A few days have passed since the new session started. And unlike most of the Std. (III) students, I haven’t paid the school fee. That’s why, when the school accountant steps into the classroom, I know he is here for me.
“What about you,” he asks me, stopping by the front row.
“Tomorrow,” I reply. He stands there for a while as if assessing the accountability of my words. I maintain a straight expression, while he scribbles something in his notebook then moves on to the next row.
“Why did you lie to him,” whispers Pragya, sitting next to me, once the accountant is out of earshot. “You are not going to be here tomorrow.”
“But he doesn’t have to know that,” I whisper back. I am filled with a sense of accomplishment having successfully duped the accountant and at the same time, saved my father some money; after all, he is going to need it elsewhere.
“Tell me something,” she says after a while. “Do you really want to go?”
Do I?
I turn around to look at my friends. Abhinav is sitting two rows behind; he throws his sheepish smile at me. Vishal, like his usual, is sitting at the last bench; at the sight of me, he imitates blowing his brains off. Last month, the three of us had appeared for a boarding school entrance examination. Sadly, I was the only one who could make it. Taking that into account, my father didn’t force me to join. It was totally up to me. Apart from Pragya, they are the only ones who know that it’s my last day here.
“Why do you care,” I reply, not answering the question she had asked me. “Once I am gone, you’ll be the class topper and the Monitor.”
“Don’t act smart. You beat me just this once, that too by one mark.”
For a moment there, I question my decision. A part of me wants to continue with the way things are: my daily squabbles with Pragya about which one of us was better than the other, getting together with Vishal and Abhinav every evening for a bit of this and a bit of that. I look around; all the faces I won’t be seeing again.
“I understand why you want to leave,” says Pragya. “You never belonged here anyway.”
I don’t know what to say to that.
“I just wish I could go too,” she continues.
“You can’t. It’s a boy’s hostel,” I reply, jokingly.
“That’s not what I meant,” she says, a shadow crossing her face. She seems upset.
“I know what you meant,” I nudge her. “I was joking.”
She takes a moment to smile.
During lunchbreak, I gather the three of them. And like every other day, we sit and talk while munching on samosas, discussing the good times. Though my friends kept it to themselves, just being happy for me, I knew that I had landed the opportunity all of them aspired to. A new door of possibilities had opened up for me, leading out of this small town. And that was a good if not the best reason why I had chosen to go.
Later on, when the school breaks, my friends gather at the Main Gate. I say my goodbyes to them before we all go on our separate ways. I find the rickshaw uncle waiting for me outside like every other day. Even he doesn’t know. I decide to tell him since he has been part of my daily life, ferrying me to school then back to home. As I step on the rickshaw, I realize, in mix of all the overwhelming emotion, one thing has totally escaped my mind. My eyes fall on the boy in the opposite seat, the last person I wanted to see today: Ashish.
It had all started when he had turned up one day on the rickshaw on my way to the school. Before long, he started borrowing stuff from me which he never returned. My parents scolded me, assuming I was losing my stuff at school. I never told my parents the real thing. One day when I confronted him, he downright denied having borrowed anything. After that day, I started avoiding him, thinking if I didn’t pay him enough attention, he would leave me alone. But every day I had to share the rickshaw with him and endure his snide remarks.
Just one last time, I repeat to myself on the way home. Ashish keeps going on and on but I don’t heed his taunts. I almost make it to the end.
The rickshaw halts at my stop. The rickshaw uncle comes to open the door. Holding my bag, I am about to get down when Ashish says something. There’s nothing new about it, just the usual. Maybe it is the sudden awareness that I don’t have to put up with that boy anymore or maybe all of his name-callings has been accumulating till date. Whatever it is, it propels my right hand, landing a punch on his face. Then without losing a moment, I jump out of the rickshaw and break into a run, the fastest I have run in my entire life. Where the street turned towards my home, I glance back. The rickshaw uncle is holding Ashish back and what is an unmistakable smile on his face.
I don’t stop until I am inside my home. Never before had I felt so pleased with myself.
To be continued...
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