‘I have been looking at apartments to rent around here and I found one I liked. I plan to move in over the weekend. It is just a two-minute walk from here. It is in the new building behind this,’ Ron declared, as he descended the stairs. Veda was just behind him, followed by Kanika.
‘Oh, that’s good! You can get here faster then!’ said Veda.
‘Yes, that’s nice Ron,’ Kanika said.
When they walked into the Sankalp classroom, they stopped short, staring in disbelief at the sight that greeted them.
Chapter 23
October 1996
Sankalp, Pune
‘Blimey! What’s happening!’ exclaimed Ron.
‘What the hell,’ said Kanika.
Veda just gasped in shock.
Not a single student was on the mat for circle time, discussing the thinking questions, as they were meant to be doing. Instead, they were chasing each other around the pillars, screaming, laughing, shouting—and it was deafening. It was as though the entire classroom had turned into a playground.
The teacher’s table lay overturned and the attendance register lay wide open with the pages fluttering. The pen holder that once stood proudly on the table lay like a fallen soldier in a battleground, with the pens and pencils lying scattered in all directions. A student stood on the teacher’s chair, trying to reach the rope that stretched across from one pillar to another. The drawings made by the students were usually pinned to this rope, like colourful flags. Not a single drawing was on it. All of them had been pulled down and were fluttering about in the classroom. A few students had got hold of the aerosol spray that they used to make fake foam for special occasions such as parties, and were spraying it everywhere, tossing the can to each other and taking turns, screaming as they did so. The chessboard lay open. Some children were grabbing fistfuls of the chess pieces and throwing them at each other as missiles. Another set of students had grabbed the coins of the carom board, and the board itself had turned into a musical instrument, with one child holding it upright, and another using a ruler to drum on it.
The small bottles of poster paint lay overturned, the paints of various colours spilling out and staining the mats. Craft material that was stored in cardboard boxes lay strewn across the classroom. There were ice cream sticks, colourful confetti, glitter paints, glue, small shiny stars, crayons—all of it scattered everywhere, contributing to the wild spectacle that was unfolding before them.
Veda desperately looked around for the student volunteer to whom she had entrusted the class. At last, she spotted her amidst the chaos. She lay flat on the ground and there were two kids pinning her down. One was pulling her plait and the other was holding her legs down.
Kajol was trying to yell at everyone, asking them to behave. Sanju was laughing in delight as he tried to jump up and catch the bubbles that a kid was blowing with a bubble-maker.
Kanika went to the bell that was suspended from the roof and rang it loudly. Then she yelled, ‘STOP IT IMMEDIATELY, ALL OF YOU. WHAT NONSENSE IS THIS?’
Her voice echoed and boomed in the open space. She succeeded in getting their attention. The children froze, pausing in mid-action, like a tableau.
‘ENOUGH NOW. IS THIS HOW YOU BEHAVE? GO . . . SIT . . . DOWN!’ she yelled, her face red with anger.
That was effective, and they obeyed.
The student volunteer leapt to her feet.
‘I . . . I am so sorry. They just wouldn’t listen to me,’ she muttered, looking pale and visibly shaken.
In the weeks that Veda had been here, she had never seen the students behave this way, this out of control.
‘It’s okay. You can leave. We will take it from here,’ said Kanika, and the student volunteer left hurriedly.
Kajol and Zinia straightened the mats. There was a deathly silence in the room, as the students took their places.
Kanika said absolutely nothing. She stood still, glaring at the students one by one. Veda and Ron stood on either side of her.
The children looked down guiltily; they wouldn’t even glance up.
Still Kanika said nothing. She wanted the message to sink in loud and clear that this certainly was not appropriate behaviour. She wanted the children to apologise by themselves, without her prompting them to do so. They were old enough to know better than to behave this way.
The children kept quiet, and the silence lasted for more than three minutes. The children were growing more and more uncomfortable by the second, and yet Kanika did not budge.
In the end, it was Zinia who spoke up. ‘Didi—we are very sorry,’ she said.
