But Ira Said

by Shreya Mathur

  His eyes finally meet us when Harsh calls out to him with yet another insult. Instead of being offended, he smiles brightly and hauls himself out of the classroom through the window and swaggers over to us, his pants hanging dangerously low. From the big red blob on his shirt, it is pretty obvious that Yash really enjoyed the chicken roll at the canteen today.

  ‘sup?’ he addresses Harsh and me. His eyes travel down to the space between the two of us and he stares at us quizzically.

  Harsh and I follow his gaze. Hina’s pocket-sized friend is standing there, staring at the three of us as if we are a congregation of wacked-out weirdos.

  ‘Why are you still here?’ I inquire somewhat scornfully.

  ‘Because Driver asked me to bring you two to him? Duh,’ she answers disdainfully.

  ‘You know what, sweetie? I am a tenth grader and you are a sixth grader. Watch that mouth when you speak to me,’ I snap.

  Harsh speaks before the imp can answer.

  ‘Listen, go back to Subhash sir and tell him that we are coming,’ he orders the girl in a way that is sure to land him in trouble with the student council on Monday. The girl, however, stands rooted to her spot, glaring at me.

  ‘Are you deaf, girl? Go,’ I say and make a dismissing hand gesture.

  She continues staring at me stonily for several seconds and then turns and flounces away with her nose in the air. As she leaves us, Yash demands, ‘Dude, wassup? Why did you call me?’

  Before I can answer, Harsh cuts me off, ‘Yash, can I borrow your sports uniform? I forgot mine and Subhash sir needs us.’

  ‘Sure. You’re in Blue, right?’ Yash answers, fiddling with his iPod. ‘Then tag along.’ He saunters ahead towards the hostel, singing ‘I wanna be a billionaire …’

  I run towards the left of the court as I hear the loud thwack of the ball against the front wall, my racquet outstretched. Harsh deftly moves out of my way as I swing my racquet hard, aiming for the ball which has now already bounced once, and miss it.

  ‘Hah!’ Harsh yells out triumphantly and then stresses the obvious. ‘I win!’

  I slap my racquet against my leg and trudge outside the squash court, gnashing my teeth.

  ‘So, wassup?’ Harsh says enthusiastically as he closes the court doors behind us. He is flashing his Close-Up smile. He is obviously in a good mood, having beaten me so bad.

  Ignoring him, I gulp down some water and look at him curiously. Has he grown taller? Granted I am seeing him after quite some time. We haven’t seen each other during the Christmas break, prelims and post-prelim break.

  Shantanu beats him. Just by a fraction.

  Shantanu has grey-green eyes. Like Hrithik Roshan and Brad Pitt. I think even Ranbir Kapoor has them. He must. He has to.

  Harsh, Rika opines, has mundane brown eyes. On the other hand, Ma thinks he has intoxicating brandy-coloured eyes. Having been bestowed with the same, Ma likes to distinguish brandy-coloured eyes from the oh-so-common brown eyes by calling them intoxicating.

  Apparently, my eyes fall into the oh-so-common brown category.

  Halting my appraisal of Harsh, I rummage through my stuff to find my lunch box. Rika had brought it during the short break along with news of another ‘full-marks’ in bio.

  ‘Driver wants you two to prepare the forms for the inter-district participants,’ says an irritatingly authoritarian voice.

  It is Hina’s friend. The four-feet nothing is standing in front of us with her hands on her hips.

  Adopting a respect-your-elders stance, I berate her, ‘Don’t call him Driver! He’s your teacher.’

  Harsh, much to my fury, says sarcastically, ‘Yeah, only Ira has the right to call him that.’ He adds contemptuously, ‘After all, Ira only thought of that name. It’s her right!’

  I look at him, deeply offended. Mocking me in front of sixth-standard kids!

  Actually, I am the idiot who decided to refer to teachers in a less-than-formal manner. Being a teacher’s kid, Harsh gets deeply annoyed if anyone dares nickname teachers. He has a hidden suspicion that people might not be too charitable towards his father.

  (Which he is totally right about, by the way. How can you not call his father Ass-nani?)

  Anyway, so what if I nicknamed Subhash sir Driver? It’s not my fault that my driver looks like his lost-at-Kumbh-ka-Mela twin!

