by Nag Mani
“Around Christmas. The exact date is yet to be fixed.”
“That’s great! So, you guys will be staying here all through December!” The winter break started in the first week of December, which meant that the play party would have the entire school to themselves for almost half a month. For most of the Junior School boys, this could have been the worst nightmare, but for seniors, getting stranded in the school with friends was as much a fantasy as getting stranded in an imaginary place with imaginary voluptuous girl(s).
“Yeah! But I have to get through the audition,” Varun replied, sitting on the railing. “By the way, we are doing the Wizard of Oz and I have been called to play the Tin Woodman.”
“The Wizard of Oz… it’s about that girl… Dorothy, right?”
“Yes,” Varun replied. “Dorothy Gale.”
Rohan had heard about the story long ago. It was about a girl who finds herself in a strange Land of Oz after a cyclone swept her house away. The house falls on a wicked witch and kills her. She is then told by a good witch to follow the ‘Road of Yellow Bricks’ to the ‘Emerald City’ and visit an old wizard who could tell her a way to return home. On her way, she meets the Tin Woodman, the Cowardly Lion and the Scarecrow. Dorothy Gale. And then it dawned upon him that she was the main character of the play and he knew exactly who would be given her role.
He was in fifth standard when he first saw her and the mountains had lost their charm since then. Yes, she was beautiful, outshining even the stars spread across the sky; and like the stars, over the years, he had looked up to her and admired her, yet not as much as spoken to her. She belonged to a different world, that was what his mind said, and she could never be his. He could shout and scream and attempt to reach out for the stars, but eventually, he would fall back, hurt, while they mocked down at him. But this silly heart, when has it followed logic? And his… it always skipped a beat even at the slightest glimpse of her.
“Hey guys!” Ayush appeared around a corner of the Library, a lollipop in his mouth.
“You know what,” Rohan turned to him. “This guy has been called for…”
“Yeah, I know,” Ayush cut in. “Now shut up and listen. The papers are kept in the Resource Room.”
“What Resource Room?” Varun asked. Rohan himself had never heard of it.
“It is a small chamber in the Accounts Section. They have recently converted it to store question papers,” Ayush answered.
“Chamber? What chamber?” asked Rohan. A wave of excitement drowned his sleep and his mind began to race. “What is this school…? Hogwarts?”
“Mrs. Sharma told me about it. She was at the meeting and…”
“And why would she tell you about it?” asked Varun.
“Because I just raised my hand and I was like, Ma’am, this is to bring into your notice that a few boys are finding it very difficult to locate the question papers and that these particular boys would be highly obliged if you could kindly tell them so.” He stared at Varun to express his disappointment. “Of course, she just mentioned it in passing.”
“And how do you intend to break in?” retorted Varun.
“Well, the keys are in the Vice-Principal’s Office, most probably.”
“And how will you break into his office?” asked Rohan.
“Manav is taking care of that,” answered Ayush. Manav had promised Nisha that he would bring the papers. Paper or no paper, they would certainly have scored decent marks, but there was something more important at stake.
“So, guys,” said Varun. “I think I no longer need to study now. Bring the paper and we’ll have it solved by morning. Besties you guys and thanks in advance!”
“And by the way,” Ayush yawned, baring his yellow molars, “Manav will be playing the Cowardly Lion and I am in charge of lights and sounds. And Ma’am wanted to see you. Now I am going to sleep.”
Rohan followed Ayush to his dormitory for a nap, feeling more at ease now, and drowsy. Mrs. Sharma could wait. He was too tired to do anything. He had just got into his bed when a junior appeared at the door. “May I come in? The warden is calling you to the Staff-Room.”
Rohan felt as if he had just gulped molten iron. “What? Me?” He could not believe it. “Why?” The junior shrugged and tried to make an innocent face, certainly aware that he was the bearer of some terrible news.
“Who else was with him?” Rohan asked, desperately trying to make some sense out of it.
“There was a guard in the room, and…”
“And who else?”
“….no one else.”
Rohan knew he could never sleep again. So, someone had been there by the Chapel the previous night. He had been seen. But why hadn’t the guards caught him red-handed? The junior saw the passing expressions on his face and concluded it was better to leave him to his misery and hurriedly walked out. Rohan put on his shoes and went down to the Staff-Room. He had decided to simply deny all accusations. He would have a rough episode with the warden, but eventually the matter would be taken to the principal. He would simply make up some story then, something about having a quarrel with a drunken guard a few days back and insisting that they were just accusing him to show who the boss was. Of course, anyone from his class could come up as a witness. And he could always argue that they had just made it up because had they actually seen him, they would have caught him red-handed.
The warden, Mr. Kapil Kumar, a tall, slim, swarthy man in his late thirties with curly hair forcefully combed back, was busy scribbling something in his diary. A guard stood by a window, lost in thought. Rohan paused to settle his blue stripped tie and put on a puzzled look. “You called me, Sir?”
The warden looked up from his work and eyed his shoes for a moment, his pointed nose sniffing something… probably menace. A pair of unpolished shoes was a crime big enough for detention. He was probably thinking of the best way to present the crime committed the previous night into a file so as to make the case as strong as possible. Rohan tried to stay calm and maintain ignorance as the guard studied him.
