‘Aarti? She got me into trouble the first day we met,’ Gopal said.
I dipped a biscuit in my tea and listened.
1
‘Lazy parents, bread-butter again,’ I grumbled, shutting a blue plastic tiffin in the second row. Raghav and I moved to the next desk.
‘Forget it, Gopal. The class will be back any time,’ Raghav said.
‘Shh …’
‘I’ve brought puri-aloo, we can share that. It’s wrong to steal from others.’
I battled a small, round steel tiffin box. ‘How does one open this?’
Neither of us had the sharp nails required to open the thin steel lid of the stubborn box. We had skipped the morning assembly for our weekly tiffin raid. We had ten more minutes till the national anthem began outside. After that class 5 C would be back. We had to find, eat and keep the tiffins back within that time.
‘Its pickle and parathas,’ Raghav said, having opened the lid. ‘You want it?’
‘Forget it,’ I said as I returned the steel box to the student’s bag. My eyes darted from one bag to another. ‘This one,’ I said, pointing to a pink imported rucksack in the first row. ‘That bag looks expensive. She must be getting good food. Come.’
We rushed to the target’s seat. I grabbed the Barbie bag, unzipped the front flap and found a red, shiny, rectangular tiffin. The cover had a spoon compartment. ‘Fancy box!’ I said, clicking the lid open.
Idlis, a little box of chutney and a large piece of chocolate cake. We’d hit the jackpot.
‘I only want the cake,’ I said as I lifted the huge slice.
‘Don’t take the whole thing. It’s not fair,’ Raghav said.
‘If I eat only a bit, she will get to know,’ I scowled.
‘Cut it into two. Take one, leave the other,’ Raghav said.
‘Cut with what?’
‘Use a ruler,’ he suggested.
I ran to my desk. I brought back a ruler and made a clean cut. ‘Fine?’ I said. ‘Happy now?’
‘It’s her cake.’ Raghav shrugged.
‘But you are my friend,’ I said.
I offered a bite. He refused. I had not had any breakfast at home. I gorged on the cake, my fingers smeared with icing.
‘Why don’t you get your own tiffin?’ Raghav said.
I spoke with my mouth stuffed. ‘It will mean extra work for Baba. He makes lunch and dinner anyway.’
‘So?’
‘I tell him I don’t feel hungry.’ My father taught in a government school. He left home at six, even earlier than me. I licked the chocolate cream off my fingers. We could hear the national anthem.
‘I can bring tiffin for you,’ Raghav said and made me stand up along with him for the anthem.
‘Forget it, your mom cooks boring stuff. Puri everyday,’ I said.
We heard students chatter on their way back to class. I stuffed the remaining cake into my mouth.
‘Hurry, hurry,’ Raghav said.
I shut the red tiffin box and placed it back in the Barbie bag.
‘Who sits here anyway?’ Raghav asked.
I fumbled through the pink rucksack and found a brown-paper-covered notebook. I read out the label on the cover, ‘Aarti Pratap Pradhan, Subject: Maths, Class 5, Section C, Age 10, Roll number 1, Sunbeam School.’
‘Whatever. Are we done?’ Raghav said.
I hung the bag back on Aarti’s chair, in its original place.
‘Let’s go,’ I said. We ran to our back-row seats, sat and put our heads down on the desk. We closed our eyes and pretended to be sick, the reason for skipping the morning assembly.
The entire 5 C entered the room, filling the class with the simultaneous cacophony of four dozen ten-year-olds.
Simran Gill madam, our class teacher, arrived a minute later and the noise died down. ‘Multiplication,’ she wrote on the board, even as the children were still settling down.
I sat up straight and craned my neck to see Aarti Pratap Pradhan, roll number one. She wore a white skirt, white shirt, red cardigan and had ribbons in her plaits, and she faced the teacher most seriously as she sat down.
‘Eww,’ Aarti screamed and jumped up. She picked up a chocolate-stained ruler from her seat. The back of her skirt had chocolate stains. ‘Oh my God!’ Aarti’s shrill voice made the entire class take notice.
‘Aarti, sit down!’ Gill madam screamed in a voice loud enough to make the back rows shiver. Gill madam didn’t like noise, even if it came from girls with cute plaits.