  I glare at Harsh, annoyed. His mocking reaction could also be attributed more to his affinity for holding a grudge than his loyalty to the teaching staff.

  And it’s not as if I had stopped talking to him.

  Well, maybe I did.

  At least I am civil. Unlike him. Also, whatever he may think, I didn’t stop talking to him because Rika thinks he is geeky.

  Honest.

  ‘Are you Ira Bhatt?’ Hina’s friend asks me curiously, dropping her hands from her hips.

  I look at the daft girl. Hadn’t she come to my class to fetch ‘Ira’?

  Ignoring my disgusted expression, she continues, ‘Oh my god! Hina says you’re the one who can predict question papers!’

  Harsh raises his eyebrow and looks at me, amused.

  Hina’s little friend looks thrilled.

  ‘And guess what?’ she carries on. ‘You were right about the digestive system diagram! It came! And we all thought Hina was lying!’ She gazes at me, full of admiration and love. ‘I’m Anita,’ she informs me.

  Harsh starts guffawing. ‘Ooh, is that how Ira Bhatt has been getting all those full marks?’ he snickers.

  ‘Feel jealous, asshole?’ I shoot back, clutching my racquet hard to stop myself from damaging his pretty mouth. I turn my attention back to Anita, feeling hurt. Hina, that sneak! I had so trustingly told her that the digestive system would come after seeing her kiddy science textbook.

  Trying to compose myself, I ask Anita, all business-like, for the list of participants.

  She hands it to me reverently and says, ‘Everyone in our class really likes you. Hina told me not to tell everyone about you but …’

  Though I try really hard, I can’t help cracking a smile after noticing that Harsh is rolling his eyes. Anita is batting adulation-filled eyes at me. Nothing could give me more pleasure than someone licking my feet ka dhool in front of Harsh.

  She skips away happily when I thank her for the list, stopping frequently to gaze back at me. She stops at the end of the corridor.

  ‘I don’t think I should tell you this,’ she lowers her voice conspiratorially, ‘but I saw in Driv—I mean, Subhash sir’s file that Ira Bhatt will be the girls’ sports vice-captain.’

  4

  When I was in sixth standard, Ma, fed up of taking up the dreary chapters in my textbooks before my exams, decided that I needed to become self-reliant and revise on my own. Her recommended method had three steps. One: Ask myself the question (in my mind, she later added when she found it impossible to tolerate my never-ending recital). Two: Shut my eyes, cover the answer with my hand (pointless since I was shutting my eyes, but Ma dismissed this by saying it was extra precaution against unintentional peeking). And three: Reel off the answers.

  Almost five years later, I continue to execute the aforementioned directions while studying for my biology prelim test. It instills a strange confidence in me. Every time. Except today. In fact, the whole exercise had been pretty much useless during these exams.

  Because today I was only sure of twenty-four questions in all. Out of the hundreds we have in our textbook.

  Objectives included.

  Biology has always been one of my favourite subjects … for the shameful reason that I don’t have to apply myself to it. I can easily mug up the names of various species of invertebrates and put them on paper. I always feel threatened by the copious amounts of application put in by students in physics and chemistry. Biology is a safe haven from the demands of applying my retired brain.

  Sitting on my bed at 5.37 a.m. on the day of the biology exam, I was puzzled … at what was happening and had happened.

  Why was I
getting worried?

  It wasn’t as if I had been outstandingly prepared for the geography, history and physics exams. In fact, my level of preparation had steadily gone down with each exam. And the less prepared I had been, the better my exam had gone. If Rika was in my place, she would never be this worried.

  Then why was I getting worried?

  After all, I can, well, predict question papers!

  Or so Rika, Lavisha, Nihar and Hina think.

  But, hello, I’ve always been correct!

  Only, it’s just a bit too much to ask a student not to be worried when they realize that they know just one-sixteenth of the syllabus the morning of the exam.

  Even if that one-sixteenth is coming in the exam.

  Hopefully.

  I entered the house to find Ma getting ready to rush off somewhere. She was standing in front of the mirror, harassing poor Tanu Bai with her my-hair-is-a-mess comments.

  I quietly walked towards my room, pointedly ignoring the fact that more than her hair being a mess, she was looking fat. Ma, alas, didn’t let me get away that easily.

