Like It Happened Yesterday (10 page)

For a while, I didn’t react, knowing that they were doing this only to tease me. But that didn’t stop them from having fun. I was getting terribly upset, listening to all that they were saying about her. I could not help myself from objecting to their filthy blabber.

Then Sushil crossed all limits when he said, ‘I am going to imagine her tonight in my bed.’ This was beyond my limit of tolerance. I jumped up to clutch his neck in my hands.

My anger stunned Sushil. He hadn’t expected that from me. The moment he realized what had just happened, he held my wrist in his hand and tried to escape my grip. Someone from the bench behind us immediately jumped in to separate the two of us and stop the fight.

But I was out of control. Never, ever in my life earlier had I behaved this way!

‘I asked you to stop,’ I said, as I gripped his neck with one hand and punched him in the chest with the other.

Sushil didn’t wait for too long to react. The last thing he said was, ‘Mujhe maarega is ke liye tu!’ [You will hit me for this!] before he hurled a blow which narrowly missed my head.

The teacher turned around when she heard the commotion. She saw me and Sushil exchange blows.

‘Get up, you two!’ she shouted sternly. She then placed her book on the table and walked towards us.

‘Out! Out, the two of you!’

‘Ma’am, he hit me first. You can ask anyone!’ Sushil claimed with confidence.

In her anger, Ma’am immediately shifted her eyes to me. ‘Did you hit him first?’ she asked me pointedly.

I was silent, staring down at the desk.

‘Tell me! Did you hit him first?’ she repeated her question in anger.

‘Yes, Ma’am,’ I said and kept looking at my desk.

‘Now tell me why you did that,’ she crossed her arms against her chest and questioned me.

‘Because he was talking dirty,’ I answered softly.

‘No, Ma’am, I didn’t say anything!’ Sushil intervened.

Ma’am signalled for Sushil to keep quiet and asked me, ‘What did he say?’

I didn’t say anything.
How could I?

She asked me again, ‘
What did he say?
’

I still didn’t utter a word.

She probably found my silence insulting, and, reluctant to discuss the issue any further, she commanded, ‘Get out, Ravinder!’ showing me the door.

I looked at her. Her hand was still pointing towards the door. I looked at Sushil and then the backbenchers.

‘
Now!
’ Ma’am reminded me.

Whispers filled the room.

I closed my notebook, put the cap on my pen and walked out of the class without any debate.

That was the very first time I had been punished in my new school. Ironically, I had been punished by the teacher I liked the most!

Leaning against the wall of the classroom and looking into the barren campus, I thought over how I had thought of impressing her when the class had begun, and what it all had turned into. I wondered why I felt so offended when Sushil talked badly about this Ma’am. He had been talking about
someone whom I hardly knew. I had never been this violent and hit anyone for someone else. I was not sure if I would have hit my benchmate for any other teacher.

The bell rang and the period ended. The entire school broke for recess. The teacher walked out and looked at me.

‘Go in,’ she said. ‘Don’t do that, ever!’

She still seemed angry with me. I kept staring at her as she walked down the corridor and then took a left turn towards the staff room.

I realized that I had ruined it all. But I still believed what I did had been right. I would do it again if someone talked badly about her. I would bang his head the next time, I decided.

That period had changed a lot of things for me. A bunch of boys believed that I had fallen for that teacher. I denied it when they said so to my face, but inside I felt nice when people associated me with her.

The only good thing was that English Ma’am now knew my name. Out of the whole class, she would remember me. The sad thing was that she would remember me for all the wrong reasons. I was no more at the starting line of the race to impress her. Instead, I was on the opposite side of the starting line.

The biggest difference that the period brought in for me was that Sushil and I had broken up our friendship. It had all happened in a very short time frame. Just one period back, we had been really good friends. A period later, the two of us were talking to everybody but each other.

When I walked inside the class, I overheard Sushil telling our common friends how I had forgotten our friendship for a teacher. ‘… Ma’am ke chakkar mein apne dost pe haath uthaaya!’

I heard more.

‘He is always so calm and jolly. I thought you hit him first,’ someone in the group reacted to Sushil’s comment.