“Yes,” Mr. Kumar finally replied and returned to his work. “Mrs. Sharma wanted to see you.”
Rohan felt a wave of relief sweep over him. He tried hard not to smile or get away too quickly. “Err… Sir, where is she?” he asked in the politest tone possible.
“In one of the classrooms. Just look around.” The warden replied and waved his hand to leave.
*
In spite of his drowsiness, Rohan was glad they were going to try again that night. He hadn’t been able to study or sleep at all. He was too excited. Mrs. Sharma had appointed him the manager of the play! His job would be to arrange for practice sessions, take care of props and costumes and most importantly, actively participate in advertisement and fund raising campaigns. This came as a bit of a surprise to him as these tasks were generally carried out by the senior most members of the Society, but who cared! It was only she he had been thinking about for the rest of the evening. He had not even bothered to ask his two friends about their plan for the night.
She was in Class XII, the girls’ House-Captain of Leopold. Spending the last of her school days with her was more than Rohan could ever ask for. But what after she left? He had become so used to her presence that he dreaded to even think about it. He lay in his bed the entire evening, while others studied, imagining and reimagining what it would be like to work with her.
It was past midnight and after hours of careful watch, Rohan, Ayush and Manav had succeeded in locking the warden and the guards. They were again in the long corridor trying to peep through the dark windows of the Accounts Section fended by heavy wooden doors. In the darkness they could only make out a small waiting room with wooden chairs installed on either side. There were three white doors on the other end. The one on the left led to the Dean’s Office and the one on the right opened into the Accounts Office. It was the middle door Manav was pointing a torch at.
“This is the room Mrs. Sharma was talking about,” whispered A
yush.
“Okay. Now let’s get the key!” Manav headed for the Vice-Principal’s Office which was a little way down the corridor, facing the Staff-Room. It too had an old, white, polished door. Two rows of glass slabs were framed above the door and above them, another single frame that could be opened, ran across the breadth. It served as a ventilator and was, currently, closed. The glass beneath this ventilator was broken.
“How did that glass break?” Rohan asked.
“Threw a ball through it this evening,” Manav replied.
“And where is the ball?”
“It’s still in there.” Rohan looked at him in alarm. “Chill! Anybody could have broken it. Juniors are always playing around here. Now let’s get some chairs.”
“Why? To crawl through the ventilator?” Rohan asked sarcastically.
“Yes.”
“Really!” Rohan looked up at the ventilator. Even if one of them did manage to slide through, there was still the problem of landing on the other side while keeping all bones intact. “But who is going through?”
“You,” was the reply.
Ayush and Manav brought two chairs from the Staff-Room and placed them right before the door. Rohan was still searching for words to defend himself, looking at the ventilator and then at his friends. “Now up you go!” said Manav, standing on a chair. Ayush put his arm through the broken glass and began searching for bolts on the other side.
“What? Crawl through the ventilator? Are you insane?”
“Oh, please! Now don’t waste time and climb up.”
“I am not going in!” Rohan protested, looking at Ayush for support.
Ayush seemed uninterested in the conversation. He finally opened the ventilator and signalled Rohan to climb up. Having no option, Rohan pulled himself up and forced his torso through the gap. It was larger than it had appeared and with the other two holding his legs, he began to slither through, lowering himself hands down on the other side, his body stiff with pain. He grabbed onto any gap or projection he could find to keep his weight away from his shins.
“Okay, stop!” he said and grabbed a handle on the door. His eyes had become accustomed to the darkness in the office and his outstretched hands were no more than three feet from the ground. Remembering that there were pieces of broken glass on the floor, he took off his pullover and threw it down. “Let go!” he whispered and the others loosened their grip. He fell on his outstretched hands, tucked in his head and rolled over on the pullover. He switched on a light and looked around.
A large, magnificent table stood at the centre with a matching chair. A name-plate, with the words Mr. D. K. Roy, Vice-Principal sat on the table beside an antique pen-stand. The walls were decorated with trophies. Rohan’s eyes fell on a wooden board hung in a corner behind the table. Bunches of labelled keys hung on it and he soon found a lot with ‘ACCOUNTS’ tag. “Here!” He threw it and all other bundles through the ventilator.
“Okay now. Stay inside. We’ll come back once we get the papers,” Manav instructed.
The room became strangely quiet after they left. Rohan walked around the room for some time and spotted the tennis ball in one of the corners. He sat on the chair and began aimlessly observing the room. A few old school magazines lay on the table. He picked up one. It was a quarterly magazine of the year 1989. He opened it and began going through its black and white photos. The first few pages contained pictures of the annual Fete. There were pictures of teachers and students behind their stalls, another of two men in suit trying their luck on a Wheel-Of-Fortune, captioned Mr. A. S. Williams with his brother Mr. E. S. Chapman. The principal, Mr. Williams was in his sixties and had a strict face and grey, balding hair. He flipped through the pages and saw another picture of the two men standing on a stage with a crew of students in costumes. It appeared that Mr. E. S. Chapman was the director of an annual play the school put up every Founder’s Day.