  ‘Ira, my hair is fine, na?’ she asked, patting her hair and making it worse. I nodded wearily and resumed my path towards my bedroom.

  ‘Baby, how was your paper?’ Tanu Bai piped up, deflecting me again from my escape route.

  I winced. ‘Good,’ I admitted.

  ‘Hmph,’ she responded. ‘So much tamasha you do bekaar mein.’

  ‘And is this “good” a direct consequence of your fabulous paper-predicting powers?’ Ma inquired, still staring into the mirror and applying what looked suspiciously like the MAC lip gloss Nim had given me as a return gift at her sweet sixteen.

  Realizing the two of them wouldn’t let me get away without solid grilling, I sat down in a chair and said, ‘I guess so.’

  ‘Show me your paper,’ she ordered. Turning away from the black shoes she had paired with beige leggings that made her legs look stumpy, I took out my question paper grumpily.

  ‘Hmm … tell me, which organ produces urea?’ she asked, looking at the paper. I groaned in protest.

  This was not fair. As if a post-mortem after the paper wasn’t good enough, now another one after coming home!

  Tanu bai started giggling when she heard the question. Ma had obviously done a very good job of teaching her the Queen’s English.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I conceded to say.

  ‘Hmm … Which other answer do you not know?’ Ma asked me, miraculously forgetting that she was in a hurry to reach some godforsaken place. Tanu bai too left the bartans she was dutifully manjoing and pursed her lips at me.

  ‘I knew all the answers,’ I cried haughtily. ‘Correctly, I might add!’

  ‘Then why didn’t you know this one?’

  ‘Oh god, Ma, I knew the answer. I just don’t remember it now,’ I said, my voice shaky.

  ‘Fine. Which cells of the pancreas secrete insulin?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘OK. Which diagrams did you draw? Myopia or single Malpighian corpuscle?’

  I said hesitantly, ‘I don’t remember.’

  Ma frowned. She came over to me and started rubbing my back. ‘Chinti, what happened? You say your exam went well. And even if it didn’t go well, it doesn’t matter, OK?’

  ‘You’re just assuming my exam didn’t go well, aren’t you?’ I snapped. My voice rose. ‘Oh my god! You people always assume I won’t do well. You think I’m an idiot, don’t you?’

  ‘Ira, it’s not that …’ my mom tried to pacify me. ‘That’s not what I meant.’

  I was furious by now. For reasons unfathomable, tears had welled up in my eyes and I shrieked, ‘You don’t understand anything, Ma! You don’t know how difficult it is for me. And you and Papa don’t make it any better. It’s not just now. I’ve noticed it before. You always think I’m going to do badly. If I actually fail one day, I’m pretty sure you both will look at each other and just say, “Haan, we knew this was going to happen.”;’

  Ma’s face immediately shuttered over. ‘Ira, don’t behave like this with me! What is so bad about what I said? If you don’t know the answer to any question, obviously I’m going to think you didn’t do so well.’ She turned to Tanu bai and said coldly, ‘Tanu, baby ko lunch de dena.’

  I kept sitting in my chair while Ma banged the door shut and went wherever she had to go. I didn’t feel the need to apologize to her. She never understood how I felt. Papa and Ma always thought poking fun at me whenever they felt like it was completely fine. It’s not that I don’t have a sense of humour. It’s just that after a day in school when a teacher walks past and returns Rika’s greeting, not recognizing me, I would like to come home to some appreciation.

  ‘Baby, why are you so bad to madam?’ Tanu Bai said reproachfully as I settled down to have my lunch. She slapped two rotis on my plate. ‘They are so worried about you.’

  I ignored her and wrinkled my nose at the spread.

  ‘Now tell us, sach-sach, how was paper?’

  ‘I told you na,’ I moaned. ‘Achcha tha.’

  ‘That toh I know,’ she said dismissively. ‘Your paper will obviously go well.’

  I smiled faintly. It was nice to know that someone believed your paper would always go well, regardless of whether you could predict the questions or not.

  ‘Arrey, what does Ira mean?’ she said loftily. ‘It is another name for goddess Saraswati only!’

  Right, of course. It didn’t matter whether I almost had had a nervous breakdown before the exam or not. As long as my name was Ira, aal izz well!