‘Yes, he isn’t of that nature. It’s still impossible for me to believe what he did!’

I packed my bag and walked out of the classroom with my tiffin box. That day I didn’t eat my lunch—I fed it to a cow outside our school campus.

If I remember it well, it was around mid-April that year when I had my first chance to see a movie at a theatre. The afternoon was pleasant, and my friends and I had gone to watch the matinee show. It was a totally unplanned event. In fact, our final exams were going on and we had one on that day as well—history exam, the most boring of all.

As usual, by 12.30 p.m. most of the students had arrived at school. The exam was scheduled to start sharp at 1 p.m. The schoolbags on our shoulders that day were light, as we carried only the relevant study material for the exam. The question papers and clipboards in everyone’s hands transmitted the anxiety of exams in the air. A last-minute sharpening of pencils or checking the ink in our pens kept most of us busy.

One could see the before-the-exam nervousness on practically everyone’s face. A handful of confident top-rankers also tried to fake the nervousness. Most of them, as usual, kept saying, ‘I don’t know what will happen in today’s exam. I don’t remember anything that I studied last night.’

It was their modus operandi to make the others appear well prepared just before the exam, so that they didn’t revise any more, while they themselves kept revising, saying they were nervous. It was a trick that everyone knew about, and yet it was practised.

On the other hand, the low-rank holders of the class were, as usual, also confident about their preparation. Most of them, as usual, kept saying, ‘History is a story. We will write one for every question—big deal!’

Standing among that noisy herd, in front of the huge entrance area of the school, the rest of us were testing each other on the ‘Dates and Events’ section from the appendix of the book. That was the best last-minute brush-up one could do before a history exam.

Amit asked me one question. ‘When was Mahatma Gandhi born?’

‘Second October,’ I replied, recalling the public holiday.

‘Abey, year bataa! Date nahi.’ He had asked for the year and not just the date.

‘Year? Hmm … 1940,’ I answered. Then, looking at the expression on his face, I quickly said, ‘… nahi, 1937.’

He chuckled and said, ‘You mean Gandhiji was ten years old when we got our freedom!’

Overhearing that, Gurpreet, who was standing close to us, started laughing. However, she also didn’t know the answer.

‘1869,’ Amit updated us.

That felt like an insult to me—humiliated in front of a third person, that too a girl.

‘Okay, okay, now let me ask you one.’ I opened my book and asked him to close his.

‘Chal bataa, first Battle of Panipat kab hui thi?’ I questioned him about the date of the historic battle.

‘1526!’ he answered instantaneously, with a victorious smile. I verified his answer. He was absolutely right. My ego was bruised—he knew more than me!

‘And the second Battle of Panipat?’ I quizzed him back, hoping he would be wrong this time.

‘Hmm … second … battle … 15—yes, 1556?’ he blurted out the date as soon as his brain fished it out of the calendar installed in his memory.

Unfortunately, he was right again.

His level of confidence shattered mine. In my mind, there were only two ways to feel comfortable in the moments before the exam. First, if you could correctly answer the questions that someone asked you. And second, if you couldn’t answer someone else’s question, that someone else should not be able to answer yours as well.

For me, neither of the two had worked. So I raised the bar and looked for a difficult question. This was to restore my confidence, however small.

‘Will you be comfortable answering anything from the Mughal period?’

Amit nodded.

‘When did Anaarkali die?’

He broke into laughter immediately. ‘We don’t have Anaarkali in our books, must be Razia Sultana. Check it out!’

I took another look through the ‘Dates and Events’ page and, exactly three seconds later, I plunged into oceans of jealousy as well as sadness—he was right!
What a blunder!

The bell rang and interrupted our Q&A session. We now had to go inside the examination room and take up our designated seats. I closed my book and looked at Amit. He asked me, ‘Should I tell you the date when Razia Sultana died?’

That was too much to bear!

‘No need. Leave it. All the best!’ I said and ran inside. I heard Amit shouting ‘All the best’ to me behind my back.
Did it matter now?

