‘Ira, come with me,’ she says solemnly.
I follow her, my shoulders slumped. It is so much easier in school. Some twelfth-standard prefect stands on our floor, stopping all the late-comers and sending them to the coordinator’s office for telephone calls to parents and notes in the school diary.
But I’ve never been taken because the prefect would always turn out to be a friend of Rika’s, angry at the management for making them stand around like a watchman when they could be using their time in much more enjoyable ways—like being locked up in the loo with someone.
Here, Shikha ma’am herself stands to catch all latecomers. Intelligent as she is, she doesn’t call our parents or anything silly like that. She just asks us to take extra tests in the week. And you don’t want to know what happens if we flunk them.
I am standing in her office alone.
I ask her disconcertedly, ‘No one else is late?’
She doesn’t acknowledge my question and picks up the phone. She says hello and holds the receiver towards me. ‘Sir,’ she says.
I fold my hands across my chest and mentally prepare a nice speech about how I am not going to entertain any of his lunacies if he doesn’t have solid proof.
Besides, my mom is a writer. She has her own column and knows journalists. I can blast him in a national daily distributed to 1.6 million people in India.
I am about to tell him this when I remember one of the points in their brochure: ‘Expulsion of students is completely at our discretion. Concerned parties should note that we are free to withhold our reasons for expulsion.’
What if they expel me? Ass-hok Amroliwallah isn’t going to conduct some deep investigation to prove my guilt. He doesn’t need to. He’ll find ten students dying to take my place.
I mean, how bad can it be? Disgraced at two institutions on charges of alleged cheating?
Losing my previous fiery enthusiasm, I meekly take the phone. Well, I guess I shall simply have to beg him not to expel me.
‘Hello,’ I say gingerly.
‘Ah, Ira? My apologies for what happened. I know sometimes my personality does have an overwhelming effect on people. Aeem I raaiit?’
I grit my teeth and say crossly, ‘What?’ There’s no way anyone can mistake that for the tone of someone ‘overwhelmed’ by Ass-hok Amroliwallah. Shikha ma’am glares at me indignantly.
‘What is it, sir?’ I amend.
‘Ira, my sincere apologies for not believing you. I should have trusted you. After all, Shikha is so convinced of your abilities.’
I almost drop the phone when he says that.
‘Your paper is correct. Absolutely correct. I can’t believe it. And you did it in front of my eyes!’ He is almost squealing with excitement. ‘I apologize. You are not a chitter. You are one of Gawd’s miracles!’
Why, thank you, I almost add dryly.
My insides are twisting as he speaks. I didn’t write the correct questions! I always write questions I like and that definitely does not include a short note on coordinate covalent bonds.
How can the paper be right???
‘So,’ his voice becomes smooth and I can totally imagine him leaning back in his chair and detangling his hair with Livon, ‘as we discussed, your gift is unique and that’s what makes you precious to your friends.’
I draw a sharp breath. What does he mean? That they only like me because of this?
Well, yeah, none of them showed this much interest in you before, a tiny voice in my head says.
Except Rika, I try to convince myself.
‘Gawd is great. We should be grateful to him. Aeem I raaiit?’
‘What are you trying to say?’ I ask.
‘What I mean is, it is your duty as a fellow miracle to serve Gawd’s purpose,’ he says. I can almost see him proceeding to pick at his teeth before opening his huge packet of Five Stars. His voice becomes urgent and he says, ‘Help me. Work with me. No one needs to know. You make the papers. I will distribute them.’
I can’t utter a word after he says that. Letting out an outraged, ‘Youuu …!’ I bang down the phone and march off to class.
Turns out that isn’t a very good idea.
Because as soon as everyone realizes I have come in, they all become quiet. Even Joseph sir, aka Joey, who had looked up in shock at the pin-drop silence in the room, gazes at me in wonder.
‘Sorry, sir,’ I mutter, mentally adding, Your jerk of a boss is a total choo—
‘Pssst … how does he look?’ Rika whispers, shoving Nihar off the bench to make space for me.
