Notion Press
Old No. 38, New No. 6
McNichols Road, Chetpet
Chennai - 600 031
First Published by Notion Press 2020
Copyright © Shivangi Ruperee 2020
All Rights Reserved.
ISBN 978-1-64899-611-5
This book has been published with all efforts taken to make the material error-free after the consent of the author. However, the author and the publisher do not assume and hereby disclaim any liability to any party for any loss, damage, or disruption caused by errors or omissions, whether such errors or omissions result from negligence, accident, or any other cause.
While every effort has been made to avoid any mistake or omission, this publication is being sold on the condition and understanding that neither the author nor the publishers or printers would be liable in any manner to any person by reason of any mistake or omission in this publication or for any action taken or omitted to be taken or advice rendered or accepted on the basis of this work. For any defect in printing or binding the publishers will be liable only to replace the defective copy by another copy of this work then available.
Dedicated to
Mom & Dad
Table of Contents
Cover
Title
Copyright
Dedication
Start Reading
About the Author
1
Intricate trees like I had always seen in the royal paintings, ladies in bright colorful attires, incredibly independent women driving to work, and a camel cart among the cars. It was the year 2008 & the usual morning hustle was on in Jaipur, Rajasthan. At one corner was me with a sandwich in my hand, admiring this spontaneous moment of amalgamation between heritage & modernization, but more precisely waiting with my father for my school bus under the blaring summer sun.
Finally, the bus arrived and I took a seat which wasn’t being reserved with a handkerchief. Friends! Yeah right? Having changed six cities because of my father’s profession I never had the privilege of having a constant set of friends who would always go to such lengths to ensure their pal a seat on a 20-minute ride. But I understood their concern for their friend, as even I had made many great ones in Kashmir from where my family had recently shifted. It was the place where I first gained consciousness about my life as I transitioned from a child to a teenager, cycling through the curvy roads, racing on the slopes by the grace of gravity but performing power cardio on the highs across the serene meadows during the summers and just shivering around fireplaces during snowy winters. I made my first best friend who was my fellow monitor of the class at school, Harman Bandhral. But somehow the first friendship that I had valued had quite a weird ending. When I told him that I had to shift in the next two months, he stopped speaking with me for some unknown reason he never told, despite me asking for it a hundred times. But I was 13 and we had already studied the poem about the frog & the nightingale and even then, the lesson I had learnt from it was that I never wanted to suffer like the nightingale. So, I told myself to move on, came with my parents to the new city and joined the new school without getting a closure.
But, when you are the new one at high school, it’s a huge task! unlike the primary counterpart, as you have to make yourself be accepted by the existing groups which have been together since their early childhood. Being super friendly, smiling at everyone who might not even reciprocate your foolish grin, is all you can do in a hope that things will get better with every passing day. In this new city I experienced a common phenomenon which prevails in our society for the first time - “Bias”. To make a place for myself in this new environment, a few days back I had participated in an on the spot poem writing competition and just as I finished writing the last verse,one of my classmates fell unconscious and I hurried back to see her.After a few minutes when our mathematics teacher took her to the sick room, I came back to my desk and saw that my poem was missing, I looked around while panicking and noticed a girl in my class looking back at me with a wicked expression. I rushed and asked her to kindly return my work but she refused on my face and laughed, this continued for a whole ten minutes, the entire class knew that she had stolen it, some came and asked her to give it back while others stayed mum. The teacher returned, and by that time I was crying inconsolably and she was my only hope for doing the right thing, I ran to her and somehow managed to tell her everything while sobbing but her action gave me my life’s first mini heart attack. She said, “You are a liar, not Arushi. She is our vice principal’s daughter. Don’t blame a smart person if you aren’t. She can never steal “. The teacher didn’t stop there, she kept shouting at me and I had zoned out, I couldn’t hear a word. But then all of a sudden, I heard my true inner self and I don’t know what gave me the courage to argue back. My tears went away, it was the first time I was replying back to a teacher, “Mam, the whole class knows the truth, ask them eye to eye, you have shouted at me today without taking a mere small initiative to find out the truth just because she is your boss’s daughter “. She was ashamed and at the same time decided to hold a grudge over me till forever I shall be around her. She told my parents but didn’t get the expected response as they were proud of what I had said and supported me but yes after that day I was given an idea that I would never come first, never win a competition, never be the star candidate, until I leave or she leaves.
