Babyji

by Abha Dawesar

  After she finished writing on the board she faced the class again. Her pallu was still slightly off her shoulder, revealing her collarbone and the full length of her neck. My mouth watered the way it did when I was hungry. Vidur looked up and stared at her as well. I rubbed my face on the sleeve of my shirt so that I could turn to see Chakra Dev. He was staring at some point under her face, possibly her bosom. I turned back, and under the pallu one could make out the shape of her breasts. I wondered if she had sex with her husband and how she looked under her clothes. After class finished and Mrs. Pillai left the room, I turned to Vidur and asked, “Do you think she’s sexy?”

  Vidur maintained a disinterested look and said, “She is attractive.” This was a big admission. He would never admit to anything more, even if he thought so.

  Chakra Dev was hovering around and heard us. He came over to our desk and leaned across it, his dirty elbows digging into my school diary. I glared and pulled it out from under him. Ignoring me, he addressed Vidur. “I spent the whole period thinking what it would be like to fuck her.”

  “You shouldn’t talk like that about a teacher,” Vidur said, his pupils dilating.

  “Oh! Come on, be a man!” Chakra Dev said.

  “Can you please move from here?” I said in an even voice. I hated his intrusion. I hated the fact that because he was a guy he was free to think as he wished and could dare to express himself.

  “You’re such a bitch,” Chakra muttered. He pulled his weight back and stood up.

  “What did you say?” Vidur said sharply.

  “She is such a bitch,” Chakra Dev spat out loudly. Some other people in the class turned to see who was talking.

  Before I knew what was happening, Vidur had shoved the desk in Chakra Dev’s direction and jumped over me to where he was standing. Vidur held him tight by the collar as if he were going to strangle him.

  The sounds of desks scraping across the floor pierced the room as Ashu and Satnam cleared a path to Chakra Dev, following Vidur’s lead. I had not seen Vidur get angry before. A vein on his temple was pulsing. He was thin and not very tall. Chakra Dev towered over him, but right now Chakra looked scared of Vidur, whose knee was poised to give Chakra a kick in the pants.

  “Fucking asshole,” Vidur hissed.

  Satnam and Ashu had grabbed Chakra’s elbows and were twisting them behind his back.

  Chakra Dev winced.

  “What did you say again?” Vidur asked.

  “Sorry,” Chakra Dev muttered.

  “Say it again,” Ashu said.

  Vidur yanked Chakra Dev by the head and said, “Say it to her.” “I’m sorry, Anamika,” he said, not sounding the least bit remorseful. I wanted to give him a sharp kick in his stomach.

  “Don’t ever talk like that about Mrs. Pillai again,” I said angrily. Ashu and Satnam tightened the twist on his elbows.

  “I won’t,” he whined.

  “She’s as old as your mother,” I said to Chakra.

  “Sorry,” he said again, this time with real remorse. There was sweat on the sides of his cheek where his coarse hair was sprouting. He was definitely hurting.

  “Let him go,” I said to them.

  Vidur brought his hand down from Chakra Dev’s collar. Satnam and Ashu let their hold go with some reluctance. They had enjoyed their power. Neither boy was very big. Chakra Dev could have totaled all of them individually, but all three were too much for him. He went back to his seat without looking at me.

  Everyone in class had stood around watching the spectacle. Vidur pushed the desks back to where they had been. Sheela came to our desk and spoke to me.

  “Are you okay? What did he say?” she asked.

  “Oh! He just called me a B,” I said.

  “Why?”

  “I told him to get off my desk because he said he wanted to fuck Mrs. Pillai.” I wanted to hear myself say the words “fuck Mrs. Pillai.”

  “Is he crazy? She’s a B,” Sheela said emphatically.

  “Stop it,” I said.

  “You like her, don’t you?” Sheela said.

  “She’s a great teacher. Who else has offered to give us all tuition?”

  “Please. It’s all for show,” Sheela said.

  “If there’s one thing about Mrs. Pillai that even you have to admit, it’s that she doesn’t do anything for show.”