‘Shut up, you bitch!’ I almost holler. ‘You’re really going to act as if everything is fine and normal?’
Her eyes widen. What she says next isn’t in such a low voice. In fact, it is loud. Very loud.
‘What is wrong with you? Don’t you realize I am helping you?’
The entire class turns to look at us. It is weird. It is like the time Sohail was dared by Rika to take off his pants between classes and swing them around saying ‘Yaaaaahooooooo!!’ (And he actually did it!)
‘Now, calm down, calm down,’ Joey begs us from the front of the classroom.
‘I will not calm down,’ I say, just loud enough for only Rika to hear.
Rika says, ‘Why are you behaving as if I’m your enemy?’
A number of scathing replies fill my head, but I choose to ignore her.
Towards the end of the class, Rika asks me quietly, ‘So, what really happened?’
‘He wants me to make question papers for him,’ I answer, still outraged.
‘And you said …?’ Nim joins the conversation.
Nim, Shantanu, Lavisha and Nihar are all looking at me with naked expectation and hope in their eyes.
‘No! Obviously!’ I exclaim.
‘Why?’ Nihar asks.
I back away from him a little. Not only because of the stinky anti-itch cream his mother has recently bought him, but I still feel weird after his earlier outburst.
Trying to block his extremely pungent odour, I think of an answer. I can’t really tell them. They will never understand that this ‘gift’ of mine had spoilt my life so comprehensively two years ago that I had to flee Kanpur.
‘Why should I do it?’ I ask defensively. ‘It’s chit—I mean, cheating.’
‘No, it’s not, you ass. It’s helping your friends,’ Lavisha pipes up eloquently.
‘Isn’t that just another term for cheating?’ I ask.
‘No, it isn’t! And if you think it is, you can always go and become friends with Anamika,’ Nim says smoothly, well aware of how Rika and I had become friends.
God, the two-faced sneak! I look at the others pleadingly. Their expressions give away their stance.
‘Why should I do it? It’s not as if I’m getting anything out of it,’ I say in a tone of finality.
Which they don’t get. Just like Joey doesn’t get that screaming ‘Who’s talking?’ and eyeing us all murderously while holding his piece of chalk as if it’s a lethal weapon is not going to make any of us stand up and say, ‘Me, sir!’
‘You want money or something?’ Rika exclaims disbelievingly.’
Okay, I didn’t mean money but interesting thought …
‘That’s soooo cheap,’ Rika says, wrinkling her nose. Trust her to form opinions about me before I have even told her everything.
Anyway, Rika isn’t the only one who thinks I am cheap. Even Lavisha turns around and throws me a dirty look.
I get fired up after that. How dare they judge and patronize me?
‘You know what’s cheap? The fact that you people would rather ostracize me for not helping you than actually earn good marks by studying! You are taking advantage of me!’ I finish triumphantly.
‘Wow, Ira! Nice to know this is what you think of us,’ counters Rika haughtily.
Meanwhile, Joseph sir finally zeroes in on us as the culprits. He throws the chalk at Nihar (something I wouldn’t do if I were in his position—everyone knows Nihar ea
ts chalk) and glares at us.
‘Rikaaa,’ I ignore Joey and wail. I don’t know why. It is like a reflex action for me, backing away from my statements if they upset her in any way.
She huffs and puffs, ignoring me and concentrating on what is being taught. The rest are looking from me to her, not comfortable with the two of us bickering.
‘What did you do there?’ Nihar asks carefully some time later as if he is afraid I will tear him apart any second now.
I take a deep breath and look at them. Finally I say, ‘He made me prepare a paper in front of him.’
‘And?’ Shantanu prompts me. Lavisha and Nim, who, a moment ago, had given up on me and started to follow what ‘Joey’ was saying as if their entire lives depended on it, immediately become interested again.
‘And it was correct,’ I finish after a moment’s hesitation.
They all stare at me, wide-eyed. Nim starts chewing on her pencil and Nihar scratches himself with his textbook.
