Usually vacation day classes were held away from the school. Koona asked her teacher whether it was possible to hold a vacation day class inside the school building.
‘It’s possible,’ her teacher replied, ‘but you’ll have to do all the studying by yourself.’
The teacher began wondering how a vacation day at school might run. A school day at school started with the ringing of the gong, followed by prayers. The students then went off to individual classrooms with their book bags. No book bags would be required on vacation day. Which day would that be? Sunday was the weekly day off. Must vacation day be on Sunday then? Would children head for their individual classrooms or could they sit in one another’s classrooms? And most important of all: what would they study? ‘Think hard,’ the teacher said to the children in his class. ‘Think hard about what you would like to study on vacation day.’
‘Whatever it is, we’ll start first thing in the morning,’ a student declared.
The students began to talk among themselves.
‘Home in the morning or school in the morning?’
‘School first thing in the morning.’
‘We’ll have to sleep in the school at night to start school first thing in the morning.’
‘We’ll have to bring our bed sheets and mattresses.’
‘I sleep with Mother.’
‘Then you’ll have to bring her along.’
‘Father is afraid to be alone in the house.’
‘You’ll have to bring Father along.’
‘I have a cat.’
‘The cat will have to come.’
‘We have a cow and a calf. I’ll bring both.’
‘I’ll bring my dog.’
‘I’ll bring my pot of tulsi.’
‘Why the tulsi?’
‘How else will it get watered in the morning?’
Their talk turned into singsong:
One family has a dog
Another has a cow
Mine has dear old Grandpa
There’s Grandma in mine
My house gets shade from ten whole trees
There’s shade from fifty in mine
Shade from sixty trees in all—
It’s easy to combine.
Grandpa, Grandma bless us all,
Shelter like the shade of trees.
May we your soft care receive
Grow to be fine shady trees.
A girl sang:
Make my home the holiday school.
A boy sang:
Bajrang Snack Shop would be cool.
But there were students who didn’t want to go to the Bajrang Snack Shop. They wanted class held on the grass-top roof.
‘Can we sit there? Is the roof solid?’
‘It’s solid,’ Bolu said. ‘Just like the earth. Grass grows on the roof just as grass grows on the earth.’
The smaller children sang:
To the grass-top roof we’ll run.
To study the moon and study the sun.
The first-graders sang:
Sun and sky, sun and space
All the Milky Way we’ll trace
Each planet we will study and know
Then to clouds and rivers go—
Then we’ll study dams and bridges
Kinds of dirt and rocks and ridges
Slope-up hills and valleys low
We’ll study lions and tigers too—
One of the first-graders got frightened:
Let’s not enter forests wild
Lions and tigers breathing near
To a fat book let us go
Read about tigers with nothing to fear.
The children split up into groups, talking to one another in song:
Let’s make friends with large black ants.
Find their homes among wild plants
Give them our home address.
Welcome them with molasses.
Let us play a novel game,
Never ever played before.
When that’s done, let’s play one more
Game after new game galore.
Countless novel games let’s play
Endless games for endless day.
As many games as there are stars,
Why does night go by so slow?
Play the game of night and day
Let the nighttime speed away
So it’s morning for our play.
A girl sang:
I have thought of something new
I will lead and you will follow
I will get there first of all
You will follow, short and tall.
I will lead through snaking trail
I will lead through swamp and brake
All the dangers I will face,
To get you there quick and safe.
Lessons were held in the school by day. Night was too dark. Night was the time to be home. The first people must have devised homes to feel safe in the dark. If there had been only day, the need for homes would have emerged much later.
Sleeping outdoors on rope beds in the summer, the children beheld a sky teeming with small lights. The forefathers had passed on knowledge about the heavens. The moon was the first light—bright and beautiful, its appearance changing each night. The elders in the family knew when and where the moon was likely to appear. The children watched with endless fascination as the moon slipped behind clouds or slid clear of them. The sky was a theatre playing mystery. The ratio of what was known to what obtained was nearly zero.
There were a hundred games the children played with the sky. Each question that arose in a child’s mind was a game. ‘Where is the moon?’ they asked if they woke up in the middle of the night. They fell asleep once they found the moon. Sometimes they fell asleep before they found the moon. The moon and stars kept changing their place in the sky. The Big Dipper too. Only the Pole Star in the north stayed where it was, guiding all wayfarers in existence—a traffic policeman for those who knew their way already, and for those wandering on land or sea who sought it.
Guruji realized that the children wanted to bring their cows, dogs, cats, mothers, fathers and grandparents on both sides. An entire neighbourhood was ready to spend their children’s vacation day at school and partake of their lessons. The announcement was silent, but even insects and birds heard the drumbeat of excitement in the village. Bajrang Maharaj got to know about vacation day because Bhaira told him. Bhaira was required to return to the Snack Shop each evening. He sought his father’s permission to spend the evening before vacation day at the school.
The students agreed with Guruji that Tuesday would be a good day for vacation day. Everyone wanted to be at the school Monday night. It would be the night of the full moon. The Long School and the Round School boasted only a dim electric bulb, that had been further dimmed by coats of dirt and plaster.