  Vidur, who must have been listening to our conversation, said, “Anamika is right.”

  Hydrogen Sulfide walked in just then, ten minutes late, and put an end to the group discussion. In her typically dour manner she told us what to focus on from the next three chapters. Then she wrote her phone number on the board and said, “That’s my number.”

  After Hydrogen Sulfide’s class we had recess. I went up to Sheela’s desk.

  “Am I still invited to your house when your parents are gone?” I asked, flirting.

  “Only if you stop Mrs. Pillai-ing all the time. Mrs. Pillai this and Mrs. Pillai that,” she said, crinkling her nose and sticking out her tongue.

  I shrugged. The faces she was making made my desire for her evaporate. I said I had urgent work to do and left the classroom, leaving Sheela to Vidur. I went to the block where the junior school was located and went to the headmistress’s office. The recess for the junior school was an hour earlier than ours, so the kids were in their classrooms and the building was calm. Mrs. Nyaya Singh was sitting alone in her office.

  “Ma’am, may I come in?” I asked.

  “Anamika, what a surprise! I don’t think you’ve been here since you left Class V.”

  “Ma’am, I’m sorry to disturb you,” I said. The headmistress had always liked me. When I was in the junior school I had won the annual trophy for the best All Rounder of the Year, and the headmistress continued to tell the kids even now that the Head Prefect was an All Rounder. I knew that during the height of school intrigue, when Prefects were to be named, Mrs. Nyaya Singh had recommended me. She had said that I was the unanimous nomination of all the teachers in the primary school. Mrs. Pillai had told me this. She and Mrs. Singh took the same school bus.

  “What brings you here?” Mrs. Singh asked me.

  “Ma’am, I know a divorced lady with a son. She has a lot of problems because her son goes to a school near the father’s house. She is hoping to move him here so that he can live with her.”

  “I remember this case. It’s Mrs. Adhikari, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Beta, the problem is that we can give midterm admission only in exceptional cases.”

  “But ma’am, it is exceptional. You could consider this case on humanitarian grounds,” I said.

  “I can look into it again,” she said.

  “Ma’am, the mother is suffering,” I said, practically pleading now.

  “For your sake I’ll look again, Beta. Ask her to call me next week.”

  “Thank you, ma’am.”

  “Have you decided what you are doing after school?” she asked me.

  “I will take the IIT exam, ma’am. I am sure I will get in,” I said without flinching. A less-than-perfect answer now and Jeet’s chances would be jeopardized.

  “Excellent! Good luck, child.”

  “Thank you, ma’am,” I said again and walked back to my class from the Primary Wing.

  Vidur was sitting all alone in the classroom eating his tiffin.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked.

  “Where did you disappear?”

  “Just had some work,” I said.

  “I wanted to talk to you about Chakra Dev,” he said, looking perturbed.

  “Thank you for what you did. You didn’t need to,” I said.

  He went red and brushed his hand past his face as if it was nothing.

  “I think he likes Sheela,” Vidur said.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “He asked her to go to the canteen.”

  “Did she?” I asked.

  “Of course not,” he said.

&nb
sp; “Where is she?”

  “She went with Ashima.”

  “So what’s the problem?” I asked.

  “He has her phone number now. I think he can’t be trusted,” Vidur said.

  “That crossed my mind, too,” I said.

  Vidur shook his head as if it was a shame. I looked at him. His face looked funny.

  “Vidur, do you have a crush on Sheela?” I asked suddenly. It hadn’t occurred to me before.

  He didn’t make eye contact with me but said, “No. No.” He denied it too much.

  I bent my knees a little so that I could look him in the face and said, “Please tell me the truth, Vidur. You like her, don’t you?”

  He looked down at the desk and then looked up at me and said, “Please don’t tell her.”

  This was a problem. I wished it had been someone else he liked. There were other attractive girls in the class. I didn’t want to think of what could happen now.

  “I won’t tell her,” I said, sighing.

