Yeaaah. His voice gives me the creeps.
‘Their natures, their thinkings are as mysterious as Gawd’s.’
‘I’m sorry?’ I ask, baffled.
He is a paedophile. That’s it. I’m convinced now.
‘I’m sure you must have seen a million cartoons where someone slips on a banana peel. Aaem I raaaiit?’ he continues, unperturbed by the sound of my nervous and panicked breathing.
Where is this going? Why isn’t he facing me? Is he that ugly? And what is that continuous rustling sound?
‘But. Yes, but …’ His voice becomes eerily calm. ‘Have you ever seen someone slipping on a banana peel?’
His hand emerges and throws a Five Star wrapper in the bin next to his chair.
‘No. Just spreading tales of being able to predict question papers,’ he gives a very deep, meaningful pause, ‘does not mean everyone will believe it.’
I draw a sharp breath. Who am I kidding? Did I really expect teachers to believe the word of Lavisha? But what is he getting at?
‘Whaddaya mean?’ I finally blurt out.
‘I mean,’ says he, ‘when someone first hears about your actions, someone cannot help thinking you are getting the papers leaked. Aeem I raaiit?’
I don’t know why my heart skips a beat. After all, this isn’t the first time I have been accused of leaking a question paper.
8
In Kanpur, my school was very close to my house. I studied in DPS, Kanpur, and we’d all known each other a long time, as far back as when I would wail in KG for my mother and Aditi, my best friend, would refuse to dot the i’s in her writing book.
‘Where’s Aditi?’ Aathya inquired while going through the incomprehensible pages of our math book distractedly.
‘She’s gone for debate practice. She’ll be back after the break.’
Lunch had just started and we had spread our tiffin on Aathya’s bench. Aathya had bizarrely decided to pair her aloo puri with her math textbook, one hand busily flicking through the textbook while the other made neat little bites of aloo puri.
Our unit test was to be held just after lunch, in the last periods, due to some glitch in the management.
An odd churning feeling was ensconced in my stomach along with my sandwiches. Unlike Aathya and like the others, I had opted to gossip while chowing down my chutney sandwiches. There wasn’t any need to revise.
For some reason, the syllabus had been deemed easy by everyone. Despite our self-assurance, it was fairly obvious from our idle gossip that our digestive juices were having a hard time working on our nervousness and unpreparedness.
Aathya was the only one who had chosen to read, yes, read her math textbook before the exam. The reason was beyond my limited intellect. I would’ve tried to emulate her and read the book before the exam, but it would have resulted in too much unhelpful last-minute confusion. For Aathya, this ritual resulted in too many full marks.
Also, I didn’t want my textbook to get smeared with green chutney.
‘Aaaargh … I can’t read any more.’ Aathya shut her book with a sigh. I had bitten off a little more than I could chew (literally) and winced at the sudden rush of the slightly bitter, slightly spicy chutney in my mouth. I opened Aathya’s book and casually flipped through the pages till I reached the Constructions chapter.
‘I don’t know why everyone is going on and on about how easy the unit test syllabus is,’ she confessed sheepishly, tearing off a small piece from her puri. ‘I, personally, find it rather tough.’
I totally sympathized with her. I had spent a good majority of my weekends singing along tunelessly to the High School Musical series and blissfully imagining myself to be a math geek like Gabriella.
‘Aaack … the bell’s gonna ring in five minutes,’ wailed Aathya.
I tried to concentrate on 7.8—construction of the incircle and circumcircle of a triangle—while Aathya began her irritating I’m-so-gonna-fail chant. The rest of us groaned in protest. ‘Aathya, you say this before every exam! And you still get full marks!’
As Aathya opened her mouth to defend herself, Vaibhavi asked me, confused, ‘Ira, why are you studying Constructions? It isn’t in the syllabus.’
Everyone was looking at me now. I answered, equally baffled, ‘No, Adhyaru sir said Constructions is still there.’
There was a unanimous ‘No!’ and Aathya laughed nervously. ‘Ira, I think you misheard or something. He never said that.’
‘Whatever, I am studying it.’ I shrugged.