Raghav and I exchanged a worried glance. We had left behind evidence.
‘Madam, someone has put a dirty ruler on my seat. My new school dress is spoiled,’ Aarti wailed.
The whole class laughed and Aarti broke into tears.
‘What?’ the teacher said. She placed the chalk down, dusted her hands and took the ruler from Aarti.
Aarti continued to sniffle. The teacher walked along the aisles. Students shrank in their seats as she passed them. ‘Who brought chocolate cake today?’ she launched into an investigation.
‘I did,’ Aarti said. She opened her tiffin and realised how her own cake had been used to ruin her dress. Her howls reached new decibel levels. ‘Someone ate my cake,’ Aarti cried so loud, the adjacent class 5 B could hear us.
Half your cake, I wanted to tell her.
Raghav stared at me. ‘Confess?’ he whispered.
‘Are you mad?’ I whispered back.
When Gill madam walked by, I stared at the floor. She wore golden slippers with fake crystals on the strap. I clenched my fists. My fingers were greasy.
The teacher walked back to the front of the class. She took out a tissue from her purse and wiped the ruler clean. ‘Admit it, else the punishment will be worse,’ she warned.
I pretended not to hear and opened my maths notebook.
‘Who is GM?’ the teacher asked. She had read my initials. I had scraped them with a compass on my ruler. Damn!
We had two GMs in the class. One, Girish Mathur, sat in the first row. He stood up without provocation.
‘I didn’t do it, ma’am,’ he said and pinched his neck. ‘God promise, ma’am.’
The teacher squinted at him, still suspicious.
‘I swear upon Ganga, ma’am,’ Girish said as he broke down.
The Ganga reference worked. Everyone believed him.
‘Who’s the other GM? Gopal Mishra!’ the teacher shouted my name.
All eyes turned to me. The teacher walked up to my desk. I stood up.
I didn’t say a word. Neither did the teacher. Slap, Slap! Both my cheeks were stinging.
‘Stealing food? Are you a thief?’ the teacher said. She looked at me as if I had stolen the Kohinoor diamond from the British queen’s museum, something the social studies teacher had told us about two days ago.
I hung my head low. She smacked the back of my neck. ‘Get out of my class!’
I dragged my feet out of the class, even as the entire 5 C stared at me.
‘Aarti, go clean up in the bathroom,’ Gill madam said.
I leaned against the wall outside the class. Aarti wiped her eyes and walked past me towards the toilet.
‘Drama queen! It was only half a slice of chocolate cake!’ I thought.
Anyway, that’s how I, Gopal Mishra, met the great Aarti Pratap Pradhan. I must tell you, even though this is my story, you won’t like me very much. After all, a ten-year-old thief isn’t exactly a likeable person to begin with.
I come from Varanasi, which my social studies teacher says is one of the oldest cities on earth. People came to live here in 1200 BC. The city gets its name from two rivers, Varuna and Asi, which pass through the city and meet the Ganga. People call my city several names – Kashi, Benares or Banaras – depending on where they come from. Some call it the City of Temples, for we have thousands of them, and some the City of Learning, as Varanasi apparently has great places to study. I simply call Varanasi my home. I stay near Gadholia, a place so noisy, you need to put cotton
balls in your ears if you want to sleep. Gadholia is near the ghats, along the river Ganga. So if the crowds of Gadholia become too much to take, you can always run to the ghats and sit by the Ganga and watch the temples. Some call my city beautiful, holy and spiritual – especially when we have to introduce it to foreign tourists. Many call it filthy and a dump. I don't think my city is dirty. It is the people who make it dirty.
Anyway, they say you must come to Varanasi once in a lifetime. Well, some of us spend a lifetime here.
I had a pencil in my pocket. I used it to scribble ‘5 C’ on the wall. It helped me pass the time, and would make our class easier to find too.
She came out of the toilet – face wet, drama-queen expression intact and gaze firmly fixed on me – and walked back to the class.
She continued to stare at me as she came closer. ‘You are scribbling on the walls!’ she said.
‘Go complain,’ I said. ‘Go.’
‘How can you steal my tiffin?’ she said.
‘I didn’t steal your tiffin,’ I said. ‘I had three bites of your chocolate cake. You wouldn’t even have noticed.’
