‘Iruuuuu,’ Lavisha shrieked, startling me. I steadied myself against the wall as my thudding heart cursed the bespectacled girl in front of me who had almost ensured my end with her disquieting yelling and/or insistence on ungainly nicknames.
‘Whaddya think is important? Huh??!!’ she intoned frantically. ‘You always know—’
I held up my hand to cut her short.
I peeked at her textbook. She was studying soils. Hmm, I thought, Ms Deepika had said laterite and alluvial soil were important. Or had she? I opened my mouth to say the same but heard myself say instead, ‘Soils is not that important. But do sandy soil properly.’ Maybe because that was the only one I had done properly.
Lavisha hurried away, satisfied with my answer.
I rushed in the opposite direction, searching for Rika. She was standing alone in a corner, looking sick. I went up to her, swimming through the nervous currents of students. Just as I reached her, the bell rang and everyone around us started shrieking.
Rika looked as if she was about to cry.
I hugged her hard. Not to sound clichéd but for once we were both at a loss for words (not Karan Johar-style, when one of the femme fatales on his show says something outrageously catty, but the kind a parent is when their teenage child storms off after saying something impossibly rude and makes them realize the child ain’t li’l any more. Basically, like my mom was when I informed her that Yash had given Rika a Swarovski pendant with the date he proposed to her engraved on it. Nobody has ever bought anything for me. Not even a packet of Lays).
Rika silently took out her pencil box from her bag. It was new. The bag, not the pencil box. She must have been really hassled by this exam if she hadn’t even mentioned the new bag to me, I thought.
‘All the best.’
‘Same to you,’ I replied. As she scurried towards her classroom, I added, ‘Listen, if you have time, revise causes and effects of inflation!’
‘Chinti! My picture is in the papers!’ Ma said in an excited voice as I entered the house.
I took the paper from her to read the interview. I scanned it quickly, searching for my name while mentally praying that Ma hadn’t said anything embarrassing about me, like the time she had admitted on TV that the antics of Avika, the five-year-old granddaughter of Alok and Rupa Saharia, the protagonists of her book, had been inspired by me. Incidentally, Avika’s antics included lustily singing the chartbuster song ‘Humma Humma’ from the movie Bombay at weddings and funerals.
I couldn’t walk around the school for more than a week after that interview was aired without people breaking into ‘Humma! Humma! Humma, Humma, Hummaaa!’
‘So, how was your history paper?’ she asked me after rolling her eyes when she realized what I had been doing. Ma always gets annoyed when I do that.
And I don’t know why she gets annoyed.
I mean, it isn’t as if I am embarrassed by her. Of course not. It’s just that she can be a bit embarrassing sometimes. Like that time we went to Lawrence & Mayo to get new specs for Papa and discovered them selling a six-thousand-rupee frame for only a thousand in a surprise clearance sale. Ma had pestered me, ‘Ira, are you sure you don’t need specs? You’ll never find such good ones for this price. Can you see everything clearly from the last bench? You know, there is nothing wrong with getting specs … Even Shah Rukh Khan wears specs.’ Eventually, I had to run out of the shop and barricade myself in the car till she had finished. Ma, not surprisingly, bought the frames, vaguely claiming that she or I would eventually need them one day.
‘Ma, you won’t believe it,’ I started excitedly and dumped my bag on a dining table chair, ‘but you know what?’
I paused for a second, waiting for a suitably eager expression. Ma obliged me and said, ‘Yes?’
‘I can predict question papers!’
Ma didn’t look very impressed. She just raised an eyebrow quizzically.
‘No, I’m serious,’ I said earnestly. ‘Before each exam, Lavisha always comes to ask me what’s important and—’
The doorbell cut me off. Ma got up to open the door and said cheerfully, ‘Hi!’
I craned my neck and saw that it was Aisha Durrani, my neighbour. An overweight seventeen-year-old girl, she was an ex-student of Thoburn and Hurst. Both her parents had studied in Thoburn and Hurst and she had been thrown into the school at the minimum age limit allowed.
‘Umm … aunty, actually, you know in the English section of the CLAT exam, I had some doubts. So, um, if you are free can you help me with a few questions?’ Aisha asked timidly.