Kanika raised a hand, silencing her.
‘What happened? Who started this nonsense?’ she asked.
Everyone kept quiet. But a few children turned to look at Sanju.
‘Kya—mujhe kyon dekh rehe ho? Yahan picture hai kya?’ he asked, staring back defiantly at them.
‘Sanju, could you please stand up and translate what you just said into English?’ said Kanika.
Sanju stood up but kept his head down.
‘Look at me, Sanju. What did you say? Say it in English, please,’ Kanika repeated.
‘Didi, he started it,’ said Sanju, pointing to Sharan.
‘I didn’t ask you who started it; I asked you to say it in English,’ Kanika insisted.
‘Errr . . . Why . . . are you seeing . . . at my face? Is . . . there a picture here?’ Sanju murmured in a low voice, hesitatingly.
‘No. That’s wrong. Why are you all looking at me? Is there a movie going on?’ That’s how you say it,’ said Kanika softly, in better control of her anger now.
‘Didi, Sharan said bad words about my father. I told him to keep quiet. But he repeated, didi. Then I got angry. I threw a carom coin at him. Sorry, didi,’ he said.
‘Who took out the party foam? And who took out the chess pieces?’ Kanika asked.
Slowly, the story came out. Sanju had thrown a carom coin at Sharan but missed. It had hit one of the other kids. Two of them had grabbed chess pieces and had thrown them back at Sanju. Before anyone realised it, a fight had broken out. Then one of the children, in a bid to separate them, had sprayed foam at them. And soon, the whole class had got into a mad melee.
‘The volunteer didi was helpless as nobody listened to her; they did not even listen to me,’ Kajol added.
‘You know, now we don’t have colours to do our crafts and painting. You spilled everything,’ said Kanika.
‘Sorry, didi,’ said the class in unison.
Kanika said that there was no excuse for bad behaviour.
‘You know that Ron bhaiya here is from England. Do you want him to go back and tell the people there that this is how Sankalp kids behave? Like wild beasts?’ she asked.
‘No, didi,’ they all said.
‘Do you want him to think well of us and our country?’ she asked.
‘Yes, didi,’ they replied.
‘Then let’s show him how fast we can get this classroom back in shape,’ Kanika challenged them.
She said she would set the timer for eight minutes, and everybody had to get involved and restore the classroom to what it had been.
‘Ready? Go,’ said Kanika, as she took out the timer and pressed it. The children, eager to make amends, co-operated. They were genuinely ashamed of their behaviour. They knew Kanika was a no-nonsense person. She was firm, and yet compassionate, and the children loved that about her. They had also grown fond of Ron and Veda.
Before the timer rang, the children had restored order to the classroom. They knew where each item belonged. The only thing they couldn’t fix, were the stains on the mats made by the poster paints.
‘Good. See, when you co-operate and behave well, how much better it is?’ asked Kanika.
She spoke to them about wastage and told them about how destructive behaviour led to no good. She said that she would pay for the cleaning of the mats.
‘No didi—I will pay for it. I am sorry, it is my mistake,’ said Sanju.
<
br /> ‘How will you pay Sanju, you don’t have a job,’ Kanika reminded him.
‘No, didi. I have a job now. I clean the vessels in a hotel, didi. I have money. I will pay,’ said Sanju.
Kanika did not know that Sanju had taken up a job.
‘When did you take up a job, Sanju? And why?’ she asked.
‘Didi—Sanju is now working for a goonda,’ said Kajol.
‘Goonda? What do you mean?’ asked Kanika.
Kajol told Kanika that Sanju’s stepmother had taunted him and refused to give him chicken pieces in the curry that she had cooked, saying that it was a ‘waste of money’ to feed him. Insulted, Sanju had not eaten the meal and had walked out. That very evening, he had gone to an eatery in the locality and taken up a job. The eatery was owned by a man who was known to be on the wrong side of the law.