Rika is still looking at me dubiously. ‘I thought you are so against this that you would go there and talk about how it is all complete and utter rubbish,’ she says. ‘And that you would prepare the wrong paper.’
I stare at her incredulously. ‘How did you know I would do that?’
Rika perks up when I say that. ‘Oh, it’s just common sense. You know, once you told me that when you were in seventh and you were taught Reproduction in Plants, your class went on and on about sexual methods of reproduction. And …’
‘And what?’ Shantanu interjects, looking bored.
‘Uff, and,’ Rika mutters, ‘her classmates are all sick like Nihar and they finally asked the teacher whether he’d had … Anyway, later some teacher asked Ira what had happened and Ira acted completely clueless. See, you’re good at wriggling out of tricky situations. That’s all I meant.’
‘So, did you …?’ Nim asks me.
‘Yeah, I selected the wrong questions. Or technically, not the wrong questions. Just questions I didn’t like, if you know what I mean,’ I blab.
‘Like questions you wouldn’t normally choose?’ Rika asks.
I nod, wondering whether I’ve done the right thing by telling them.
‘Ira, what’s this rubbish you are watching?’ Ma asks me, annoyed.
I barely hear what she says. It seemed that fate had played a cruel joke on me when I switched on the TV and found myself glued to Sansani Khez Khabar—a girl studying medicine in Delhi had hung herself in her room. She had been caught cheating during exams. Rather than facing expulsion, she had decided to ‘gale lagao maut’. Both her parents were hi-fi surgeons who had studied abroad.
It is gory stuff. At least for me. Think about the reporters who have to cover stories about a kid hanging herself because she was caught cheating.
And then a disturbing thought occurs to me. What if one of my friends flunk because I refused to help them? And then they …
No, I immediately chuck the thought from my mind. None of them is so bad that they would flunk.
Anyway, even if they do, they can always switch to IB …
‘Change it na,’ Ma cries. ‘It’s so depressing.’
Instead of changing the channel, I turn off the TV and start checking my mail.
Ma continues, ‘Ira, I tell you, you’re lucky you have parents who aren’t forcing you to do engineering or medicine. See what happened to that poor girl!’
I nod briefly. My parents are blissfully unaware of my rendezvous with Ass-hok Amroliwallah. They assumed all the tension and stress etched on my face was due to exams.
It would be better if I phuto from this place as fast as I can. Now that the ‘prediction thing’ topic was closed, my parents had started on the monotonous ‘Beta, you have to decide now if you want to do arts or science …’
Honestly, doesn’t she know I have more serious things to worry about?
‘See, Ira,’ Ma states in her no-nonsense voice, ‘we have absolutely no problem with what you want to do or become. Even if you want to take up arts and become a writer or something.’
This is my mother’s fondest dream. That I will also become a writer and we will be like Nayantara and Gita Sahgal.
‘You can do anything you want,’ she bulldozes on, ignoring my expression of complete and utter disinterest. ‘Except politics, engineering, acting and fashion designing.’
See, this is her problem.
Not that I want to do politics. Or engineering. Or fashion designing. Or acting. It’s just that she has an opinion on everything. I don’t think she would like it if I declared my desire to help Ashok Amroliwallah conquer exams.
Even if not doing it meant being ostracized (God, I love this word. It sounds so cool. I picked it up from our history chapter on nihilists in Russia. Rika would make a very cool nihilist.) by everyone I know.
And she knows we can’t change schools. Anyway, where would we go? No place in Mumbai. And Ma and Papa want either Delhi or Bombay now that I have to do my twelfth and college. And I can’t live in Delhi. Delhiites call pani-puri golgappa.
I let my mother talk. She is happiest when she is allowed to talk without any interruptions.
I surf the net aimlessly as she talks, till my eyes stop at a mail. From Ashok A.
To: Ira Bhatt
From: Ashok Amroliwallah
Subject: Offr stll valid
Ira beta,
We wll pay u. thnk of God n frndz. I do undrstnd if u dnt wnt parents 2 noe.