Aathya continued chewing on her puris, eyeing me and Constructions warily. Highly unnerved at the possibility of forgetting to study an entire chapter, she got up abruptly, abandoning her puris, to clear the issue with the first available person after a purposeful stare in my direction.
The closest person was Ashwini. And she was definitely not available just then. Rishabh, Ashwini’s standard-eleven boyfriend, had come to our class to give her a best-of-luck kiss. The two were cozy in their little corner and giving each other furtive kisses. For the sake of the others, they had limited themselves to the cheeks.
Moving on to greener pastures, Aathya turned to Jaya, who was babbling away at ten thousand words an hour, pulled her around and asked her urgently, ‘Listen, is Constructions in the syllabus?’
Jaya staggered back a little at Aathya’s intense expression, but said soothingly, ‘No, Aathya, it’s not there! What gave you such an idea?’
‘See?’ Aathya turned to me and sneered.
Whoa. This girl took her exams a bit too seriously.
I threw my hands up in the air and said drily, ‘OK. Fine. It’s your loss if it comes. I’m just helping you.’
Aathya and I stood in two corners of our classroom with our hands folded across our chests, exchanging furious glares. Just then the bell rang and Aditi entered the class. Aarzoo, to my pleasure, ran towards Aditi and asked her anxiously, ‘Listen, we don’t have Constructions in today’s paper, right?’
‘Umm … yeah, we do.’
Ha! I looked around triumphantly. Who better than the teacher’s daughter to clarify your doubts?
Aathya’s smile had vanished and she snapped at Aditi, ‘Who told you?’
‘Ira told me,’ Aditi said, looking bewildered.
‘And how do you know?’ Aathya whirled around to face me again. For a girl who was so tiny, she sure was intense. Her eyes were blazing and I took a few steps back. Aathya was standing way too close to the blackboard. What if she decided to pick up the duster and hurl it at me?
‘I told you,’ I answered, trying to sound bold and defiant. ‘Adhyaru sir said so.’
I picked up my textbook and told them which constructions I thought were important, in an attempt to jog their memory.
‘When did all this happen?’ Himanshu asked. I looked around and realized with a start that a crowd had formed around Aathya and me. They were all waiting for an answer from me. Some of them had opened their geometry textbooks and were trying to mug up the chapter. Even Ashwini had emerged from her corner, disgruntled boyfriend in tow.
Seriously, what was wrong with Aathya? Even she was allowed to make a mistake once in a while. No one was going to kill her if she lost a few paltry marks.
I looked at Aditi helplessly. Because the fact of the matter was that I didn’t remember when Adhyaru sir had told us. I had just known since the previous night that Constructions was there. And we were going to get half the paper from it.
‘How did you know?’
Everyone was asking me the same question as I waded my way through the crowd of students after school got over. The worst part was that I was now pretty sure about how I’d come to know.
It was the only possible way. I had overheard Adhyaru sir when I went to Aditi’s house on Friday. Adhyaru sir hated it when any of Aditi’s friends came to meet her before exams. He thought we were all going to gang up on him and tie him to his fridge and run away with the exam papers. Total meanie. Not to mention paranoid.
Of course, I never told Aditi this. Aditi’s really sweet. Just like her mom.
I didn’t actually remember hearing Adhyaru sir talk about Constructions. But that’s understandable. I barely remember whether I’ve eaten lunch.
Not that any of this mattered a week later, when I was waiting to see the principal. The whole issue had been blown out of proportion. Aathya, the stupid cow, had barged into the middle school coordinator’s office, shoving her prefect’s batch at the secretary, and launched into a tale of deceit and betrayal. Adhyaru sir, Aditi and I were the chief perpetrators.
Even our doofus of a coordinator found it suspicious that only the math teacher’s daughter and her best friend knew about the out-of-syllabus questions. Furthermore, they knew which questions would come.
He had tried to pacify a fuming Aathya and promised her that he would look into it. Rather than launch a full-scale enquiry and lose precious TV time, he chose to brush it under our school’s already dusty carpet. After a few days, Aathya’s mother, along with an equally neurotic bunch of ‘pedal-pusher’-wearing mothers, turned up to investigate. They demanded that all students be given extra marks as ‘compensation’. Of course, there was no mention of a retest.