We were seated in our respective classrooms to take the exam. But then, all of a sudden, things changed—some Morarji Desai had passed away. And one of our teachers, who was the invigilator for my class, broadcast the news that the history exam had been postponed to the next day.

I didn’t know who Morarji Desai was and what his death had to do with our history exam. My best guess was that he must have been on our school committee. There were a few more like me in the crowd, but some intelligent soul updated all of us that he was the fourth prime minister of India! I am sure, on hearing that, Amit would have added that date to the calendar in his memory!

Anyway, the conclusion was that now we had time on our hands. Mature human beings mourn someone’s death. Immature ones like us go out for a movie.

And that’s what we did!

Everyone realized that it was pointless to reread history. What difference would it make? And, anyhow, we had the whole night and the entire morning of the next day to revise the syllabus.

Laxmi Talkies was playing
Karan Arjun
. I had never watched a movie in a theatre till then. My hometown, Burla, didn’t have any theatre—the only one in the town had shut down long back. I wondered if I had enough money to watch the show. Sushil told me that Laxmi Talkies was the cheapest of all the theatres in Sambalpur and the ticket price per show was only five rupees. The matinee show suited us all, and we joyfully discovered that each of us had five rupees to spare. So we left for the theatre. While everyone had their own bicycle, I adjusted myself on the front bar of Nandu’s bicycle. After he’d pedalled half the way, we exchanged our seats.

Before leaving for the movie, I had called my neighbours from the school phone. They lived next door to our house and were the only ones who possessed a landline telephone in the vicinity. Everyone who knew about their phone used to treat them as their messengers. It probably irritated them, which was why, half the time, they didn’t pass on the messages. But I made sure that they would inform my mother.

That was my first visit to a place like Laxmi Talkies, an experience still etched in my mind. It was dark inside the hall, with dilapidated seats and the coir wool coming out of the covers in places. A few men whistled, but I couldn’t see them. All of us sat in the second row from the front. The dialogues echoed in the hall and it was an experience in itself to see the big heroes, the big villains and the big heroines on that screen.

Time and again, someone or other kept opening the door under the Exit display, which used to illuminate the front few rows and blur the picture. Every time in those split seconds of light, I noticed a few familiar faces in the initial rows. They were the rickshaw pullers who used to drop off a few primary-class students to our school. It felt good to see them and I mentioned them to my classmates. Sushil told me to shut up and concentrate on the movie.

‘Amrish Puri will rape someone now!’ he told me without looking at me, his eyes glued to the screen.

I wanted to wave at the rickshaw pullers. But they, too,
were just concentrating on the screen. So I had no choice but to resume looking at Amrish Puri. I loved the fighting scenes of the movie and the double roles of the heroes made it extremely interesting. At interval, the yellow light bulbs were turned on and doors of the theatre were opened. Suddenly, everyone got up from their seats and left the hall. I looked around to see how many people had turned up to watch the movie. They were all men, and I found that it was just the few of us who were neatly dressed. The rest of the crowd looked as if they had come from the slums.

Sushil looked at my expression and said, ‘Paanch rupaye ki ticket mein yehi jugaadd milega.’ [This is all you can expect for a five-rupee ticket.]

All of us ignored Sushil’s comment and went to the toilet. A long queue welcomed us in front of those eight or ten urinals. I was appalled at the condition of the place. Water was leaking everywhere and the stench of urine filled my nostrils! Cigarette butts and bidis—the locally rolled cigarettes—floated in the water on the floor. There were a few dumped in the urinals as well. The red stain of paan spit had painted every nook and corner of the toilet. Most of the people took a leak first, and then went out to have a quick tea. I felt sick to my guts and could not bear to think of eating or drinking anything at that time. Had it not been for the exciting film, I would probably have left. The film was good and it made me forget the surroundings.

It started from where it had stopped, and soon we were all
absorbed in watching. The heroes were able to beat the villain in their new avatars after rebirth!

Dusk had fallen by the time we all came out of the movie theatre. We ate a few samosas and drank a cup of tea each from a nearby restaurant, after which my friends dropped me off at the bus stop. I was the only one who had to catch a bus to get back home. They left when I was able to find the bus that I was supposed to board.