  We went to get a drink at the watercooler. A couple of young boys stood around. Only one of the several taps on the cooler was working, and the pressure was very low. I had to keep my head bent for a few minutes to get a proper drink. Vidur drank after I was done. The bell rang, and a herd of boys approached us, bringing dust from the PT field. Before anyone reached the watercoolers, Vidur and I finished and walked out of the alcove where the watercoolers were located. At the same time, from behind us, Vidur and I heard a tremendous explosion. I whirled around.

  A massive firecracker the size of a grapefruit, orange and green in color, had gone off two feet away from me. The boys who had thundered in from the playing field immediately backed off. Vidur looked sharply down the corridors and went running in one direction. The firecracker had burnt fully. I shrugged and walked up to it, kicking it into a corner. Seeing that it had been spent, the boys jostled one another and formed a huge queue in front of the watercoolers.

  I saw Vidur walk back, his hands clutching the necks of two boys. He was dragging them with tremendous force. I remembered the day of the investiture ceremony for the Prefects. I had been dead certain that Vidur would be made a Prefect, but though twenty boys and girls were chosen, he was not one of them. The teachers had made a huge mistake.

  “It was these two,” Vidur said, shoving them under my face. He let go of their necks and gave them each a wallop on the head. They brought their shoulders up instinctively and bent their necks. I raised my hand a little to stop him from whacking them again.

  “We didn’t do it,” one of them whined.

  “They were the only ones hanging around when we were drinking water,” Vidur said.

  “Who lit it?” I asked. I hadn’t noticed anyone hanging around.

  “We didn’t,” they both said. I had no evidence whatsoever. Even if they had been hanging around, there was no proof they lit the bomb. I stared at their faces to see if I could pick up any signs. I looked them up and down to see if they were in correct uniform. A small piece of paper the same color as the firecracker was stuck to the shoe of one of the boys.

  I shouted toward the entrance of the watercooler alcove, “Someone hand me the burnt firecracker.”

  A few seconds later a boy came with what little remained of the firecracker. It was wet and covered in dirt, since the floor of the watercooler area was always slimy. I didn’t want to touch it.

  “Hold it,” I said to one of the boys. He held out his hand and took it.

  Word about the incident seemed to have spread. Kids popped their heads out of classrooms. Before it disintegrated into a real street show I decided to take the kids to the princi. They seemed to me to be entirely guilty.

  “Look, I am taking you to the princi’s office. You can tell him what happened,” I said.

  The boy with the telltale evidence of the firecracker on his shoe spoke. He pointed to the other boy and said, “It was Sanju’s idea.”

  “What were you trying to do?” I asked, looking at Sanju.

  “I . . . I . . . I . . . Didi . . . I just wanted to see what would happen,” he stammered.

  “What class are you in, Sanju?” I asked.

  “Class . . . Class VI, Didi,” he said.

  “Do you realize someone could have gotten hurt?”

  “Yes, Didi, I’m sorry,” he sniveled.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Digvijay.”

  “The two of you come with me,” I said.

  “Should I come with you?” Vidur asked. I shook my head.

  “Sorry, Didi, please don’t take us to the princi,” Digvijay whined.

  “It was your plan, and you’re the ones who’re shaking,” I said.

  “Sorry, Didi,” Sanju whined again.

  “Kids, come along,” I said.

  “Pl . . .” Sanju began again.

  “Shut up,” I said.

  We walked down the flight of stairs to the ground floor. Sanju dragged his feet while Digvijay glared at the floor. As we neared the princi’s office, Digvijay said quietly, “Didi, please, I already have two yellow cards. My parents will beat me.”

  “If you already have two yellow cards, you know that a third one means you’ll get suspended,” I said, stopping and turning around to look at him. “How did you get the other two?”

  “The first time I hit a boy with a motorcycle chain. He had to get stitches. And the second time I stole money from Mrs. Divan’s purse.”

  “Why did you do this today? Don’t you ever think of the consequences?”

  “Sanju has one yellow card, too,” he muttered.