‘You are a really bad boy,’ Aarti said.
2
Dubey uncle, our lawyer, pushed a small box of four laddoos towards us.
‘Sweets? What for?’ my father said.
Dubey uncle had come home. Baba and I faced him across our ancient dining table.
‘You’ve got a hearing date,’ Dubey uncle said. ‘This itself took so long, I thought we should celebrate.’
I wondered if I could give some laddoos to drama queen Aarti as compensation for the cake. I wanted to buy a chocolate cake and slam it on her desk. However, I didn’t have money for that. My father didn’t give me any pocket money, and he didn’t have much money in his own pocket.
My mother’s illness had wiped out all his savings. She died two weeks after I turned four. I don’t remember much of her or her death. Baba did say he had to wear her dupatta and sleep next to me for a month. After her death the land dispute started. Dubey uncle had become a frequent visitor to our house for this reason.
‘You brought sweets only because we have a hearing?’ Baba coughed. The case had not given his land back to him, but it did worsen his respiratory ailment.
‘Well, Ghanshyam wants to settle the case out of court,’ Dubey uncle said.
Ghanshyam taya-ji, my father’s respected elder brother, had screwed us. My grandfather had left his two sons thirty acres of agricultural land on the Lucknow Highway, to be divided equally. Soon after my grandfather’s death, Ghanshyam uncle took a loan from the bank and mortgaged Baba’s half of the property, forging the papers with wrong plot numbers and bribing the bank officer.
Ghanshyam taya-ji made bad business decisions and lost the money. The bank sent a foreclosure notice to us. Baba protested, and the bank slapped cases on both my father and uncle. The two brothers slapped cases on each other. All these cases moved through our legal system slower than a bullock cart on the national highway.
‘Settle?’ My father leaned forward.
I picked up a laddoo and put it in my pocket.
‘Ghanshyam will give you some cash. He will take your share of the land and handle the bank and legal cases,’ Dubey uncle said.
‘How much?’ Baba asked.
‘Ten lakhs,’ Dubey uncle replied.
My father kept quiet. I snucked away another laddoo. She should be happy with two, I thought.
‘I admit the offer is ridiculously low for fifteen acres,’ Dubey uncle continued. ‘But there’s a loan of a crore on your property.’
‘It’s not my loan!’ Baba said in an uncharacteristically loud voice.
‘He submitted your documents to the bank. Why did you give him your property papers?’
‘He is my elder brother,’ Baba said, fighting tears. The loss of a brother hurt him more than the loss of land.
‘If you want more money, I can ask him. Why drag this forever?’ Dubey uncle said.
‘I am a farmer’s son. I am not giving up my land,’ Baba said, his eyes red. ‘Not until I die. Tell him to kill me if he wants the land.’
Baba then stared at me as my hand reached for the third laddoo.
‘It’s okay, take all of them,’ Dubey uncle told me.
I looked at both of them, picked up the box and ran out of the room.
I placed the box on her desk with a thump.
‘What is this?’ She looked at me primly.
‘I ate your cake. I’m sorry,’ I said, my last word faint.
‘I don’t like laddoos,’ she announced.
‘Why? You firang or what?’ I said.
‘No, laddoos make you fat. I don’t want to be fat,’ she said.
‘Chocolate cake doesn’t make you fat?’
‘I don’t want it,’ she said. She gently pushed the box towards me.
‘Fine,’ I said and took the box.
‘Did you say sorry?’ Aarti said.
‘Yes, I did.’ I noticed her loopy plaits, tied up with red ribbons. She looked like a cartoon character.
‘Apology accepted,’ she said.
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘Sure you don’t want the laddoos?’
‘No, fat girls can’t become air hostesses,’ she said.
‘You want to be an air hostess?’ I said.
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
‘They fly everywhere. I want to see different places.’
‘Okay.’
‘What do you want to be?’ Aarti said.
I shrugged my shoulders. ‘A rich man,’ I said.
She nodded, as if my choice was reasonable. ‘Are you poor right now?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
She said, ‘I am rich. We have a car.’
‘We don’t have a car. Okay, bye.’ I turned to leave when Aarti spoke again.
‘Why doesn’t your mother give you a tiffin?’