Aisha and her parents are as similar as chalk and cheese. The most famous divorce lawyers in India, they are hugely popular in society parties for obvious reasons. Aisha, however, courtesy her large frame and doormat nature, was bullied by the entire school. The day Thoburn and Hurst gained affiliation to IBSE and students and parents realized that the gates of junior colleges had been closed to them for ever due to their late results declaration, Aisha had fled from the school, claiming that she had to attend her parents’ old junior college.
No one at the school really liked her anyway.
‘Sure,’ Ma replied. ‘Come on in.’
‘Hi, Aisha,’ I greeted her. Aisha smiled at me while my gaze travelled to the pile of books she was carrying.
‘I’ve just come back from Amroli’s,’ she explained apologetically.
My mother and I nodded understandingly. I too went to Amroli’s. Amroli’s was India’s biggest coaching class, a decade-old money-spinning enterprise that coached students for every exam from CBSE and ICSE to IIT-JEE, AIPMT and CLAT. Since IBSE’s inception a few years ago, Amroli’s had very charitably taken up our cause too.
‘Amira?’
I looked at Aisha, hiding a smile. Poor, fumbling Aisha was so used to adding an ‘umm’ before everyone’s name that Ira sounded like Amira and Sujata aunty sounded like Amsujata aunty.
Aisha would probably call Rika Amrika.
‘Amira? Umm … can I have that book?’ She pointed towards my elbow. I’d propped my elbow on an Amroli’s Crack the CLAT English book.
I gave it to her and started flipping through the pages of Amroli’s Crack the CLAT GK book.
‘You know what, Aisha?’ Ma said mock-seriously. ‘You should seek Ira’s help. Ira has just discovered that she can predict question papers.’
Aisha looked around uncertainly and asked, ‘Really?’
Eager to prove my tried and tested abilities, I said, ‘Yup. Ma thinks I’m just fooling around but I really can. In fact, tell me, when is your next test?’
‘Amira, I have tests every day. But I have a major test next week. It’s an—’ she paused for a second, ‘Ashok Amroliwallah paper.’
Oh. Ashok Amroliwallah.
We both maintained a one-minute silence.
It was just polite. All the students at Amroli’s observed the unwritten rule of a minute of silence after his name.
Ashok Amroliwallah is the founder of Amroli’s. Today, he enjoys the same air of mystery as Osama bin Laden did. Maybe even more.
‘I’m quite worried about that paper,’ Aisha babbled on. ‘I mean, everybody knows how tough his papers are …’
No one knows much about Ashok Amroliwallah. His question papers? Yes. Him? No.
It is said that when Ashok Amroliwallah was young, he was amongst the millions of aimless and jobless lads in India. A mediocre student, he blamed the pathetic education system for his failures. Realizing that what the Indian youth lacked was proper guidance, he started conducting free tuitions for kids in Jalgaon, his hometown. His students fared brilliantly in their exams and soon the docile but desperate mothers of Jalgaon started stalking him with their rolling pins in tow. He eventually succumbed to their demands, but charged a hefty amount. His fame spread and after two years of earning quite a few lakhs and evading income tax, Ashok Amroliwallah opened a branch of Amroli’s in Mumbai. The rest, as they say, is history.
Today, after getting the
ir B.Ed., a number of teachers try to get a job at Amroli’s and make actual schools their back-up plan.
The thing about Ashok Amroliwallah, though, is that no student other than his first batch has seen him. There is no conclusive proof of his existence. He refuses to shoot for posters and advertisements, preferring to rule over his vast empire sitting behind a table and preparing the deadliest of practice papers. He is the Aditya Chopra of the coaching class world. And every competitive exam instituted on earth is his DDLJ.
‘OK, cool,’ I said. My gaze fell on the question: Which is the southernmost point in the Indian Union? I repeated it to her.
‘Amindira Point?’ she guessed.
‘Right! And tell you what? This will come in your exam,’ I said cockily.
She just gave me a doubtful grin.
I spent the rest of the afternoon marking random questions in her Amroli’s Crack the CLAT textbook.
3
‘Another hundred?’ Shantanu asks me with an envious edge to his voice.
I nod half-heartedly, looking away from my geometry paper.