With every passing day after this incident, my motivation to wake up every morning for attending this new school declined. A year went by and I had no sense of long term vision for my future left anymore. I had no idea where my life was heading. I was just doing what most of the students my age around me were doing, showing up at the bus stop and passing each day one tiffin box at a time.
Suddenly with the bus hitting a sharp brake, I came back to the present with a jerk like every other day and I started to walk towards my classroom. As I was walking past the corridor, I was expecting to see a hysterically funny lad who used to bring his guitar every day since a week later I joined and started to sing for me as soon as he saw me every morning. Sometimes, attempting to accompany his act with his highly ambitious moonwalking. To be honest he wasn’t bad & it was amusing indeed! But the effect lasted only till we got to the regular monotony.
Much to my surprise, today was different as he wasn’t present in the corridor and it felt odd. I sat on my desk with a deep sigh and soon the English teacher arrived. She wrote on the board, “Destiny Favours the Brave” and started to tell all of us a story. Out of the blue, someone called my name and I looked back. It was one of our school’s administrative staff members. “Shivangi Trivedi? Is she here? Her father is waiting outside to get her… her mother has fallen really sick “. My heart skipped a beat and I had no idea how to react. I packed my bag quickly and followed him. My heart was pounding and I was startled as my mother was dancing the last night. I saw my father and ran to him, he held my hand and said, “Come Quickly! It’s extremely urgent”. I asked him what had happened and he didn’t reply until we took an auto-rickshaw. Then told me, “You finally got selected for an interview at St. Stephens, I got a call at work today. Please for the next 30 minutes of this auto ride listen to me and revise your general aptitude”, with this my father handed me his GK - 2008 book.
St. Stephens! The school for which I had been dreaming and trying for since we had shifted to Jaipur. One of the most prestigious schools in the country, with the best teachers & the best alumni. The first year I couldn’t clear the written test cut off and this year the results were awaited. I was nervous and excited at the same time.
We rushed and reached outside the Principal’s Office for my interview and we got called in a minute. My father greeted
him and I went behind. I looked at my father’s face and how he was so optimistic about my potential and my future. I was asked to answer some general aptitude questions and that day I saw my father was much more tensed than I was. We discussed my extra-curricular potential and academic performance in depth and Father Principal said, “She can do much better in some areas”. Our hearts sank. Then he added, “I can offer her an admission only on one condition”.
My father anxiously asked him what that condition was and Father Principal replied, “It’s 11:30 am, If you can make sure that she doesn’t wear the other school’s uniform she is wearing today, wears our uniform and is present with the school diary in the morning assembly at 8:00 am tomorrow, somewhere in class ninth E’s queue”. We were overjoyed, but I was still perplexed. We thanked him, called up my mother and rushed to complete all the forms & formalities. This memory got etched in my brain as I had never realized how much happiness my achievements brought to my family before. I pledged that day to make my parents proud of me by not letting this opportunity go in vain.
The very next day, I had put on a brand new white uniform, had new books, wore a new pair of shoes and sat in an auto rickshaw which my father had booked on a monthly wage basis to pick me up and drop me from the school. Of course, it was the first day and my father without disclosing me followed my auto secretly, hiding on the way to see if I was safe. I could spot him in the rearview mirror all the while no matter how much disguised he thought he was. I was excited and scared at the same time as I entered into my new world which was not even given to me 24 hours ago with a really strong mindset of making something big. I still felt like I was dreaming and the random flooding of the roads due to heavy rains in a state like Rajasthan that day added to the belief of everything still being a fantasy.
100 acres of lush green gardens, historic stone wall buildings, traditional names for every corner, students getting themselves clicked almost every day for the newspapers, such was the heritage of that institution but yet felt humble. As I stood at the central palatial stairway, in awe with the majestic grandeur, I was only thinking about how much I had missed. The passion with which students were practicing for their national-level games, the zeal with which the students were reading in the library even before the morning assembly, these were the first things I noticed. I knew it was time for me to level up as I navigated my way to the classroom with the help of a campus map I found in my newly laminated school diary which I had read thoroughly last night, from the rules till the repercussions.