‘I don’t have a mother,’ I said.
‘Dead?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Okay, bye.’
I came back to my seat. I opened the box of laddoos and took one out.
Aarti walked up to me.
‘What?’ I asked.
‘You can eat my tiffin sometimes. Don’t take a lot though. And don’t take any cake or nice treats.’
‘Thanks,’ I said.
‘And don’t make a mess. If you want, we can eat together during lunch-break.’
‘You won’t have enough food for yourself,’ I said.
‘It’s okay. I am dieting. I don’t want to be fat,’ Aarti said.
Seven Years Later
3
‘Walk me home first. Then go to the cricket ground,’ Aarti said.
We were coming back after an afternoon of boating on the Ganga. Aarti and I had been doing this every week for the last five years. Phoolchand bhai, a boatman at Assi Ghat, let me borrow his boat. We walked down a bylane narrow enough to jam a fat cow, and came out on the main road adjacent to the ghats.
‘I’m already late, Aarti. Raghav will scream at me.’
‘So let me come with you. I don’t want to be bored at home,’ she said.
‘No.’
‘Why?’ she blinked.
‘Too many boys. Remember the whistles last time?’
‘I can handle it,’ Aarti said. She brushed some strands of hair away from her forehead.
I looked at her beautiful face. ‘You have no idea what you do to them,’ I said. You have no idea what you do to me, was what I actually wanted to tell her.
Aarti’s looks had always drawn appreciative comments from the school teachers. However, two years ago when she turned fifteen, the whole school started talking about her. Statements such as ‘the most beautiful girl in Sunbeam School’, ‘she should be an actress’, or ‘she can apply for Miss India’ became increasingly common. Some of it came from people trying to please her. After all, a senior IAS officer father and a prominent ex
-politician grandfather meant people wanted to be in her good books.
But yes, Aarti did make Varanasi skip a heartbeat.
Her entry into the Sigra Stadium cricket ground would definitely disrupt the game. Batsmen would miss the ball, fielders would miss catches and jobless morons would whistle in the way they do to give UP a bad name.
‘I’ve not met Raghav for so long,’ Aarti said. ‘Let’s go. I will watch you play.’
‘You will meet him at tuitions tomorrow,’ I said curtly. ‘Go home now.’
‘You want me to walk home alone?’
‘Take a rickshaw,’ I said.
She grabbed my wrist. ‘You are coming with me right now.’ She held my hand and swung it back and forth as I walked her home.
I wanted to tell her not to hold my hand anymore. It is fine at twelve, not at seventeen. Even though I liked it more at seventeen than at twelve.
‘What?’ she said. ‘Why are you staring? I am only holding your hand so that you don’t run away.’
I smiled. We walked past the noisy shopping streets to the calmer Cantonment area. We reached the bungalow of District Magistrate Pratap Brij Pradhan, Aarti’s father.
The evening sky had turned a deep orange. Raghav was sure to sulk, as it would be too late to play. However, I could not refuse Aarti.
‘Thank you,’ Aarti said in a child-like voice. ‘Coming in?’
‘No, I am already late,’ I said.
Our eyes met. I broke eye contact quickly. Best friends, that’s all we were, I told myself.
Her hair blew in the breeze and wisps of black gently stroked her face.
‘I should cut my hair, so hard to maintain,’ Aarti said.
‘Don’t,’ I said firmly.
‘I’m keeping it long only for you. Bye!’ she said. I wondered if she had also started to feel differently about me. But I didn’t know how to ask.
‘See you at tuitions,’ I said, walking away.
‘Raghav Kashyap,’ the teacher called out and held up an answer-sheet. Raghav, Aarti and I had joined JSR coaching classes in Durgakund to prepare for the engineering entrance exams. JSR, named after its three founders – Mr Jha, Mr Singh and Mr Rai – conducted frequent mock-tests for AIEEE (All India Engineering Entrance Exam) and the IIT JEE (Indian Institute of Technology Joint Entrance Exam). The AIEEE attracted ten lakh students annually for thirty thousand seats in the National Institutes of Technology (NITs) across the country. Every engineering aspirant took these exams. I didn’t particularly want to become an engineer. Baba wished to see me as one, and that was why I went to JSR.