‘Ira, we have to rule the world,’ he continues in the same melodramatic manner. ‘All Indians are my brothers and sisters. Isn’t that what is written in the Constitution? Tell me, aeem I raaiit?’
He comes back to his desk and settles down in his chair. Examining the rings on his fingers, he says sharply, ‘You will make papers for everyone. If you don’t want to then you may please leave. Yeh sirf some people ke liye we will not do.’
I gaze at him, stunned. His English is bad. Ma would die of a heart attack if she ever heard him.
And his genes have been deep fried in the devil’s frying pan. He knows why I decided to come. Not that I’d told him the reason. However, I did catch ‘peer pressure’ in the welcome speech he gave when I turned up at his office.
If I leave now, Rika will never talk to me. And I can imagine the rest of them saying, ‘Ira, what’s so difficult about doing stuff for others? You are soo selfish!’
I slump back in my chair, feeling tired. I can’t argue with this man.
He is the Anna Hazare to my Manmohan Singh.
The Shobhaa De to my Bollywood star.
The Lalit Modi to my IPL team.
‘Fine,’ I mutter, disgusted with myself. ‘We’re on.’
I look at a set of equations in bewilderment. I don’t understand a word. The chapter on Thermodynamics is 54 pages long. I counted.
How am I supposed to make papers if I don’t understand a word, I wonder sulkily. Tanu bai is staring at me, mightily impressed. Never before have I so willingly sat down to study. That’s what she thinks … that I am studying.
Realizing this is only the trailer and that the IIT, medical and law books are still left, I randomly start marking a few questions here and there.
It is going to be a long day.
‘Have you prepared for the math test today?’ Lavisha asks me chirpily when I come for tuition the next day. Her attitude towards me has improved drastically after I told them I had agreed.
‘What? Which test?’ I ask, bewildered. I am a little tired of all these tests and exams. I spent most of my time yesterday going through dismally fat physics books. It was quite easy, really. I would just select a random numerical, change the numbers and figures a bit and if I felt like it, I would ask them to find the recoil velocity along with instantaneous acceleration. (Not that I’m very clear on what exactly recoil velocity and instantaneous acceleration are, I just liked the sound of them.)
‘I was under the impression that today’s class is for math revision,’ I grumble, hoping Lavisha is wrong.
‘Yes, it is, ass,’ Rika piped up. ‘Only, it’s in the form of a test. A revision test.’
Rika isn’t looking at me. In fact, she’s been deliberately ignoring me since I told her about my last meeting with Amroliwallah. I mean, she was interested in how he looks and all (in fact, she was the only one), though she refused to believe he has a substance abuse problem. (Which he does. Even if the substance is only Five Stars.) She is the only one who doesn’t believe me. Yash and Lavisha totally do.
‘What the hell ya! Which chapters?’ I ask, hassled.
Lavisha replies, ‘Only circles and statistics.’
I grab my bag and rummage through it for my math textbook. I take it out with a flourish.
Lavisha looks at me beadily and Rika is staring hawk-eyed.
‘So,’ Lavisha says, ‘what’s coming?’ ‘I thought you’d prepared for the exam,’ I mutter, trying to search for circles.
‘I mean, yeah, I have, obviously! But I was just hoping … now that you’ve agreed …’
‘I’ve only agreed to give you the IBSE papers,’ I reply curtly. I start reading through a couple of sums.
‘You are seriously going to depend only on her for your boards?’ Rika asks Lavisha.
This touches a nerve with me. ‘What do you mean? You know I’m always correct!’
‘Yeah, but still,’ Rika counters, ‘this isn’t a stupid pre-board or something. Besides, what if one day before our exams you suddenly decide to follow the path of virtue and refuse to give us the paper?’
‘Ira wouldn’t do that,’ Lavisha cries. ‘Would you?’
‘No,’ I say. Straightening up to my full height, I say in the least cheesiest way I can, ‘I keep my word.’
Rika stares at me, lips pursed, for two whole minutes. Every few seconds, she opens her mouth to utter some caustic remark but shuts it again, maybe (hopefully) in the wake of the knowledge that I am correct.