Today was Friday. Guruji suggested they begin preparations for Monday night on Friday itself. The students stayed an extra two hours after classes, cleaning and sweeping around the school grounds. Guruji climbed up to the transom using pegs and cubbyholes, and stepped through the transom to the roof. Once on the roof, he unscrewed the light bulb from its post, wiped it and screwed it back on. The students below observed the care with which Guruji unscrewed and screwed on the bulb.
Bhaira stepped over the doorsill of the Bajrang Snack Shop with bedroll tucked under his arm. Bajrang Maharaj swung his feet. This signified that Bajrang Maharaj was aware of Bhaira’s presence. Bajrang Maharaj swung his feet again. This signified his asking what Bhaira wanted. Bhaira held out the bedroll. Bajrang Maharaj swung his feet. Bhaira understood Bajrang Maharaj’s wish to know what the bedroll was for. Bhaira leaned his head over the bedroll to signify he wanted to sleep at the school. Bajrang Maharaj swung his feet faster and hit the cash box with his right hand. The coins inside jangled loudly. If the lid to the box had been open the coins would have flown out.
‘Say in words what you want!’ Bajrang Maharaj thundered. A tiger in the forest
roared back. Bhaira dropped the bedroll from under his arm. The open jaws of a tiger flashed before him. ‘I want to sleep over at the school,’ he mumbled. ‘They are going to be studying vacation day.’
Bajrang Maharaj tried to speak softly, ‘But you’ve dropped out.’ His roaring travelled to the forest. Bhaira heard deer fleeing in fear as the roaring chased after them. One baby deer couldn’t run fast enough. ‘Everybody needs to be at school for vacation day,’ he said sobbing. ‘Mother and Father, Grandpa and Grandma, tigers, lions, wolves, bears…’ Bhaira wanted to say Bajrang Maharaj’s presence was required at the school but he inserted ‘lions, tigers, wolves and bears’ where he should have said ‘Bajrang Maharaj’. The sentence came out as: ‘The presence of lions, tigers, wolves and bears was required at the school.’ Bajrang Maharaj kept swinging his feet while Bhaira sobbed. The feet became still when the sobbing stopped.
Bhaira picked up his bedroll off the floor. Silently he asked his father’s permission to go to school. Bajrang Maharaj swung his feet. Bhaira sensed that permission had been given. He wiped his tears. Only then did he notice that the snack shop was empty. There were plates of snacks on a table, and unfinished cups of tea. The tea had grown cold. The customers had fled.
As he headed towards the school, Bhaira noticed the cook from the snack shop hiding behind a rock. He noticed an older man and a fifteen-year-old boy, father and son probably, hiding behind another rock. They must have been the ones who had ordered the abandoned snacks.
Monday night was moonlit. The children had never before attended school at night. They didn’t know how the school looked then. They were ready, waiting to set out. Uncles and grandfathers were still getting ready. A doll was being dressed up in trimming. Bolu saw his mother combing her hair and remembered Grandma. He was planning to run and greet her when his mother called, ‘Time to do your hair.’ He went to his mother. The process was slow; combing the curls right took a long time. He ran off the moment his mother’s hold slackened. ‘I am going to Grandma. I’ll ask her to finish combing my hair.’
The moon was up. It seemed to have risen above the school and come over to the village to find out why the children hadn’t reached the school yet. Or could it be that the moon had come to the village to accompany the villagers to school? The moon’s silvery light made people eager. They felt they were delaying festivities by not being ready in time.
The moon had risen from the grass of the green roof. Its light was wet with dew. A cool wind, damp from the moonlight, flowed over the village. The children shouted noisily. Hearing their clamour a stranger could be excused for imagining only children inhabited this village. If he rapped on one door, a girl dressed like a bride would answer the door. If he rapped on another, a boy dressed like a groom would answer the door. ‘Have you lost your way?’ the boy would ask. The visitor would imagine he looked lost because he was grown-up. A stranger child rapping on the door would not seem to have lost his way.
The children were about to leave. The moon stood on tiptoe, peeping through the windows. The wind stopped, the better to see children coming out onto the street. The wind stopped, it’s true, but tree branches continued to wave and leaves to flutter. They were excited to be near the children.
The first child appeared on the street with his mother, like the first flower in a garden. ‘The others have left already,’ he complained to his mother. ‘Yes,’ his mother said. Just then the other children emerged from their houses saying, ‘We are here!’ The street was filled with flowers. A cavalcade of children and parents and elders was on its way to a festival. The moon lit their path. Bolu thought the moon travelled with him. Koona rode on a pony that she wasn’t tall enough to mount on her own. She had been helped up. Koona, too, thought the moon travelled with her. Each person in that cavalcade thought similarly. Indeed the moon was with them all, leaving no one behind.
Bolu hummed a song. There was music in the air already, borne along the light of the moon. The leaves fluttered. Their fluttering did not have the usual effect of deepening the silence of the night. Instead, the fluttering lightened the silence, making it musical. Cows and buffaloes were part of the cavalcade, the tun-tun-tun of their bells adding to the music in the air.
