Of Course, It's Butterfingers Again

by Khyrunnisa A

  ‘Fine?’ Shreya Kishen looked appalled. ‘You have changed its colour to brown, Amar, and despite two washes in the washing machine, it still looks muddy!’

  ‘Permanent dust-and-dirt dye!’ Amar grinned. ‘So what now?’

  ‘Get him a new pair,’ said Mr Kishen. ‘What else? Nice thing, Amar, to tell us at the eleventh hour!’

  The family set out to shop for a readymade set. They got a shirt that fitted Amar but the trousers proved to be a problem. Amar was tall for his age, and lanky, so no trouser fitted him perfectly. If the length was right, the waist was wrong, and if the waist was right, the length wasn’t. Mr Kishen was losing his patience and, finally, an exhausted Mrs Kishen said, ‘I think you’d better get one with the correct waist measurement and long trouser legs. I can shorten them to the right length.’

  Finally they managed to find a pair whose trouser legs, according to Mr Kishen, would reach the other end of town. Once home, Amar’s mother took the correct measurement and, with Amar by her side, snipped off, with great expertise, the excess length of one trouser leg. Then she proceeded to tuck up and secure the edge with neat stitches as her son watched with admiration her deftness with her fingers.

  ‘Wow! Who will say this wasn’t done by a professional? Cool!’ Amar raved. Now his hands itched to do something. ‘Shall I help you, Ma? I know a little stitching from the needlework classes we had in class V. Or let me shorten the other leg at least. I’ll be careful with the scissors. Please, Ma.’

  Against her better judgement, Mrs Kishen, mellowed by her son’s praise, nodded. ‘All right.’ She smiled. ‘Use the bit I had already cut to measure what needs to be snipped off.’

  Amar held the trousers against him, the ends flapping about, and preened around as if he were a model on the catwalk, stopping only when his father startled him with a yell. ‘What are you up to, Amar?’

  Amar dropped the trousers and picked them up with a mumbled ‘Nothing, Dad.’ He arranged one trouser leg flat on the table, placed the cut end over it and began to chop off the excess bit.

  It was not as easy as it had appeared when his mother had done it, for the material was thick. Tongue sticking out, he set to work with great concentration and, finally, fingers aching, managed to cut it rather unevenly. His effort didn’t please the artist in him and he was trying to pull out the loose threads when his mother returned. She took one look at her son’s handiwork, took possession of the trousers and trimmed the jagged edge first before stitching the end neatly. ‘Now wear it and see if it’s okay,’ she said.

  ‘You bet it is. Oh no, I forgot the report! I’d better go and write it. Princi will skin me alive and drop me in boiling oil if I go to school without it. Not to worry, Ma, I’m sure the trousers are a perfect fit; you’re the world’s best tailor!’ Rolling the trousers into a bundle, Amar rushed off to his room, paying no heed to his mother’s exasperated words: ‘Fold them properly, Amar. See that they are pressed and don’t forget your shirt . . .’

  Amar stayed up late and consequently woke up late too. Downing his breakfast in a gobble and a gulp, he elected to skip his bath—an easy decision. He stuffed the report into the pocket of his new trousers and, shoving them into a bag, raced out wearing his sports shorts and sleeveless shirt with his number on it. He was in quite a few events, including the relay. Everything went off without a hitch; he scrambled to the third spot in the 200-metre race and his relay team managed the second place, though he dropped the baton and had to go back for it. He was so much in the thick of things that he was one of the last to leave the field.

  By the time he reached the changing room, the other boys were already in the hall, neat and tidy. The chief guest had also arrived. Amar turned out his bag only to discover he had forgotten his shirt. There was no one he could ask for help. Either he had to go shirtless or make do with the sweaty sleeveless green shirt. He decided on the latter and as he shook out his new but crumpled trousers, a further shock awaited him. One trouser leg was way shorter than the other! What magic was this? He soon realized with horror that in his eagerness to cut the right length, he had chopped off a length of the already altered trouser leg!

  There was nothing to do but wear the mutilated trousers. He rolled up the longer trouser leg but it was the other that made his heart sink. It just about reached his knee. He pulled his sock high but it didn’t help. If anything, it was more comical, for his sock was a deep yellow and it wouldn’t reach up to fully cover the exposed leg.