‘Didi, he pays me my salary on time. I work hard and I earn well,’ said Sanju, jumping to the defence of his employer.
Veda felt bad for Sanju when she heard that. These children had to bear such a lot of hardship at a tender age, and yet they shrugged it off and just got on with life, without making a big deal of it. How stoic they were, she thought.
The rest of the class went off smoothly. The children, chastised by Kanika, behaved well. Ron and Veda worked with them in small groups, as they usually did. Veda could see why Aparna was worried. She was right about her concerns. The performance of many of the students was below par, and if things went on like this, there was no way this class was getting a cent per cent result.
Later, after the class was over and the children left, Kanika asked Veda and Ron if they wanted to grab a cup of coffee.
‘Yes, after that session, I could definitely do with one,’ Ron replied.
They went to a cafeteria that was basic, with practical, minimalistic decor. Ron got himself a samosa and bit into it.
‘Mmmm, this is so delicious,’ he said, as they all settled down. Kanika had got a coffee for herself and Veda.
‘Listen, folks. We need an action-plan. Let’s draw up a schedule,’ said Kanika, as she took out a notebook and a pen from her bag.
Over the next fifteen minutes, they drew up a detailed plan that involved splitting the entire class into small batches. They divided them according to their levels. They decided that each of them could handle four children at a time, and they would have one-hour sessions. In two such sessions, between the three of them, each child in the class would receive an extra hour of coaching. That way, the three of them would have to put in two additional hours, and each child would have to spend only an extra hour at the centre.
Kanika said that it would be difficult for the children to spend anything more than an hour, as many of them had chores at home. Some of them, like Sanju, had taken up jobs to supplement their parents’ income. At home, none of these children had an environment where they could study. The men of the house came home drunk, there would be fights in the family, televisions would be blaring, younger siblings would be noisy, and there would be many other things like festival celebrations, or brawls—common in these areas—that were an impediment to their studying at home. Hence, all the studies that the children did had to take place in these extra sessions that Ron, Veda and Kanika would start taking.
Once they had drawn up the plan, they decided to start the sessions in two days. The children would have to take permission from their parents and make a few adjustments to be able to come to class.
That night, when Veda was alone with Bhuwan in the privacy of their bedroom, she told him about the extra classes that she would have to take. She also told him about her promotion and how, from now on, she would be paid.
Bhuwan had got back from work at 9 p.m., which was early by his standards, and after dinner, they had retired to bed. It had taken Veda all her will-power not to blurt out the new development at the dining table. She didn’t want to tell her mother-in-law. She knew that the old lady would be dismissive of it. But Bhuwan’s reaction was not much better.
‘Oh, that’s nice,’ Bhuwan said. ‘Are you happy?’ he asked.
Veda sighed. She wished he would show a little more enthusiasm.
‘Of course I am, Bhuwan! I am elated. This is the first time in my life that I will be earning. It is my first job. But it does mean I will probably get back home well after 8 p.m. on some days and your mother will be annoyed,’ she said.
‘Don’t worry. I will take care of it,’ said Bhuwan.
‘Thank you, Bhuwan. It means so much to me,’ said Veda.
‘It is the least I can do, Veda,’ he said.
Veda tried to reach for his hand to squeeze it, but he had already turned towards the reading lamp and opened his book.
Veda turned on her side, wondering why there was such a massive disconnect between her and Bhuwan. Was it the lack of sex? Why was he not enthusiastic about anything she did? His behaviour puzzled her. It was not like he did not care. He very much did. Then why were his responses always so measured? Couldn’t he be excited for her? Veda lay awake for a while, thinking about it, trying to see it from his point of view. She concluded that perhaps, for him, it was not such a big deal. After all, he earned ten times more than what she would be paid at this job. Still, not everything in life is about money, Veda thought, as she drifted off to sleep.
The next morning, over breakfast, Bhuwan calmly informed his mother that Veda would be home later than usual once the extra classes started.
‘When is it starting, Veda?’ he asked her.
