environmentalists had left them for the wind to disperse and spread the message.

  Others in the town also spoke of coming across similar posters flying about, reminding them it was World Environment Day. Slogans like ‘Plastic is drastic, but jute is cute’, ‘Be mature, love nature’, ‘Taste food, don’t waste it’, ‘Avoid air conditioners, open windows’, ‘Don’t just use, reuse’, ‘Plastic isn’t fantastic, cloth is’, ‘Don’t brood, share food’, ‘This is our only world. Save it’, ‘Don’t panic, eat organic’, ‘More buses, less cars’, ‘Wear cotton, synthetic is rotten (though it doesn’t rot)’, ‘Stay stable, eat vegetable’, ‘Two legs are better than four wheels’, ‘Want a treat? Eat wheat’, ‘Pesticide is suicide’ and ‘He who walks, lasts’ stirred the collective conscience of the people, who decided to put many of these into practice.

  On finding out that one boy, Amar Kishen, of Class VIII A, had been entrusted with the task of crafting the posters and had been responsible for taking the message to the people in this innovative manner, Mr Madhav gave him a certificate of merit and a special treat for his class that has impressed him with their thought-provoking work.

  By staff reporter.

  At the school assembly, after Mr Madhav handed the shield to Mr Jagmohan and the certificate to Amar, he praised the students. ‘With such responsible youth, there is hope for our planet. As a reward for Class VIII A’s exemplary work, its students will be treated to a movie this afternoon. Mr Jagmohan and I will come to Class VIII A with the details.’

  The rewarded students couldn’t believe their ears while the others looked enviously at them. A movie during class hours? And Mr Jagmohan had agreed to it? Unbelievable! The world was certainly coming to an end; never mind what the optimistic environmentalists and Mr Madhav felt.

  In class, while waiting for Mr Madhav and the principal, the students debated on what movie it could be.

  ‘Can’t be Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. It’s only going to be released.’ Kishore made a face.

  ‘Who knows, special release for special students!’ Amar winked.

  ‘I hope it’s A Quiet Place,’ said Ajay. ‘It’s got something to do with the environment. And there’s suspense in it.’ He smacked his lips.

  ‘Maybe it’s some Dark Knight movie.’ Eric looked pleased with his guess.

  ‘I want to see Deadpool 2!’ Reshmi pouted.

  Mr Madhav came to class with Mr Jagmohan, beaming. ‘My congratulations to all of you. I’m very proud to see such conscientious children. Since you are such committed environmentalists, I’ve arranged for you to watch the short film No Nature, No Life, a prize-winning German documentary with English subtitles, at the Museum Hall this afternoon. It’s not too far from here and you will enjoy walking to the venue. And since, being health-conscious students, I know you’d prefer organic to junk food like popcorn, fizzy drinks and pizzas, I’ve arranged for you to be served special ragi dosa, nuts and fruit salad . . .’

  The students, whose faces were growing longer and longer with dismay, perked up when they heard ‘fruit salad’. ‘Thank goodness for some ice cream, at least,’ whispered Kiran to Eric.

  Mr Madhav continued. ‘. . . with brown-sugar syrup, not ice cream. You know better than others how bad ice cream is. Enjoy the afternoon and keep up the good work!’

  Amar began to look forward to Saturday’s football match.

  The Beach Adventure

  ‘Wh
ew!’ said Amar, closing with a big bang the Sherlock Holmes collection he had been reading. He now pounced on a card lying on the table and began to fan himself furiously with it. ‘It’s as hot as the Sahara!’ he complained. ‘I’m getting barbecued. Why does the power fail all the time?’

  ‘It’s only been a minute since the power failed, Amar,’ Mr Kishen retorted. ‘And the temperature’s just 33 degrees. Your powers of exaggeration are scaling new heights.’

  ‘Thirty-three degrees? Seems more like 330 degrees. I don’t think people know how to check the temperature.’

  ‘And you don’t know how to treat wedding invitations. Put that card down, Amar! I think you’ve already torn it and the wedding’s not over yet.’

  ‘Whose wedding is it?’ asked Amar. He stopped his frenzied fanning and looked with some curiosity at the card that was much the worse for having doubled as a fan.

  ‘A relative’s. The wedding’s tomorrow and your uncle Ravi is coming too. He’ll be arriving any time now.’

  ‘Ravi Uncle? Oh, lovely!’

  Ravi was Amar’s father’s youngest brother and Amar’s favourite uncle. Amar owed his skills in tree- climbing, whistling, making funny faces and playing weird variations of cricket and football to Ravi Uncle’s assiduous tutoring.

  At that moment, someone began to drum on the door.

  ‘That, my dear Watson, has got to be Ravi Uncle; that’s his unmistakable signature tattoo,’ observed Amar to no one in particular, his face breaking into an anticipatory smile as he flew to open the door.

  It was indeed Ravi and Amar fell upon him with a cry of delight. Uncle and nephew performed a wild jig together before Ravi asked, ‘So how’s everyone? Goodness, it’s so hot!’

  ‘My father doesn’t think so,’ said Amar, sneaking a sly glance at his father before beginning to fan himself again, this time with the newspaper.

  ‘Well, I do,’ said Ravi. ‘So how about going to the beach this evening?’

  ‘Great idea!’ exclaimed Amar, wiping the sweat from his face.