  The red light in front of the princi’s office was lit, which meant that he was busy. Bahadur opened the door and came out of the office.

  “Who’s inside?” I asked.

  “PT teachers,” Bahadur said.

  “Tell him it’s urgent,” I said.

  Bahadur disappeared into the office again and then opened the door for us to go in. The teachers were in an animated discussion with the princi. He held his hand up, asking me to wait.

  “But you see, sir, he’s been doing this with the students for years,” one teacher said.

  “Our school’s reputation is at stake,” Mrs. Rishi said. She was the only lady PT teacher. She usually taught volleyball and had a rough voice, the voice of paper being torn. All the male teachers flirted with her.

  “Does he threaten the parents, or does he merely ask and inform?” the princi asked.

  “He threatens them,” two of the teachers said simultaneously.

  “Well, let’s see what Anamika says,” the princi said. The teachers who had not noticed me all turned around.

  “What, sir?” I asked.

  “Has Mr. Bala ever solicited your parents to join his insurance scheme?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Did they buy it?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Did he say anything?”

  “No, sir.”

  “And you?” the princi asked, looking at Sanju.

  “No, sir. I didn’t do anything,” Sanju whined. He wasn’t listening. His legs and hands were shaking.

  “What’s the matter with you, boy?” one of the PT teachers said to Sanju.

  “Sorry, sir,” Sanju whined.

  “What happened, Anamika?” the princi asked me.

  I told him.

  “And you, weren’t you the motorcycle chain boy?” the princi asked Digvijay, who stood motionless with his head hung down.

  “Do you think there’s any reason to be lenient with them?” the princi asked me.

  “No. The contrary,” I said.

  “I’ll suspend him. There’s no point having such bad elements around. And we’ll give Sanju a yellow card,” the princi said.

  I nodded.

  “I didn’t do it,” Digvijay said.

  “We didn’t want to hurt you, Didi,” Sanju bleated.

  “Did someone ask you to do this?” I asked Digvijay.

  “No, Di
di,” Sanju said.

  “Shut up,” the princi said to Sanju.

  “Answer Anamika Didi,” the princi said to Digvijay.

  “I’ll tell the truth if you don’t suspend me,” he said, still looking down. I couldn’t believe he had the gall to negotiate like this with the princi. The PT teachers in the room gasped.

  “I’ll break your feet,” one of the male PT teachers barked.

  The principal gestured with his hand for everyone to stay cool.

  “Just tell us what happened,” the princi said soothingly.

  “A senior asked me to plant the bomb when Didi was there. But I was late,” Digvijay said.

  “We decided on purpose to light it a few seconds late. It had a long thread, so we knew it wouldn’t go off immediately and hurt you, Didi,” Sanju said. He was now crying.

  “Who asked you to do this?” I asked.

  “I can’t tell you,” he said simply.

  The princi was looking at me, and from behind I could feel the eyes of the PT teachers boring into my back. I felt ashamed at having been responsible for such commotion in the school. I knew the only way to shake it off was to come up with a situation where I was clean, where it was clear to everybody that I had not incited the action.

  “Just nod your head if you cannot tell me,” I said.

  Digvijay looked up for the first time. Sanju continued to sob. The princi waited.

  “Was it Chakra Dev Yadav?” I asked.

  “It was him,” Sanju said, howling afresh. Digvijay nodded.

  “He’ll kill us. He knows real goondas. They even have guns,” Digvijay said, all worked up.

  “Who is this goon?” the principal demanded.

  “Sir, can I speak to you alone?” I asked. I wanted to tell the principal the whole story from earlier today, but I didn’t want to use the F and B words in front of the kids or the PT teachers. He nodded and asked one of the PT teachers to take the two kids to the field and make them run a hundred laps while he decided their fates.

  Once we were alone I told him what had happened earlier in my classroom. I related the story using Chakra Dev’s exact words about Mrs. Pillai and me.

  “Your classmates are thinking about intercourse with their teachers while your school counselor thinks a joint sex-ed class is a scandal,” he remarked, laughing.