  ‘Toh, it was what you,’ she dropped her voice, ‘said would come?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Hume lag raha tha,’ she murmured. ‘But baby, don’t feel bad. This happens to everyone!’

  I stared at her incredulously.

  ‘See, what happens,’ she explained, ‘is that god … when he borns us, he gives us all some gift.’

  I listened to her, torn between scepticism and curiosity.

  ‘Bhai, now it is up to us if we discover it,’ she said with an air of superiority. Funny, since I was the one who had discovered the gift, not her.

  ‘But remember,’ she said, shaking the Vim ki tikki at me. ‘You will only find your gift when you need it. Like dekho, in that Gulaal serial, you think if she lived in aamchi Mumbai, she would have found water dinbhar? Vaise, nice serial it was, na? Bekaar mein they stopped it.’

  Oh. So this is what it came down to. A ghagra and backless-choli-clad village chick who could discover the location of groundwater in arid areas.

  ‘You did not study pehle se. I know that. Don’t lie. So you needed extra help,’ she spoke philosophically. ‘That is why goddess Saraswati herself decided to help you. You have found your purpose in life.’

  ‘Lekin,’ I couldn’t believe I was lapping up her shit, ‘if goddess Saraswati wants to help me, why can’t she give me a photographic memory or something like that?’

  ‘Photo?’ she asked, flummoxed.

  ‘Means ekdum mast memory. Makhan jaisi.’

  She tut-tutted. ‘See, this is humans ka problem. We are never happy with what god gives us. Aur chahiye hamesha.’

  She grabbed my shoulders and shook me. ‘What you have been given, you should be happy with.’

  I shrugged her off and grumbled, ‘Why didn’t she give me a lifetime validity plan, then?’

  Tanu bai looked horribly confused.

  ‘Hai bhagwan, you don’t know only …’ I said, resigning myself to a very long explanation. ‘See, you know why I cry before every paper?’

  ‘Arrey, that toh madam says ki screw satke hain tumhare!’

  Ignoring the unintentional or intentional jibe, I continued, ‘Because I can’t study. I can only learn five or six questions properly. All the others I forget. Not even one chotu question. So obviously I get scared.’

  ‘Hmm …’ she mused. ‘And then those five or six questions only come.’

  I no
dded, not sure whether she got what I was trying to say. I couldn’t pass every class in my life like this. Learning a handful of questions and being confident that they would come. And it was not as if I remembered those questions for ever. Sheesh, I didn’t even remember what I’d written two seconds after I came out of the exam hall.

  And of course, my biggest fear: what if one day those questions don’t come?

  5

  ‘I’ll come within an hour to pick you up for the sleepover,’ says Rika with a smile.

  ‘God! Imagine how thrilled Shikha ma’am will be to find out you have got full marks in almost every subject!’ Hina is shrill with excitement.

  ‘Dude, Ira, you should, like, open some consultation thingy. You know, you can predict question papers for everyone and charge, like, thousand bucks for each paper,’ Nihar suggests.

  I scowl at Hina and Nihar.

  Turning to Rika, I say, ‘I’m not coming for tuitions.’

  ‘Yeah, and you can name it “Ira Says” or something like that,’ Hina continues dreamily, oblivious to everyone around her. ‘Oooh and the tagline can be: Full paper. Hundred per cent success. Guaranteed.’

  ‘That sounds like an ad for a performance booster,’ says Rika flatly. She turns to me and says meaningfully, ‘Anyway, Ira, if you don’t want to come, don’t. But you can’t stay at home for ever. Shikha was quite cheesed off when you didn’t come during the vacations.’

  ‘I’ll see you in the evening,’ I tell Rika calmly.

  Rika shrugs at me. ‘You know, Ira, everyone will come to know eventually.’

  ‘Not if I don’t want them to,’ I shoot back.

  ‘Everyone already knows!’ Rika cries, frustrated.

  I stalk off towards my building and the last thing I hear is Hina asking innocently, ‘What’s a performance booster?’

  ‘Ah, Ira.’ Papa switches off the TV and turns to look at me. Even Ma quickly closes her laptop.

  ‘You know, Ma, you are never going to complete your next book if you write so little-little every day,’ I tell her.

  ‘You don’t need to worry about that,’ she says flatly. ‘Come here and sit.’ She pats the vacant spot between her and Papa on the sofa.