It had been a great day for me—my first outing with my friends in Sambalpur! I was happy and excited. However, unlike other days, on that evening, I was boarding a late bus. Usually, by that time, I would be at home. This evening I expected to reach home only by dinner time.

There were only a handful of people inside the bus. Most of the seats were empty. As the first few rows were not so good for long-distance travel, I found myself a seat at the rear of the bus. It was on the right side of the aisle, next to the window. I slid open the window pane to let the fresh air in, and started to look outside.

The street lights were on and so were the lights in the small shops. Inside the bus, it was close to dark. There were lights installed on the roof of the bus, but since the insides of the lamp shades were full of dirt and dead insects, most of the light was getting blocked, creating a faint glimmer. The
driver ignited the engine, and the bus started up with a vibration, followed by a creaky sound that became a part and parcel of the journey.

An old man sat diagonally behind me, towards my left. I saw him staring at me. He appeared strange. He was chewing paan. He was bald apart from a patch of hair behind his ears, and wore a thick pair of glasses. I could faintly see that he was dressed in a shirt and a dhoti. Every time I looked at him, he felt uncomfortable and tried not to make any eye contact with me.

But from the left corner of my eye, I watched him observing me. I tried to recall if I had ever seen him earlier, but I didn’t recall any such moment. Soon, I decided to ignore him and tilted my head towards the window and got absorbed in looking outside. I thought about the scenes from the movie and then remembered I still had the history exam the next day. I kept thinking about a lot of things. Then tiredness took over me, and I don’t recall when I fell asleep. I woke up with a start when I suddenly felt someone’s hand on my shoulder. It was the conductor pulling at the collar of my shirt.

‘Ticket! Ticket!’ he asked when he saw me awake.

I blinked and looked here and there to make sense of where I was. I realized I had been in a deep sleep. The bus had travelled a lot of distance in this time. At present, it was halted at one of the bus stops. I looked outside to see which stop it was and found that I was halfway home. Almost everyone else from the bus had gotten down at that stop.

‘Ticket! Ticket!’ the conductor reminded me again in his typical style.

‘Yeh lo. Aur soney do usey,’ [Take this. And let him sleep] a voice from behind me said.

It was the same strange old man. In his right hand, extended towards the conductor, he held a two-rupee note. I looked at him and then at the conductor, who looked at both of us. Just out of the sleep, I couldn’t make a lot of sense of this reaction from the old man. I slipped my hand in my pocket to pull out my change, but the old man stopped me.

‘Nahi, nahi, Uncle. I have money.’ I insisted on paying on my own.

‘Don’t worry, I will take it from your father. I know him,’ he responded.

The conductor took the money from him and left us to go and sit next to the driver on the bonnet of the engine in the cabin area.

At the back of the bus, that old man and I were the only passengers.

‘You know my father?’ I inquired with a lot of interest.

‘Yes.’ He smiled and came to sit next to me.

I felt nice that someone knew my father and had paid my bus fare.

I squeezed in towards the window, giving him more space to sit. He made himself comfortable and put his arm over my shoulder. I kept my two-rupee note back in my pocket.
I had saved two rupees and, at the back of my mind, I was planning to treat myself to either a samosa or a jalebi from the Ram Bharose snacks shop under the huge banyan tree in the Kaccha Market.

‘So where do you study?’ the old man asked me.

‘Guru Nanak Public School.’

‘Oh, very nice, very nice!’ he said.

I smiled back and turned my head to look outside.

‘Come to our home tonight. There is a kid of your age in my house too. You can play with him. And my house is close to yours,’ he offered politely.

‘No, no, Uncle, I have to go back to my home,’ I excused myself.

‘You know, I have gifted him a video game. It’s called Mario. Have you ever played it?’ he persisted, and then pushed me back to stretch himself to the window in order to spit.

The name of the video game made me very curious. I had heard about it from a few of my classmates. I had even asked my father to buy me one, but he had refused, saying it was too expensive, as usual.

‘Where is your house, Uncle?’ I asked the moment he settled back in his place.

‘Quite close to yours, I can drop you back to your house. You want to come?’ he asked, looking straight into my eyes.