The school gong sounded eight times. The gong rebuked the children for being tardy. It was late for them; normally they would be in bed by this time. But enthusiasm for sleeping at the school kept them awake. It would have been better for their daily routine if they had gotten to school by six-thirty or seven in the evening. The elders urged the children to hurry; some of the children in the cavalcade broke into a run.
Koona called out to Bolu as her pony approached him on the road. ‘It’s getting late, Bolu. Why don’t you ride with me on my pony?’
‘Thanks,’ Bolu said. ‘I’ll ride my own pony.’
‘Where’s the pony?’
Bolu’s pony was ready. He quickened his pace until he was running.
He began humming to himself and his body grew lighter. Wind-gust wings extended from his right and left shoulders. The skies became a book he could read, the moon was the dot on the i. He wanted to fly up to the moon but then he remembered school. With two wing beats he came close to Koona on her pony. He whispered her name. He was already past her when she looked up. ‘I’ll get to school ahead of you,’ he said.
Koona was bewildered by the magic trick she saw. Her pony was equally bewildered and slowed down. Koona pressed with her little heels to make it go faster. She called out to Bolu, ‘Can I ride on your pony? It’s better than mine. The least you can do is let me ride ahead of you.’
‘Let’s travel together, neither of us ahead of the other,’ Bolu responded.
‘Shall I get on your pony?’
‘My pony won’t be able to take your weight.’
‘Is your pony starving?’
‘No, it’s you who is fat. The pony won’t be able to carry the weight of two,’ Bolu said extending his right hand to Koona. Bolu moved away from Koona’s pony and for a little while he and Koona flew together in the air, Koona holding Bolu’s hand. But Bolu was being dragged down by Koona’s weight. He could maintain only a pony’s height above the ground. When they passed a rock, Koona tucked her knees in to avoid being scraped by the rock. There were trees ahead. Bolu tried, but failed to lighten himself so they could rise above the trees. He stopped his humming and grew heavier. Koona was able to step down onto the ground.
Her pony had run on ahead. She remembered the pony only when she was back on earth. Now her worries about the pony made her forget she had just been flying.
The school drew near. Bolu and Koona paused as they entered the school grounds. The classrooms looked poorly lit. Reading would have been impossible in the faint light. Fortunately, this was not a reading and writing kind of day.
The moon hung in the open sky like a bulb, in fact, like a floodlight. It was the eve of their vacation day. Children and parents were about to arrive. Conversation among approaching pupils had become audible. Or could it be Chhotu alone carrying on a conversation in his many voices? If Chhotu assumed the voice of Bajrang Maharaj, would a tiger roar back in response? It couldn’t be that everyone would be taken in by Chhotu’s voices. The tiger must know which voice belonged to the real Bajrang Maharaj.
The sky was thick with stars. Perhaps the stars attended school at night.
This night it was the children attending school. The stars vacated the classrooms for the children and packed the sky. They were the questions children wanted to ask, but had never asked out loud. Now they glowed in the firmament so someone would deliver the answers directly into the hearts of children.
Bhaira was among the students flocking to the school. He looked this way and that but couldn’t locate Bolu. He hung back, hoping to find Bolu at the rear of the group, and got separated from the others. The moon was shining, but there were pockets the moon could not reach. Bhaira held on tight to his bedroll. Some people walked by. He heard his own voice saying, ‘Will
Koona be staying away from school, Bolu?’ That’s the question he would have asked if he had met Bolu and noticed Koona was not with him. But Bhaira hadn’t spoken and he hadn’t found Bolu.
Had his thoughts expressed themselves out loud on their own? In any case, there was no Bolu around to whom the imagined question might have been addressed.
‘Why don’t you answer, Bolu?’ Bhaira heard Bhaira asking.
‘I am Bhaira, Bolu,’ Bhaira shouted out. ‘Where are you?’
He heard Bhaira saying, ‘Chhotu seems to be imitating Bhaira’s voice and making fools of us.’
Bhaira turned to the source of the voice. It was dark there because of trees. He moved rapidly, parting bushes to make a path.
‘It’s me, Bolu,’ he said. ‘I’ve been looking for you.’
‘You can’t be Bhaira. Bhaira is walking beside me,’ Bolu said. ‘Are you Chhotu or are you some magician?’
‘It’s me, Bolu. Don’t be misled by whoever says he is Bhaira. I’m on my way to school. I’ve been looking for all of you a long time. The person with you is a magician pretending to be me. Or else you are both playing tricks on me.’
‘It’s you who are playing tricks. Bhaira is with me. Tell me your real name,’ he heard Bolu say.
‘Bhaira is my real name,’ Bhaira said.
The darkness found gloomy places to lurk in and pounced on a person unawares. These places were gloomy because no one cared to visit them. While looking for Bolu, Bhaira lurched close to a dangerous pit. He recovered his balance just in time. Had he fallen in, it would have been difficult to pull him out. The moon had already fallen into the rainwater at the bottom of the pit, and it wasn’t clear how the moon could be pulled out.
Moonrise from the Green Grass Roof Page 5