I was hoping to meet some of my classmates and see their first expressions. I pushed the door and met 50 newly varnished teak desks and chairs. I was too early! I kept my bag and went to the library, exchanged smiles and started to read the newspaper. My routine was already way different than it used to be and it was just the first day! When it was fifteen minutes to 8 am, everyone started to move outside and I kept my newspaper back on the shelf and followed them. I reached the assembly ground and found the queue for ninth E. Students were standing in ascending order of their height and I went somewhere in the middle while smiling at everyone. “Hey!”, suddenly a tall sharp-looking guy, perfectly attired jumped in front of me, “I am Shashwat Rathore, I am the monitor of the class, mam told me about you, any-who what’s your name?”. His energy was contagious and he was beaming like a sun, as I told him my name, without wasting even a second, he started to explain me all about the class, the people I should be friends with and about the personality traits of every teacher passing by. Before I could realize I had burst into laughter, but then had to stuff it all inside as we had to stay quiet. While the prayer was going on and I joined my hands to thank the all mighty, I realized I hadn’t laughed this way since I had left Kashmir.
As we all dispersed and reached the class, Shashwat pulled my bag from behind and bought it next to him saying, “You stay in the front and study “. The lecture marathon started for the day and with every passing hour, I felt more burdened. I had no idea where to start from, the level of teaching was the highest I had ever witnessed and all of that was crazily overwhelming, but I knew I had to overcome this and it wasn’t going to be easy. Every day at school I started to stay silent in the class and slowly moved into my own shell, reading notes, going through textbooks & over analyzing explanations.
Two months passed by, my first exam at St. Stephens was here, and it was Mathematics! I had never experienced such a high performance anxiety before maybe because this was the first time I took studies very seriously. On top of all this, we had the worst kind of invigilator possible on earth that day - the talkative stopwatch! In the whole 60 minutes exam, she didn’t keep quiet for even a continuous time of 2 minutes. She kept picking up random conversations with every student during the exam and in between to wreak a havoc of panic screamed in an extremely shrill voice the time which had gone by. To make that worse I was assigned the first bench with the closest proximity to her. For 35 minutes I managed somehow with my lost concentration, I had switched to the disaster recovery mode and solved the questions which were enough to get me an average score but I just couldn’t gather the focus to move beyond average as my own nervousness & the environmental noise started to play bongo in my head, I handed the sheet and walked out panic stricken. I went to the reception and asked them to call my father as I wasn’t feeling right and he came to pick me up. That day after going home I discussed with my mom about my shortcomings and we found out it was mathematics! My mom asked my father to find a math home tutor for me and I was already crying, out of my apprehension towards tuitions.
The very next week after my rest of the exams, I came back from school and was told by my mom that I will be having a tutor visit me for an hour every day starting later that afternoon. I was grief stricken. The clock struck four and there was the doorbell. I gathered courage somehow to face my fear of the subject which had become parasitic to my growth since my first encounter with algebra. I lifted all my textbooks, practice registers, pens and headed to the study room. I had vaguely crammed somethings to hide my shortcomings as I had always imagined tutors to be someone who would laugh and judge me on my silly mistakes, making me feel worthless. Hesitantly, I sat down with my tutor for the first time. “Good afternoon, sir “and he nodded. “Solve this equation”, he wrote down a problem of calculus. I was surprised to get an analytical problem as a response to my greeting and yes, I attempted to solve it or one can say struggled with it for 20 minutes. “Your approach isn’t that wrong, you started out with the right logic, your basic concepts later get hazy and that’s why you make errors, I think I know what to teach you “. I was amazed by his patience and his uplifting remark. For the first time, I thought someone could help me solve my problems which were till now intangible in my head. This day marked the beginning of thousands of afternoons that were yet to come. Vikas sir became my mentor.
I started to gain confidence a little a day as I felt my grip becoming stronger in academics and then began to observe innocent classroom mischiefs. A group of four bright eyed boys were pioneers of all the pranks around us and they had a treasure box of unimaginable things, from which they bought one each day to the class. On one such day, unwillingly, the entire class became participants to their one novel prank.