It was so scary. They actually ganged up on Aditi and me, their eyes gleaming with sadistic joy, coaxing us to tell them what happened. They must have understood the whole ‘Together we stand, divided we fall’ philosophy we had adopted, because later our coordinator asked me to come to his office alone.
And I cracked. I couldn’t help it. It wasn’t my fault that I’d overheard Adhyaru sir. Only, they wouldn’t believe me, especially after four or five students bore testimony to the fact that they had heard me say exactly which questions would come.
After that I didn’t see much hope for myself. Aathya had once got a substitute teacher thrown out of school because she thought the substitute was rubbish. She made everyone sign a letter saying they wanted the teacher to be thrown out and they wouldn’t sit for their exams if their demands weren’t complied with. So strong was the effect of her rebellion that the teacher had been removed and we were all exempt from that exam.
Everyone was saying that Adhyaru sir was going to be thrown out.
‘See, Ira, it is very difficult for us to believe that you knew half the paper just by overhearing. I do not blame you if you saw some papers when you went to your friend’s house,’ said the principal in a tight voice when I was in his office. ‘Accidentally, of course,’ he said as an afterthought. ‘I’ve called your parents. I will discuss further consequences with them.’
And that was that. I wasn’t thrown out of the school, but it was made very clear that the school would be overjoyed to receive an application for withdrawal at the end of the year. I had become a disgrace.
Adhyaru sir wasn’t fired but, unhappy with the prospect of facing the tiger moms’ snaring jaws at every meeting, he resigned.
There were only two months left for the term to end. Ma’s book became really famous and Papa got a job in Bombay. They never directly said it, but I knew I was the sole reason we were moving. I had become notorious in Kanpur. No school there would’ve taken me.
Aditi never talked to me after that. I had always thought that the shared ‘victim’ factor would cement our friendship quicker than the time gourmint-badi-kharaab-hain takes to form a bond between strangers.
But no one talked to me any more. I was this big social leper.
I’d never really given much thought to how I had known about the paper. All this time, I never once thought about it. But would it have made a difference? I’d repeated my story about overhearing Adhyaru sir so many times to my parents, teachers and classmates that I believed it.
I had always thought of myself as an innocent victim in the Kanpur fiasco.
Till this big ass coaching class maestro burst my bubble.
9
‘But, but. Yesss, I have a but. I am a fair man, Ira,’ says Ashok Amroliwallah with a sigh. ‘I have a conscience. I will give you a chance. Our Indian Constitution says innocent until proven guilty. Aeem I raaiit?’
I remain quiet. There’s too much going on in my mind to decipher what he is saying.
I had lost my best friend’s father his job. I had lost my best friend. I’d pretty much been driven out of the city I loved.
All because of this.
I want nothing more than to run home and spend the rest of my pathetic, cheater-cock life lying in bed.
I so wish I hadn’t come here.
In fact, I so wish I hadn’t started this whole business. Haven’t I learnt anything from Harry Potter? I mean, if you saunter all over the globe brandishing the Elder wand, at the end of the day you are going to die because of the same Elder wand!
Only, I hadn’t even realized that I had become the owner of the Elder wand.
And anyone who owns the Elder wand eventually dies.
I am jolted back to my senses when I hear the squeaking of his chair as it swivels around to face me.
I see a man with a lean and spry body sitting in front of me. The cheekbones of his lean face are high and there are permanent brooding lines on his forehead and between his eyes. He has crow’s feet and wrinkles coupled with a crooked, broken nose. He wears glasses and his eyes are as black as coal. He seems to be beyond the measures of age, middle-aged, young or old.
He takes off his glasses with his fair hands and smiles. Just like one of those evil-but-hot bad guys after telling Superman that he is holding Lois Lane captive.
He has a luscious salt-and-pepper mane tied up in a messy bun, but what catches my attention (aside from his bejewelled fingers) is a sun pendant, made of what looks like topaz, strung on a necklace made of rudraksh beads. So strong is the effect of his pendant that he seems to be emitting this sort of golden glow.