  When the announcement was made—‘Reading of the report by the sports secretary, Amar Kishen’—a strange figure that looked like a modern-day Pied Piper slunk to the podium. The whole school looked stunned. Mr Jagmohan couldn’t believe his eyes. Mad! I always knew it! he thought, rage darkening his face. Now he’s proved it. With great apprehension, he sneaked a glance at the chief guest. The chief guest, who had been looking bored and had been preparing to take a light nap, was now sitting up, looking animated. He began to smile and then laugh.

  Amar, not daring to look at anyone on stage or in the audience, focused all his attention on the report. And the principal got another shock when he heard Amar explain in exaggerated detail how the hockey team lost the hockey sticks. The reason was simple. Mr Jagmohan had asked him to mention everything significant, and for Amar that was one of the most significant events of the year. He also mentioned that the principal had said it was the end of hockey in school. Mr Jagmohan flinched. Amar described the school’s loss of a cricket match because of his own dropped catches, the walkover the school’s tennis team had given their rivals because they didn’t get the repaired rackets on time and how all the teachers who’d taken part in the sack race had stumbled and fallen like sacks of potatoes.

  ‘Hahaha! At last!’ Mr Sidhant Roy laughed.

  ‘At last what?’ Mr Jagmohan agonized, certain the laughter was sarcastic.

  After Amar’s speech, it was time for the chief guest to deliver his address. Mr Sidhant Roy began without any preliminaries. ‘I was wondering when I’d come across originality, individuality and a sense of adventure. I’d given up hope. Every school is producing nothing but clones. Every student is neat and tidy, everywhere the same old gushing speeches, same lists of achievements . . . I thought this school, too, would be the same. It appeared so at first glance anyway—all the children in sparkling white clothes, silent, disciplined.

  ‘But, no, I realize that Green Park is different—unique and open. The secretary, what’s his name? Amar! Yes, wonderfully strange sense of dressing, haha! I’ve not laughed so much in a long time. Good sense of humour, boy. And the honest report of the year’s activities. Well, I don’t have to look further. My company will sponsor the sports equipment for the school this year. The hockey team can rest assured. Congratulations!’ Everyone cheered as Mr Jagmohan and Mr Sunderlal, not to mention the hockey team, looked relieved. ‘And Amar, accept this from me.’

  He handed his bouquet to Amar and gave him a warm hug, sweaty T-shirt and all.

  Amar Is Locked Out

  Amar’s father returned from the office on Friday evening in quite a flap and began to vent his feelings with an irritable ‘Nuisance, I call it! I’ve to go tomorrow . . .’ at the same time that his wife said, ‘Sony’s ill. I’ve to be with her tomorrow . . .’

  ‘What!’ exclaimed Amar. ‘Both of you have to go tomorrow?’

  Mr Kishen calmed down and asked, ‘Eh, what’s that? Sony ill?’ Sony was Mrs Kishen’s sister.

  Amar’s mother said, ‘You’ve to go tomorrow?’ Her question again coincided with his.

  ‘Dad, Ma, I think I’ll be the moderator; else you’ll both be talking at the same time and no one will have any idea! Ladies first. Ma, take the floor.’

  His father frowned while his mother, a faint smile on her face, said, ‘This is serious, Amar, not a game. But yes, Sony needs emergency surgery for appendicitis and . . .’

  ‘Wow! An operation? How lucky!’ Amar exclaimed.

  ‘Will you st
op making these idiotic remarks, Amar, and allow people to complete what they are saying?’

  ‘Sorry, Dad.’

  ‘. . . I need to be with her tomorrow, the day of the surgery.’

  ‘Now your turn, Dad.’

  Mr Kishen looked exasperated and said, ‘My boss wants me to be present at the meeting, I can’t understand why! I’ve been slogging day and night over the project the whole week, the file’s ready and Suresh from my office is going anyway. Why I have to go too beats me. I was planning to relax on Sunday . . .’

  ‘And watch the football finals!’ added Amar irrepressibly.

  His father looked a little abashed and said, ‘Yes, that did cross my mind, but I really do need a break. And if your mother has to go too, what about you? We can’t leave you alone here, with all the robberies around. Maybe you can accompany your mother.’