Ashok Amroliwallah
Founder and Head
Amroli’s Academy
Premier coaching class for IIT-JEE, AIPMT, CLAT, ICSE, CBSE, I BSE, IB, A-levels
This e-mail communication and any attachments may be privileged and confidential to Amroli’s Academy Limited and are intended only for the use of the recipients named above. If you are not the intended recipient, please do not review, disclose, disseminate, distribute or copy this e-mail and attachments. If you have received this e-mail in error, please delete the same along with all attachments there to and notify us immediately at [email protected]
He has guts.
I mean, does he still think I’ll agree to this whacky scheme of his? This constitutes harassment. I should take him to court. For mental trauma and character assassination. What kind of teacher is he? Actually, he isn’t even a real teacher. He’s a tutor. And a very manipulative one.
Is this who the Ashok Amroliwallah is? Actually, I shouldn’t be surprised. The signs were everywhere.
You know how all advertisements of products meant for guys always have the same message—that if you use this product, you’ll get lucky tonight. They always show a guy going home with ten girls stuffed in his car after he uses that product. Why? Because that will have the biggest impact on them.
That’s how this guy promotes his classes, using the thing that would have the most impact on students. If you don’t come to Amroli’s, you are going to fail. Forget about your future if you’re not here. We unearth diamonds from coal.
And getting in is tough. You have to go through admission tests with special books published to study for them.
His advertisements talk about students who left Amroli’s thinking they were very clever and didn’t need Amroli’s any more. They failed. Why? In my opinion, it’s not because they don’t get the same kind of superior teaching elsewhere. It’s because they get too dependent on Amroli’s.
It is like a drug. When a kid becomes so used to his notes being written for him, answers being prepared for him, and basically being spoon-fed, it’s very difficult for him to become self-reliant again.
A few years ago, kids and parents would have been embarrassed to say they needed tuitions. Now it has become a matter of pride to say you go to Amroli’s.
‘Ira, is that whole drama over?’ my mom asks suddenly. She has been staring at me for some time. I must have looked really stressed because I can see worry lines on her face.
‘Huh?�
��
‘Your whole prediction phase?’ she asks.
‘Uh-huh,’ I say casually, avoiding her eyes.
I feel bad. My parents are really nice. They don’t deserve to have someone like me as their daughter. A good daughter would have told them the truth and they would have sorted everything out. And she’d probably come first in class without the help of a weirdo.
Like Aisha.
And here I am, too scared to talk to them.
‘We are really worried, Ira,’ Ma says. ‘Tell us if something is wrong.’
Those two months had scarred me. She doesn’t understand that. I can’t tell her. The two of them are going to think it’s my fault.
Which it is.
10
I don’t believe it. I’m sitting in a corner at Rika’s party.
And it isn’t taking place on a yacht, by the way. Apparently Shah Rukh Khan’s son gets seasick.
Also, I’m not sucking some guy’s face or snorting whatever Nihar snorts in the compound behind their building.
I am alone with my glass of Fanta. And I don’t even like Fanta. It makes my tongue and teeth orange, but then you never know what Nihar might have added to the Pepsi or Coke.
It’s been almost a week. Ass-hok hasn’t mailed me since then. In fact, no one has contacted me since then. Our study leave for the boards has started and I’ve been sitting in my house and actually studying. (Fortunately, not predicting. I guess it’s only before exams that I can do that shit.)
I can’t believe Rika isn’t talking to me. Shalini aunty called to invite me to the party. She must’ve known something was wrong because she was all ‘you silly girls don’t realize the importance of friends.’
Seriously? Can I laugh?
The party’s really nice that way. Way better than the parties I went to in Kanpur, where people would burst the khoi bag on top of the cake and give us a Nestlé Munch as a return gift.
‘Hi, Amira,’ I hear a voice saying.
I turn to greet Aisha. She is tugging uncomfortably at the neckline of her clinging dress which I’m sure her mother must have forced her to wear.
‘Oh, you’ve been invi—’ I bite my tongue before I can say more. How rude can I be?
But Ira Said Page 9