Finally, she sweeps up her books, throws Lavisha and me dirty looks and saunters away.
‘Chuck it ya,’ Lavisha drawls. ‘You know how she is. She wants all of us to breathe after taking her signed approval.’
‘She’s just jealous, isn’t she?’ I ask haughtily.
‘Exactly! She totally is,’ Lavisha says, nodding her crown of shiny hair fervently.
‘I mean, she knows that she can study for ten hours a day while I don’t need to study at all and I will still score more than her,’ I state. It is the truth. ‘She can’t stand it when anyone else is the centre of attention, can she?’
‘No, she can’t ya.’ Lavisha is starting to sound pathetically sycophantic. Before she can ask me for the paper, I smartly stalk off in the opposite direction, towards the class, not even bothering to turn at her desperate call of ‘Listen, Iraa …!’
By the time the test starts, I’ve read exactly five sums from each chapter but this does not bother me. I have only studied ten sums in all but I feel calm. The earlier panic has gone. Seeing other people poring over textbooks and murmuring proofs, theorems and formulae and knowing that just a short while ago I would have done the same doesn’t bother me. Something in me knows that I’m going to do well.
When I see the others start scribbling furiously, I decide to pick up my pen too. I look at the questions and a smile creeps onto my face. I start writing, moving my pen across the paper luxuriously. It feels like I’m writing poetry, not finding the median of the given data.
‘Ira,’ I hear a brusque voice. I swivel around, surprised to hear someone call out my name in the middle of a test.
Standing behind me, her arms folded across her chest, wearing a disgruntled expression, is Shikha ma’am. ‘What?’ I ask squarely.
Her eyebrows shoot up in surprise. I suppose I was a bit ‘indecorous’. But what can she do? Report me to her boss who is eating out of the palm of my hand?
‘How’s your paper going?’ she asks me in a suspiciously sweet tone. Her lips curl into a strained smile. It’s rather surreal. As if we are chatting in a park.
‘Well, I guess,’ I say, still maintaining my impertinence.
Her smile vanishes. She hauls me up by my arm in a very callous manner.
‘Hey!’ I exclaim.
One by one, heads previously buried in their answer papers look up, confused. Shikha tells me through gritted teeth, ‘Collect your things and come to my office.’
I realize she is dead serious. Picking up my books, I trail behind her, a hundred pairs of eyes following me, utterly scandalized. We exit the exam hall and something about her demeanour makes me keep my mouth shut.
We reach her office and she proceeds to calmly sit down in her chair. Without looking at me, she starts flipping through some files. After a long time, she says, ‘Ashok sir believes that it is pointless asking you to sit for revision exams and tests, so he has suggested that whenever you come to Amroli’s you sit in my office and prepare papers or study if you’ve finished the work he’s given you.’
I look at her, deeply astonished. ‘You mean to say I won’t be practising and revising before exams?’
‘Well,’ she says with a tight smile, ‘you don’t really need the practice, do you?’
‘So why can’t I stay at home?’
Her voice becomes nastier. ‘Well, won’t your parents wonder why you aren’t attending classes?’
Oh, they will. They certainly will.
12
I wish he w
ould give me a break. This is inhuman. Sometimes I wish someone would remind me why I am doing this. And now that we’re talking, I wish some people I cannot name would listen to me.
OK, I’ll just say it. I wish Ass-hok would realize that printing full-page ads dotted with images of grimacing toppers is not the best way to keep our ‘secret’.
I can predict question papers. Obviously, there is a part of me that is genetically superior to everyone else.
I peer into the classroom. Our usual nine o’clock class has been shifted to six in the morning for some godforsaken reason. Tanu bai was ready to strangle me bare-handed when she was told to give me breakfast at five o’clock.
I have been locked up in Shikha’s office with Shikha dutifully playing the role of vigilant jailer. The location of Shikha’s office must have been chosen by Ass-hok. The large mahogany doors of her surprisingly cheery command centre open into the IBSE classroom. This enables her to keep her hawk eye on the students, very Eye of Sauron-like. The students, on the other hand, cannot look into her room (since they are made to sit with their back to the door).