It was Narayan sir’s Geography class. His name did justice to his personality. Jeweled with a battery of degrees against his name, he was tall, dark & walked with an ever-present grin on his face. He was famous to rupture the confidence of even the brightest mind. Nobody dared interrupt him when he taught, for the fear of unpredictable punishment. One day, our four boys got a little curious. Fifteen minutes into the lecture, while sir was speaking and simultaneously writing on the blackboard, one of the boys barked softly, interrupting his flow of words. He got annoyed, paused, exhaled loudly and without looking back continued speaking nevertheless. Emboldened, the other boy, sitting in the opposite corner of the room barked. Narayan sir swiftly spun back with bigger eyes and a chilly red face. Somehow,
he decided to ignore this act too. He exhaled deeply and continued again. But as they say, third time’s the charm. Bark! came from the center. That was it! He lost his patience and in a deafening tone, instructed us all to stand in a line. We were shivering, sweating and in a hush, tone contemplating about what was to come. Once we were all in the expected order, sir advanced to the first student in the line with a stick in his hand. We thought we knew what was coming and were already crying injustice. He came closer to the first student, raised his stick and asked him to bark. In his head, he devised an ingenious experiment to match the previous barks to that of the student and catch the culprit. To dodge his ‘foolproof’ strategy, we all started practicing barking in our heads trying our best to sound different to the one we heard because what if it matches? As students barked one by one, sir listened to each one patiently and paused for a few seconds to process the noise. If satisfied, he would move to the other student. In some instances, he asked the students to repeat a couple of times to be sure. It was getting hilarious by the passing minute and even more difficult to control our laughter. Here was a well learned academic, experimenting with sound waves to identify his culprit. To avoid his attention, we all tried hard to hold our laughter in our stomachs. He finished his round with everyone, unhappy and unsure of the source. Before he could devise another plan, one of the boys secretly called out to a passing dog near the classroom window. Without a word, we all knew it was now or never. Unanimously and collectively we all yelled, “The dog sir!!, there he is! it was him!”, sir knew it was a lie but there was little he could do to prove otherwise. “Sit down & Focus”, Narayan sir said. Relieved, we all went back to our desks smiling at each other. All of us showed the greatest camaraderie that day. Yes, we all as a class became indispensably the naughtiest & I found friendship.
Gradually, I started opening up & things started to look more amiable. But one day I was taken out of my comfort zone in the class, “Shivangi! I read your submission yesterday, you can surely write! Why don’t you read the first paragraph of today’s lesson for all of us”, said the multitalented & the most dynamic of all our teachers, David sir, who taught us literature. I stood up and held the textbook in my hand, “One fine day, the mono… ah! sorry… the monotone… *unexpected long pause*… Pardon me… the monotony” and I went on fumbling as I saw the text quiver in front of me. “Hold on, wait a second… why are you speaking this way?”, David sir looked at me with an unusually firm expression. He was like our elder friend & his classes were the ones we waited for the entire day as they were always full of humor. “I think out of nervousness”, I said confidently, as I felt 50 pairs of eyes judgmentally staring at me, the most haunting one was Shashwat’s. “What is making you nervous?”, “The fear of making a mistake, sir”, I answered in a jiffy and it was a revelation! even for me. “What is the point of being scared? It’s of no use! As your fear is already making what you dreaded in the first place, come true “. I was instantly blown away by his words and I think it went in my permanent memory that very second as it was the answer to not just one but many of my inhibitions. “Try again! without the fear, please? We are ready whenever you are, come here and speak if that’s better”. I took a deep breath as I left my desk to stand at a raised podium from where I could see the entire audience. I looked at everyone, some of my friends for a little longer and started to make my second attempt. To my surprise, it went smooth. “See! you can speak the same way you write”. That day David sir didn’t teach me how to read flawlessly but he taught me to overcome all the reluctances I would ever have in life, as I now knew that the first step was acceptance. “Thank you, sir”, my eyes twinkled with gratitude as I saw him with his hands crossed, radiating a soulful smile while the room echoed with a special applause.
Through Lemons & Peaches Page 1