Chapter 7 May 1, 2008

Karun opened his mouth, but before he could say anything, I heard my mom saying:

“COME HERE RIGHT NOW……!!!!”

“Mummy, ..umm.. it was an accident. Actually……”

“I said come here right now.” I realised mom was seriously angry. Arguing will certainly worsen the situation. So I decided to keep my mouth shut and follow the orders.

Mom took me to home. We spoke nothing on the way. Sometimes silence speaks louder than words. I was wondering what made my mom to come to my tuition at such a weird time. But does it matters?? The only thing that mattered was she saw me doing wrong thing to the wrong person.

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NEXT DAY:

“You are not going to your tuition anymore from today itself.” mom said. It was the first time, she spoke to me after that incident.

“But I can explain it to you. Actually, its not what you think.” I defended.

“No, I don’t want to hear anything…My..”

“Ohk….say.” dad interrupted her. I thanked God for dad was in here. This is the best thing about ‘dads’. They know how to tackle ‘mummy’s’ and the situation simultaneously.

The next half-an-hour, I told them everything that happened to me and how the situation twisted into a real massacre. Although they appeared a bit convinced after my hard work, but still they were not agree to allow me for my tuition.

It was like a shock for me. Tuition was like a ‘third-home’ to me. Yes, I know this whole idea of ‘third-home’ sounds eerie, but still I didn’t want to lose my tuition. Finally, I surrendered.

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BHARATI VIDYA MANDIR ~ MY SCHOOL

“Nature speaks the language of mathematics.” Sinha sir articulated. He was our maths teacher but the way he used to teach us made him appear more like a philosopher.

He erased the blackboard and wrote the letter ‘D’ at the middle in large.

“Now who will tell me what is it??” He yelled. I raised my hand. It was my habit to react or better to say ‘over-react’ in school. I used to consider myself ‘out of this world’ student.

“Yes Himanshu, please tell us the answer.” sir said completely surprised by my reaction-time.

“Sir its ‘D’. ‘D’ stands for ‘Dog’.” I answered and instantaneously realised how foolish I was. Whole class started to giggle.

“You idiot, everyone knows its ‘D’. Why you have to act oversmart in the class??”, Sinha sir shouted angrily at me. He then took a deep breath to control his anger and then said, “D stands for ‘discriminant’. Its the base of our next chapter ‘Quadratic Equations’.”

Everyone laughed at me. But I was used to it. I knew its only for a few minutes. I’ll again be a ‘hero’ in the next period. Although I was not certain about it.

“Better luck next time Himanshu.” Akshat said. He was my class-mate and one of the ‘three best friends’ in school. The rest being Apurv and Sandeep.

“Lets play ‘fighter’”, I said. ‘FIGHTER’ was our favourite time-pass game. Its a game played with pen. Each player puts his pen on the battleground (i.e desk) and targets to throw the other ones out of the desk. The last one to survive wins. I know it sounds a bit childish, but who cares…!!!

“Himanshu….!!!!!!” I heard someone shouting at me. And the voice was from none other than Isha. Isha was our class-monitor. “Will you stop your rubbish thing on your own or I’ll have to come to your place.” she shouted again. I hated her for her strictness. If she were not a monitor, we would have been very good friends. But now we were just classmates.

Isha used to sit on a bench just parallel to mine and this enabled her to keep an eye on ‘all of us’ comfortably. Isha was good looking and had a tall and commanding personality and may be this was the reason that she was the first choice of our class-teacher for the class representative.

But she was very short-tempered and also responsible for creating ‘discipline troubles’ for us. Besides Isha, used to sit a ‘very-very’ cute girl named Palak. I am mentioning Palak because I’d always wanted to talk to her but every time I’d tried to do so, I just couldn’t. I won’t say that I had a crush on her, but nevertheless I liked her.

See this is the problem with boys. They get infatuated with more than one girl simultaneously. And guess what, I was no exception to this.

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TWO HOURS LATER: THE ‘GROUP-SONG’ AUDITIONS

I am feeling very proud in telling you that for the first time in my life, I participated in the group-song competition. I didn’t know what drove me to it, but still I was very delighted. The singer inside me was ready to show himself to the world.

When I reached for the auditions, I saw there was only one more boy out there. I realised I have taken a wrong decision. I began to feel inconvenient among so many girls. Finally, the group leader started taking auditions. Since there were only two boys, so she selected us without auditions.

The next 30 minutes, I listened to other girls who were trying their best to sing melodiously. I was already getting mad, when I realised Palak had also come. Suddenly, my lost delightfulness started to reappear. I prayed to God that she gets selected……!

And guess what, she did..!

{Rest continued in Chapter 8}