Her headquarters are painted a lovely shade of canary yellow. Ass-hok had read somewhere that yellow stimulates the brain. And considering how dumb Shikha has proved herself to be on several occasions, this move is for the best.
Too bad it’s usually just me in her office most of the time. It’s the only room in this godawful tuition class with an AC. And while I’m glad I get to prepare question papers in comfort, I do feel kind of bad thinking of all the other students going through revision in the muggy Mumbai mornings.
I’m not allowed to sit in class. Ass-hok feels a teacher’s guidance is useless for me. I have Gawd’s guidance. So I study on my own. The rest of my time is spent trying to predict his ‘papers’.
My parents don’t know this.
Nor do many students, as a matter of fact. A lot of them operate under the assumption that I have been (gasp!) chucked out for cheating. A majority believes that the reason for my expulsion is that I was involved with (double gasp!) the printer dude.
Yup. That’s what they think. That I hooked up with the pimply and scrawny twelfth-standard guy who works at Amroli’s to cover his tuition fee. And that was how I got hold of the question papers.
Honestly? It doesn’t bother me too much. I have good reason to believe that Lavisha is the mastermind orchestrating my sordid love affairs.
Sometimes I just feel sorry for Rika, Nihar, Lavisha, Nim, Shantanu, Yash … all of them. None of them is ever going to do stuff that comes even close to what I can do.
Rika calls me an alien. But she’s just jealous.
I finally manage to peep into the classroom without being seen, a practice Shikha is quite determined to squash (judging by the way she slapped my hand when she caught me). The students aren’t IBSE students. They are scrawnier, taller and bespectacled. The attribute that helped me identify them is that they all look sapped of energy. Their eyes are dull and they resemble mangoes that have been completely sucked out and don’t have a chance in hell of getting their ‘pulp’ back.
They must be the IIT aspirants.
I am confused. They have their exams in a couple of hours. Why have they been called at this unearthly hour?
‘Where are the IBSE people?’ I ask Shikha indignantly.
She gives me a cutting look. She doesn’t like answering my questions. Initially, she used to snap at me and ask me to concentrate on my work. My standard response was that her trademark pushiness would ‘disturb’ me and my thoughts. This worked like a charm.
She grits her teeth and answers, ‘They have been shifted to another classroom. The IITians have to give their exam.’
I notice how she refers to them as IITians. Every teacher in Amroli’s does. Ma used to say they behaved as if Kapil Sibal had come and promised Ass-hok he’ll get them into IITs.
Ma’s scathing statement held ground earlier. But not now. They have me. They would have to be total dumbasses not to become IITians.
‘You gave them my paper?’ I ask.
Shikha looks pained. Like someone suffering from constipation. She studies her laptop screen. Sometimes, when she gets horribly fed up with me and I see the murderous intent in her eyes reach danger level, she does this. Studies her laptop screen, that is. Probably to look at her bank balance, mentally calculating how much Ass-hok contributes to it, and to convince herself to let go of her heart’s deepest desires. Murdering me would not get her into Ass-hok’s good books.
I send Rika a BBM asking whether we have to come to school tomorrow. Shikha barks, ‘Put that away!’
I ignore her. ‘So, did you give them my paper?’ I repeat.
‘Yes. That’s what they’re solving right now.’
My mouth falls open. ‘You called them at 6 a.m. on the day of their exam to solve my paper! Are you mad? How will they be prepared?’
‘Behave yourself. Ashok sir doesn’t want them to become overconfident.’
Oh. Oh. He doesn’t want them to become overconfident.
Wait, this doesn’t make sense. ‘But he told me he would give them the paper as soon as I handed it to him.’
‘What rubbish!’ Shikha exclaims. ‘They will forget everything in that paper by the time of the exam.’
‘So, he could have made them practise from it every day, no?’ I counter.