  ‘No, Dad!’ protested Amar. ‘I want to watch the football finals.’

  After some discussion, it was finally decided, very reluctantly on the part of Amar’s parents and rather eagerly on Amar’s, that he be alone in the house for a night. His mother would leave on Saturday morning and return on Sunday evening, and his father’s flight was on Saturday night so Amar would have to be alone at home on Saturday night. His parents were not happy for there had been a spate of robberies in the neighbourhood and though two of the three-member gang had been caught, one was still at large and very active.

  ‘At least you should change the lock on the front door,’ said Mrs Kishen to her husband.

  ‘Yeah, you’re right, any key fits in. Good thing you reminded me! Remember how we opened it the other day with a wire lying around when I forgot my key?’

  ‘That’s exactly it. Any fool can open it . . .’ she remarked unthinkingly while Amar stifled a giggle.

  ‘. . . and it would be child’s play for thieves,’ Mrs Kishen continued. ‘The police have recovered quite a bit of the stolen stuff, though the gold’s still missing. But my friends say that this end of town is safe now—the burglar seems to have changed his area of operation. There have been no burglaries hereabouts for two weeks.’

  ‘How do your friends know a burglar’s mind? Of all the silly . . .!’ Mr Kishen let the sentence trail off. ‘Anyway, tomorrow I’ll see to the lock.’

  Early the next morning, Amar’s mother left after stocking the fridge with food for two days. In the afternoon, his father got a carpenter to change the lock and replace the flimsy old one with a very fancy, newfangled, durable lock. After the carpenter left, Mr Kishen demonstrated its workings to his son.

  ‘Watch, Amar. From the inside you have to turn the key like this till you hear two clicks. From the outside you just have to pull the door shut. It locks automatically and even the best burglar in the world can’t open it. At least that’s what the shop attendant told me. But you must be careful and see that you have the key with you when you are outside, else you’ll be locked out of your own house, haha!’

  ‘Yes, I’ll remember, Dad. Two clicks, and it shuts like a prison gate.’

  The next evening after supper, his father left after giving him a string of instructions. ‘See that . . . Don’t forget . . . Whatever happens you mustn’t . . . Don’t . . .’

  ‘All right, Dad! Ma already told me the same things many times. Why don’t you trust me?’

  As his father got into the car, he said, ‘You’re man of the house now.’

  Amar heard it as ‘Are you man or mouse now?’ and began protesting, ‘What do you mean mouse?’ But the car was already on its way and he could only see his father’s hand waving to him.

  ‘Man or mouse? Mouse? How dare Dad say that? I’m man of the house and yesssss, I’m HOME ALONE!’

  For an hour, he went about relishing his independence. He raided the fridge, eating what his mother had expressly told him to keep for the next day, then bounced hard on his bed, as if it were a trampoline, to try and reach the ceiling, stopping only when he went overboard with a thud. Relieved to discover he hadn’t done any serious damage to his ankles, he played book cricket against himself. His stomach rumbled, prompting him to go in for another helping of food. While carrying his dirty plate to the kitchen sink, he remembered his mother’s instructions to take the garbage out.

  Grabbing the bag, he dashed out and the door banged shut behind him. The significance of the thud did not strike him immediately. He dropped the garbage in the bin and tried the door, but it wouldn’t open. Horrified, he realized that what his father had warned him against had happened. He had not taken the key with him and he was locked out! Not one to give up easily, he kept twisting and turning the doorknob, to no avail.

  ‘Now what?’ he said to himself. ‘What would I do if I were a burglar and could not enter through the front door? Try the back!’ He went there only to discover that his father had securely padlocked it from inside. He returned to the front, where the door loomed large and unfriendly—the same door that used to respond so willingly to his slam-bang methods so many times a day! The trees began to throw weird shadows against the street and, though Amar prided himself on his courage—‘I’m no mouse,’ he repeated to himself over and over again—he began to feel a little scared.