Full marks again. In every paper, from geography to geometry, except languages. Thankfully, my paper predicting powers could not get me full marks in languages (though Ms Carol did say she had never given any student such high marks. She was so pleased she even showed us the new tattoo she had got on her upper arm).
I know I should be grateful and everything. Trust me, I am. Ecstatic would be more appropriate. It’s just that what happens next isn’t conducive to any enthusiasm.
‘So, can I see your paper? I have a doubt in one question,’ he continues, eyeing my paper strangely.
I hesitate. Asnani sir is really strict when it comes to students matching their answers with other students’, especially the full marks category papers. Shantanu waits, baffled by my vacillation. I crane my neck and look at Asnani sir. He is explaining with a sigh to a teary-eyed Lavisha that he can’t give her marks for drawing a figure which was already given in the question paper.
Heck, what’s with me? Only Harsh, Asnani sir’s son, follows that stupid rule. And of course, that cow, Gopu. Why am I being stupid then?
I hand him the paper. He flips through it, his grey-green eyes searching for the debated question. He stares at the answer for some time, cross-checking each step with his own. He is gazing at it intently, looking like Superman would if he spotted an error in his plan to save the world.
Rika calls my ability to equate every real-life situation with a pop culture reference pathetic. But I can’t help it. Rika stares at us from the other corner of the room. I turn red and look away. Her eyebrows are wiggling and she begins mouthing (I think), ‘Ira and Shantanu sitting in a tree. K-I-S …’
I stick out my tongue at Rika. Unfortunately for me, Shantanu notices.
‘Umm … that was for Rika,’ I answer idiotically.
‘Uh-huh,’ he nods sceptically and looks over his shoulder at Rika. Rika, annoying as she is, looks right back at him, grinning.
He shoves my paper back into my hands and asks me in that same peculiar voice, ‘So, how have you, like, got all these full marks, huh? Like, every subject, right? I mean, wow!’
I smile and shrug my shoulders.
Great. Now Shantanu thinks I’m a nerd. One of those really terrible nerds who study day and night and deny being nerds but go ahead and get the ‘full marks’.
And then claim to have spent the eve of the exam watching John Tucker Must Die.
(Which I totally did before the math exam.)
‘OK then, bye,’ he murmurs, sticking his hands in his pockets, and walks away.
Just like that. Without even asking me why I haven’t replied to his SMS-es, called him or pinged him during the post-prelims two-week break.
‘Excuse me, sir?’ a mousy voice interrupts the clamouring in our class. ‘Subhash sir wants Harsh and Ira.’ Asnani sir glances irritably at the petrified little girl (whom I recognize as one of Hina’s friends) and then looks at Harsh and me. He growls, ‘First give me your papers.’ Both of us walk towards his table with our answer scripts.
I sneak a peek at Harsh’s paper. He yanks it away from my gaze and throws me a dirty look. But not in time for me not to notice that he too has got full marks. In any other school students would have griped about this and whispers of ‘partiality’ would have flooded the classes, but not here. Harsh is, as grudgingly as I admit this, one of the brightest students in our class. I would’ve said the brightest but thankfully there is no ranking system in our school. Had one existed I would happily jump off my balcony, looking forward to eternal union with Mr I-shit-on-the-Merc’s offerings.
Asnani sir smiles as he sees my paper. ‘I always knew you were an intelligent girl. Keep studying like this!’ I smile back, feeling wretched. Asnani sir emphasizes the ‘Excellent’ he has already written on top of my paper by underlining it again. I wait for him to do the same for Harsh. Instead he just gives him a kind smile and motions towards the door.
Poor Harsh.
We both leave the classroom and follow the little girl quietly.
‘So why do you think Driver has called us?’ I politely ask Harsh in an attempt to initiate small talk. Driver, aka our sports teacher, has a tendency to pull students out of class for no apparent reason.
He ignores the question. Stopping abruptly in his tracks, he says a very rude word which even Rika wouldn’t have said in front of that little girl.
‘Harsh!’ I gasp.
What is with this guy?
I mean, I do know that even after two years of sweating it out every day after school with Driver, Harsh and I aren’t exactly on speaking terms but he doesn’t have to hurl abuses at me every time we meet. I ain’t that bad.