‘Pukhraj,’ he says, noticing my gaze. ‘Yellow sapphire. Not topaaaz.’
Aaack, how does he know?
He continues smiling like a Cheshire cat, giving me tantalizing glimpses of chocolate stuck between his teeth. His tongue emerges to lick away any remnants of Five Star on his lips. If he was a dog, his tail would be wagging madly. But he’s more like a cat as he opens a drawer and brings out a Big Bazaar plastic bag, takes out a Five Star and purrs majestically, ‘Want some?’
I shake my head.
With a relieved smile, he tears open the packet quite easily and bites off a chunk of Five Star.
‘Fame hasn’t corrupted me,’ he says amiably, gesturing at the softboards plastered with paper cuttings. ‘In fact, stardom brings you closer to your true being. Aeem I raaaiit?’
Stardom?
‘Gawd has given me a lot. What Gawd has also given me is sense. And sensibility. Do forgive me if I have hurt you with my previous statements. I will give you a chance. Do you have your chaaemistry book with you?’
Huh?
His smile broadens in a very patronizing Amitabh-Bachchan-meets-psycho-fan way. He takes another bite from the Five Star.
‘Yeah,’ I say cautiously.
‘Ira, our mind is capable of distinguishing the conscious from the subconscious. You, of all people, should know that. Aeem I raaiit?’
‘Your mind has performed supernatural powers beyond the normal. It has delved into the subconscious. But—’ he waggles his fingers at me as he says that, ‘do not get lost in this maya. Take aaouut your textbooook.’
He opens the Big Bazaar bag with the Five Stars in it, taking another bite of the Five Star in his hands, and takes out a meticulously folded paper.
He waves it at me and says, ‘This is a question paper I have prepared for you to guess. Remember, if this paper is not correct, I will have no option but to assume that you chitted somehow. I do not believe in coincidences like this. The only thing I believe in is Gawd’s miracles. I am giving you a chance to show that you are one. Why, once I myself experienced one.’
He waits for me to ask when. I oblige.
‘When, sir?’
&nbs
p; ‘1994. An aimless lad discovers his purpose in life. Education. Enlightenment of less fortunate creatures.’
Oh. Whatever, I think, feeling cheated. Even Tanu bai had better stories of miracles. A cow in her village wandered off into a jungle infested with savage felines at midnight and returned home without a scratch. She continued to go there every night as soon as darkness fell and did the walk of honour every morning. And once when a kid who everyone thought was mute had doodh straight from her you-know-what, he began to speak!
‘That is your purpose in life, Ira! To make full use of what Gawd has given you! Aeem I raaiit? Now show me what you’ve got! Your powers.’
I take out my chemistry book. I don’t understand what I’m doing. Why am I falling into their trap?
‘Uh, what’s the paper format?’ I ask slowly.
He smiles and polishes off his Five Star. ‘Now, beta, if I tell you that, how will I know if you’re correct?’
I firmly grasp my pen. The kind of weirdo he is, he will most probably prepare a ridiculous paper. One of those trick papers made by particularly sadistic teachers.
The words in my chemistry book look like Greek or Latin. I have to prepare a wrong paper. I know that if this paper turns out to be correct, I will be gone. For ever.
Fifteen minutes later I hand him the paper. His eyes widen when he sees it. Before he has a chance to accuse me of being a cheat, I grab my bag and run out of the room as fast as I can. I start sweating profusely and by the time I leave the building, I’m completely out of breath.
I had lied so blatantly, lied to my mother for this? Let that loony Amroliwallah think I’m a cheat. Or a ‘chitter’.
I am not foolish enough to actually write the questions I think will be there. I selected the most random, unattractive questions I could.
I had deliberately prepared a wrong paper.
He can’t do anything. He has absolutely zilch proof! He can take his freaking Five Stars and sod off!
I’m late for tuition. Thank god Ass-hok Amroliwallah is ensconced in the main building and not in my branch. I run up to my class only to be stopped by a stern Shikha ma’am.
But Ira Said Page 8