  But soon his never-say-die spirit asserted itself. He surveyed his house with great curiosity from the outside and examined various possibilities. Finally, he decided to climb the big mango tree that grew by the side of the house. It would help him reach the parapet around the tiled portion of the roof. This would be the tricky part, for he would have to crawl over the tiles and go to the other side. From there, a small leap would take him to a tiny landing on the first floor, near the window of his room, a window that he hoped had not been latched properly. He knew, though his parents didn’t, that two of the bars of the window were loose. Regular testing of his strength on them had made them so.

  As he climbed the tree, he stepped on a dry and brittle branch that gave way.

  ‘Whee!’ he gave an involuntary shout and went slithering down with a lot of noise until another branch broke his descent. The neighbourhood dogs woke up eagerly to the intimation of a lively night’s happenings and began barking with fervour. The yelping woke up some of the neighbours, who began to switch on lights and come out of their houses. Someone called the police.

  Hardly daring to breathe, Amar froze on the branch, cursing his rotten luck. While waiting for the noise around to cease, he checked for injuries and found he only had a few scratches and grazes. Wiping his hands on his trousers, he resumed his ascent. He reached the top without further mishap. Taking a deep breath, he jumped from the tree and on to the parapet, barely managing to get his hands over the parapet’s edge. He hung there precariously like an out-of-form cat burglar, his heart in his mouth.

  The dogs began barking again. Not daring to look down, he slowly managed to pull himself up and over to safety. He walked along the narrow parapet and, reaching the tiled portion without much ado, began to climb up. He reached the top after several failed attempts, since it had rained heavily three days before and the tiles were still slippery, with a thin film of moss growing on them. Once he reached there, he began the descent to the other side, which became swifter than he had bargained for.

  He had just placed his foot on the topmost tile when it broke and Amar lost his balance. Flailing his arms about, desperately trying to grasp at thin air, he went crashing down over the tiles, overshot the landing and flew right into a small group of people who had already gathered in his garden near the lily pond. Someone shone a torch, spotlighting his mad dive. He broke his fall on a man who had been looking up in shock. Thud! Both splash-landed in the pond.

  ‘Get him!’ shouted a spectator.

  ‘Ooh, help! Get your fat body off me!’ Amar said in a hollow, breathless manner, pushing the man away and plucking a lily from his mouth.

  ‘Amar!’ the ‘fat’ man spluttered. ‘I should have guessed!’ It was his father.

  The neighbours helped father and son out. Mr Kis
hen, who seemed to be in considerable pain, didn’t realize he was holding something he had got entangled with in the pond. It was a plastic bag. The police arrived at that moment. They had found a man moving suspiciously down the street close by as they had made their way to Amar’s house, and they had nabbed him. It turned out to be the other thief.

  ‘Now we have to find the gold,’ the inspector said.

  ‘Ah, I think I’ve twisted my ankle! Inspector, I found this in the pond.’ Mr Kishen winced and handed over the bag.

  The inspector opened it and found another bag inside it and yet another one inside that. He finally, and literally, struck gold. ‘The stolen gold! It’s here!’ he announced with joy. ‘So that’s why the burglar was headed here. They must have hidden it in the pond, hoping to get it later. Thank you, sir.’ He beamed at Mr Kishen.

  ‘I think you should thank Butterfingers, I mean Amar, my son. I don’t know how, but he’s at the bottom of this.’

  ‘I was at the bottom of the pond, anyway,’ said Amar, laughing, though he was now covered in bruises. ‘But, Dad, how come you’re here? Did you miss your flight?’

  ‘No, my flight’s delayed—it’s only at 11 p.m. now, and a good thing too, for I discovered I’d taken the wrong file and returned to get the right one.’

  ‘Mr Kishen! Mr Kishen! What’s the matter? What happened?’ It was Suresh, his colleague.

  ‘Oh, Suresh, how come you’re here?’

  ‘I got a phone alert that the flight was delayed, so I thought I’d come here and we could go to the airport together. But what’s going on? You seem to have hurt yourself badly!’ Suresh looked concerned.

  ‘I think I have, among other things, twisted my ankle, if not fractured it, and dislocated an elbow.’

  ‘I think you should see a doctor right away! You certainly can’t come for the meeting.’

  ‘Ah, yes, I certainly can’t,’ said Mr Kishen, brightening. Every fall has its silver lining.