Then there was this picture, rather the person in the picture that caught his attention. It was of two girls standing next to their Treasure Hunt stall. The one on the left was unrealistically beautiful. He gazed at her in awe. Her beauty almost pinched him. Her hair was parted on one side and combed back. She was thin, almost fragile, and wore a pair of simple black-frame spectacles that made her look sincere and intelligent. She was smiling, and adding it to her intense gaze, it appeared as if she was actually watching the person looking at her picture.
Realising that he had been staring at her for too long, he turned the page. The magazine then switched to articles and Rohan found himself turning back to the picture of the two girls. It had no caption. And before realising it, he was turning through the pages for any other reference of her. And he found another in one of the articles. She was in a few pictures of the girls’ basketball team. K. Khanna. She was in 11th grade that year. Rohan felt an unusual throb in his heart. They at least had some connection. She would probably be a mother now, living happily with the love of her life. He began to search through the pages again.
There were hurried movements outside the office. He stood up, alert. “Rohan!” he heard Ayush call out.
“Got the papers?” Rohan asked excitedly.
“No. There’s a problem!”
“What?”
“That Resource Room… it has a…”
“Wait!” Manav whispered. Then there was jingling of keys and a few seconds later the door swung open. “Come and look!” Manav said.
“What happened?”
“We opened the Accounts Section,” Ayush went on to explain as they walked towards it. “But there was no key to the Resource Room. Instead we found one to the Dean’s Office. We raided it and found another key in a drawer, and there it is…” They had reached the Resource Room. It was open. Ayush pointed his torch at a brand-new steel cupboard inside. It had two additional, high-quality latches installed below its handle with heavy locks over them. “Now, we don’t have keys for that!” Ayush concluded.
“Mrs. Sharma didn’t cover this part, did she?” Manav taunted.
“It might be in the Dean’s Office,” suggested Rohan.
“Nope! We have searched. It’s not there.”
Rohan looked around the room. It was small and dark. A Xerox machine stood in a corner. “That’s where they make copies of the papers,” he murmured.
“I think I’m gonna fail!” mumbled Manav.
“More importantly,” Rohan said as he walked towards the machine, “Nisha is going to fail!”
Manav threw him an intense look, but it was lost in the darkness. Rohan went closer to the machine and in the light of the torch, he saw a basket overflowing with crumpled and torn sheets of paper. “What’s this!” he exclaimed and picked up a sheet. The heading on top said that it was Unit IV English question paper for Class VII. However, the print was misaligned. “Hey! These are discarded copies of the question papers!” Rohan felt his excitement soar.
Ayush and Manav ran to him, and without wasting a moment, they began searching the pile. Soon, Manav had found their own English paper. It was crumpled too and the print ran off the page, but there was no problem in understanding the questions. Within ten minutes under shining luck, they had found all other papers. They put the remaining sheets back in the basket and locked all the rooms they had opened. Rohan went inside the Vice-Principal’s Office and Ayush locked the door and threw in the keys through the ventilator. Rohan put them back in their place and grabbed the pullover Ayush threw in. The two boys pulled him till he got hold of the ventilator frame and then he pulled himself up. Ayush stood on the chairs and supported him while Manav climbed down and helped him descend. They put the chairs back in the Staff-Room and unlocked the guards and the warden. Most of the boys were waiting for them. It was the silence of the night that kept them from screaming till the mountains came down.
By 6 AM everyone had the solution. It was decided that nobody would attempt more than they usually did. Rohan, Ayush and Manav were excluded. The papers were leaked to save them the la
bour of preparation and not get unrealistic marks, which would certainly make the teachers suspicious. The girls could get the paper only after breakfast as their hostel was outside the school’s main campus. They only had fifteen minutes to go through, and Nisha utilised that time hugging Manav and at one point, she pecked him on his cheeks which resulted in so much hooting from the boys that invigilators came inside before schedule to kill the commotion.
2. THE PIANO
“Eyes on the ball, damn it!” screamed Ayush.
Rohan quickly looked away from the balcony, but too late, he missed the ball again. He had spent over an hour in front of a mirror, combing his hair again and again and yet again and it only seemed to worsen each time. And just when he was all set to head for the Auditorium, he was informed about a football match, Edward House, E.D., versus Leopold House, L.P. Cursing, he changed into his football-kit and went to the Field. He didn’t want to miss the audition. The match started but he couldn’t take his eyes off the balcony. The audition had begun and students were strolling on the balcony, two storeys above the Field, with scripts in their hands while some merely watched the match, blue and yellow waves chasing a white sphere. He had spotted Nisha, but she wasn’t there.
The match went on. Clusters of students watched from the Stadium Steps, occasionally cheering for their house. It was a pity sight as compared to school matches when it was compulsory for every student to watch and participate in organised cheering. Students of Class XI led this cheering, punishing anyone who refused to shout and cheer at their command. The mountains echoed with their shouts and slogans and drums. But Rohan did not need spectators to cheer him. All he wanted was one person watching him from the balcony. No team scored in the first half. But with a sudden change of luck, L.P. scored within five minutes into the second half. The match intensified.