‘And you don’t think they’ll wonder why this paper is so special?’ Shikha looks as if she enjoys arguing with me. ‘Making them solve it on the day of the exam ensures that they remember it well. And on the basis of your paper, we have been making them solve similar problems.’
I pout. Like Nargis Fakhri from Rockstar. Is this how they are treating my paper? Do they know how long it took me to prepare it? I had to scour a humongous number of overweight books, my eyes protesting over the callous hours of scanning through math, physics and chemistry questions I didn’t understand a word of. Each of these portly books boasted of over a thousand types of problems. Narrowing them down to a few measly sheets of paper was gruelling work. And I had to change the numbers too.
‘We can’t make them depend completely on your paper,’ Shikha adds. ‘What if it’s wrong?’ She smirks at me.
My phone buzzes before I can stab her with the pencil in my hand.
I don’t know. Some are saying we have to come tomorrow. I’ll check with Harsh.
I don’t know why they even made Rika the vice-head girl. She is my best friend and all, but from a purely professional point of view, she is clearly incompetent.
Shikha is still sneering at me. Realizing that she is in a chatty mood today, I decide to milk the situation for all it is worth.
‘Why doesn’t Ass—I mean, Ashok sir want the kids to know about me?’ I ask in the most syrupy innocent voice I can muster.
Shikha snorts. ‘You are such a silly girl, Ira. You think anyone will believe this rubbish about you predicting papers?’
‘But there were so many rumours after prelims. Lavisha talks about it in class! And there was the biology paper after prelims!’ I cry out. Her tone is extremely patronizing.
‘Oh, please! No one knew anything about your preliminary exams. And no one believes anything that girl says, anyway. Something like this is completely absurd.’
My Blackberry vibrates again. Rika is texting me.
Wanna come to McD when you’re free? It’s the only place open at bloody eight in the morning.
‘Unreal. Weird,’ Shikha adds for good measure.
I flare up. So, according to her, I am weird. My powers are absurd. The current state of events is unreal.
What does she know? She just corrects answer papers. I predict them.
‘Hiiii,’ I sing loudly as I approach Rika and our coterie sitting on a two-seater McDonald’s table and nonchalantly stealing chairs from surrounding tables. For this hour of the day, McDonald’s is boorishly filled. Tables are cluttered with students still reeling from the effects of a six o’clock class
and seeking blissful solace in Coke floats and coffees. The staff looks unpleasantly surprised and yawn as they hand out cups of coffee to a swarm of sleep-deprived students.
‘You never told me she was coming,’ Lavisha accuses Nim.
Nim shrugs and says, ‘So?’
‘So, I am leaving,’ Lavisha mutters and gets up in a huff, swinging her shoulder bag. It makes me wonder how she can fit all her books into a bag that can only be described as an overweight clutch.
‘Are you still upset because of the dress thing? The stains must have come off by now,’ I protest.
The infamous orange stains on Lavisha’s pristine white dress had indeed come off. Lavisha’s mother had called my mother and waxed eloquent on my shocking loutishness.
We didn’t fight over the incident. Though Ma did point out that a chaste glass of Fanta did not deserve an end as brutal as that.
Just kidding. Ma did not find the incident funny. Especially since Lavisha’s mom called in the middle of How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days.
Which is completely unfair. In second standard, when Aathya’s mom had called her to whine over my refusal to play Lock-and-Key with her daughter, Ma had giggled her head off.
In both cases, it wasn’t my fault. Lavisha was just plain annoying and Aathya used to sit on the ground and bawl if she lost. But this time Ma and Papa unanimously agreed that I had behaved awfully and I wasn’t allowed to go to Rika’s farmhouse party when the Polish exchange students were there.
Not that this matters to me. They just smoke and drink. I would be bored.
‘The stains came off,’ Lavisha enunciates in her snootiest voice. ‘But that’s not the problem. The problem is that you’re friggin’ weird.’
With that, she storms out of the restaurant.
I sit down, stunned. The others look even more stunned. Nihar’s hands are trembling and he looks ready to scoot.
But Ira Said Page 11