‘I think we start tomorrow,’ replied Veda.
She was glad that he had brought up the topic with his mother instead of leaving it to her.
‘Already you are out of the house from 7.30 a.m. Now you want to stay back further?’ Padma Devi asked angrily.
‘She has taken this up, Ma; she cannot quit now. The board exam results are important for these students. And besides, she is also getting paid for it now. She is no longer a volunteer. She has been absorbed as a teacher,’ Bhuwan defended Veda.
Veda shot him a look of gratitude.
‘Oh, when did that happen? And why didn’t you tell me?’ she asked Veda accusingly.
‘It happened only yesterday, Ma. And we are telling you now, aren’t we?’ said Bhuwan.
It was the first time that he had used ‘we’ when talking to his mother. Veda noticed it and was happy. It made it sound like he was on her side.
‘Okay, okay. I hope this will not continue forever. And now, does that mean I will have to cook dinner and wait for you?’ asked Padma Devi.
‘Ma, I think we should employ a cook. Veda is working now and is earning as well. It will be difficult for her to come back and cook. Also, I was thinking about how it will be unfair on you. You can get complete rest that way, and you don’t have to enter the kitchen at all,’ said Bhuwan.
Padma Devi considered this for a minute. She was pleased at the suggestion. She had not liked the idea of cooking for her son and her daughter-in-law and waiting for them to return from work. She liked going out with her friends to temples, for musical evenings and bhajan recitations from time to time. This arrangement was perfect for her.
‘Hmm. We will have to find the right cook, someone who cooks well. Kanti behen was mentioning the other day that her neighbour’s cook was looking for a job. I shall speak to her tomorrow,’ said Padma Devi.
Veda could have kissed Bhuwan then. In a single stroke, he had solved the problem. She met his eyes and mouthed a ‘thank you’ to him.
Then she smiled as he smiled back, and they carried on with their meal.
Chapter 24
November 1996
Pune
Dear, dear Suraj,
How are you my friend? I hope you are doing fine. Your loss and what you are going through is so deep that anything I want to say to lessen the pain you feel seems inadequate. You are one brave person, Suraj. You have so much strength.
I was very happy to read about your work. You seem to have compl
etely taken to it, like a duck to water. I know you must have heard this many times, especially from your father’s colleagues, but your parents would be so proud of you right now. Their souls must be smiling at you.
I think it is only when you experience deep sorrow that you truly appreciate the power of kindness. I was overwhelmed to read that your father’s colleagues are inviting you to their homes, and sending home-cooked meals for you. I can also understand what a strain it must be for you to pretend that things are fine. But, I guess, it is their way of coping with the loss too. They want to feel they did something to express their sorrow at the loss of their colleague, and that way, they can feel connected to someone who is no longer there, through their son. I once read a novel about a girl who loses her entire family in a famine. She is the only one who survives, and she is all alone. She longs for her family. The descriptions of the sorrow she experiences affected me deeply, and your situation now reminds me of that girl in the novel.
On a different note, the situation at home has improved a great deal. We have now employed a cook who comes twice a day. He makes breakfast and lunch in the morning, and in the evening, he cooks dinner. I don’t have kitchen duties anymore. My MIL decides the menu and gives him elaborate instructions. The cook is a sweet chap by the name of Niranjan. He is only too happy to discuss the day’s menu in detail with my MIL. It is an arrangement that suits me. It frees up a lot of my time in the morning.
Right now, as I write this letter, the delicious aroma of breakfast being made in the kitchen is wafting in. Bhuwan is on yet another work-related business trip, and since I have a bit of time on my hands before I leave for Sankalp, I am utilising it well in writing to you.
Right now, at Sankalp, I am neck-deep in work. We are giving extra coaching to all students who are going to appear for the Class 10 exams.
Kanika and Ron (my colleagues at Sankalp—I might have told you about them in my previous letter; we have now become friends) and I, are working hard. Ron is from the UK, and he has rented an apartment near the office complex where Sankalp is based.
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