We used to get along pretty well. He is almost as good as me in squash. (No, not bragging.) I met him at a squash camp at Thoburn and Hurst. Amongst the branded crowd that goes to Thoburn and Hurst, Harsh was a refreshing change.
But once I became familiar with the school and its people I realized it wouldn’t be a bad idea to keep away from Harsh. I wasn’t trying to be mean. Only, he took it the wrong way and got it into his head to be at his rudest best around me.
I’m formulating an insulting if not witty retort when I notice a strange trepidation in his eyes. His mouth is ajar and he kind of staggers back, seeking support from the window behind him. He stands there, his long limbs stretched in front, and finally meets my bewildered look, breathing heavily. ‘I forgot to wear the sports uniform.’
That’s it?
I almost fall laughing. ‘You are such a nerd.’
There is only one thing wrong uniform translates into in teacher speak—punishment. I always used to be the one picked and chucked out of class unmercifully for sporting the wrong uniform. But Harsh Asnani, model student? Our adarsh vidyarthi?
I give him a once-over and note his perfectly knotted tie gleefully. Wrong shoes? Check. Wrong pants? Check. Wrong shirt? Check. Right expression? Check.
I know it is against the spirit of Thoburn and Hurst to rejoice in the misfortune of a fellow Thoburnite but… mwa ha ha ha ha. It is infinitely soothing to my troubled soul to see Harsh panicking, thinking of ways to bail himself out of this situation. And don’t even get me started on the sheer pleasure of hearing Harsh ask me to stop giggling and make myself useful. Especially when he clenches his jaws and grits his teeth so hard that for a second I’m worried they are going to chip, or worse, break.
Which would be a tragedy because I always thought Harsh would make a very good Close-Up model. He has this perfect pearly-white set of teeth. And these deep Shah Rukh Khan-esque dimples. And his lips are never chapped. In fact, his entire mouth area is very pleasing. Too bad he wants to do law.
I consider a boy’s mouth and teeth very important criteria when rating their appeal. And that is exactly why I disapprove of Yash, Rika’s boyfriend. However, my remarks on this imperfection of Yash’s fall on deaf ears. Rika thinks there is absolutely
nothing wrong with Yash’s yellow, crooked teeth. But of course, she doesn’t deem them to be yellow and crooked. And she doesn’t think Harsh has the most gorgeous teeth on earth. She thinks they are just okay.
It’s no wonder that Pranithi, Harsh’s alleged girlfriend, gets upset when anyone else (OK, a girl) sits next to him. However, it is beyond me how any girl, even Pranithi, can be Harsh’s girlfriend.
There is a limit to the number of times you can hear him talk about Roger Federer. I mean, he doesn’t even play squash. He plays tennis. Harsh is such a traitor.
‘You know, if you want I can always ask Yash for his sports tee. He lives in the hostel,’ I hear myself saying.
‘Really? Can you?’ he asks me warily. I nod earnestly, still surprised at myself.
Harsh reverses his direction and I follow him to Yash’s class.
We stop outside the classroom window and I peep inside and give a sigh of relief. There is a teacher in the class but she is busy adjusting her dupatta like a shield against the swarm of angry students buzzing around her. They are holding their answer sheets in their hands like upset aunties who have just been cheated of ten bucks by the kiraana shop. Oh, good. All clear.
Harsh looms over my head, trying to see through the window, and flattens me against the wall (effortlessly, I’d say, considering how absurdly tall and skinny he is).
‘Back off,’ I snarl and elbow Harsh in the stomach. ‘You are squashing me.’
‘Ow! What the—wait, he’s there! On the last bench.’ Harsh points at a nonchalant and serene Yash, sitting on the last bench, tapping his feet leisurely to the music on his iPod.
‘Pssst … Yash! Pssst …’ I hiss. Yash is in his own world, oblivious to the cacophony enveloping the class. I call out to Angela who, having just discovered a discrepancy in her answer sheet, rushes to join her comrades, leaving me high and dry outside the window. Nobody responds to our vehement jumping and pointing. Luckily our booming insults and waving hands are clouded from the eyes of the teacher by the flock of students mobbing her.
But Ira Said Page 3