“Oh! It’s my way of teaching. I believe everybody should gain his or her knowledge from different sources. Just one teacher and one book are no good to anybody.”
“How true you are, ma’am! Now I understood why you are Neha’s role model.”
Malati, as if remembering something suddenly, said, “Ma’am why don’t you tell him your favourite student also once failed in a mathematics exam.”
“That too with a zero score,” laughed Nirmala ma’am.
“Neha failed in Mathematics? I can’t believe it,” Neeraj said. “She is very good at it. She told me she used to be the top scorer in all her classes.”
“No doubt about it. She was the best at studies. That’s why she is my favourite. But, that day, I didn’t know what happened to her, she got all the answers wrong,” she paused. “I still remember feeling angry while checking her paper. I hadn’t expected such a thing from her. I was so disappointed I slapped her the next day while distributing papers, in front of all the students in the class.”
Neeraj was silent. A slap in front of the whole class must have been too much for his little Neha. How much pain she must have gone through! Even now he would never dare to talk to her loudly or angrily as she would be hurt. “Neha must have had some problem the previous day.”
“I asked her later what the reason was for her zero,” Nirmala madam said. “But she gave no response! The poor thing just kept weeping. You know what? She got top scores in the remaining subjects.”
“It happens in every student’s life, ma’am,” Neeraj said defending Neha. “They do well in everything, and suddenly they find themselves in a mess in one or two things. It applies to exams, sports and all.”
“You are right, Neeraj. But I was so fond of Neha I couldn’t digest such failure from her; her failure was my failure. Later on, I realised children are children; intelligent they may be, they too are prone to failure. We should not expect too much from them; otherwise we will be disappointed and in turn they, the children, will be ruined. To keep reminding myself of this fact, I kept Neha’s answer sheet with zero marks with me.”
“Ma’am! You still have that answer sheet with you?” Malati asked.
“Yes.”
“Can I see it?” Neeraj asked, excited. He wanted to see Neha’s childhood handwriting.
Nirmala madam went inside a room and came back after fifteen minutes with a sheet of paper, which was typically folded neatly in the middle. “I haven’t seen it for years. So it took me some time to search for it.”
Neeraj took the answer sheet into his hands carefully, as if he was taking little Neha herself into his hands. He unfolded the answer sheet and ran his palm over the beautiful words written in black ink. These were the words she had written twelve years before! How lucky he was to uncover these beautiful words after so many years! Neeraj kept staring at the words for a long moment. Graphologists say a person’s handwriting will tell his or her whole personality!
He lifted his head up suddenly and asked Nirmala madam, “May I request you for a favour, ma’am? I want to keep this paper.”
“What will you do with this?”
“You know Neha’s birthday is just two week’s away? I want to gift this answer sheet to her. She will be pleasantly surprised.”
“Good idea!” announced Malati.
Nirmala ma’am was silent for a while. Then, looking into Neeraj’s eyes, she whispered, “Neeraj, you told me you are a friend of Neha. I thought you were her best friend to come and meet me, her teacher. Now you want to gift her something nobody could think of. You are well aware how many childhood memories this little sheet will stir in her and how nostalgic she will become! I understand you are more than a friend to her.”
Neeraj gave her a warm smile. “Ma’am! The thing called love is strange. If I had come across my own answer sheet written in my childhood, I might have just stared at it for a long moment and then kept it away. But this piece of paper suddenly became so precious to me,” he lifted the answer sheet to his eyes. “Because I am in love with the person who used this paper years ago and who wrote these beautiful words with her tiny hands.”
“The thing called love is strange,” smiled Niramala ma’am. “And essential to life. I grant your request. You can take with you your love’s childhood adventure with a zero score.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” Neeraj said, all smiles. After a while, he took Nirmala madam’s blessings and came out of her room along with Malati.
“You got a great gift for Neha,” Malati said appreciatively. “Do you want to know how Neha got that famous zero in her maths exam?”
“You know?” he asked with surprise and curiosity.
She nodded. “Come on, I will take you to our secret place, which was the original reason for this zero.” Malati dragged him to the back of the school building. There, it was filled with nothing but trees and bushes growing haphazardly. Malati led him further into the bushes and into a small clearing, which seemed to have been unused for many years.
“What kind of secret place is it?” Neeraj asked in confusion.
“You know, this place remains the same as it was when we were here as kids?” Malati said. “Those days all the students, during study hours, used to divide themselves in groups and disappear into some lonely places to study without any disturbance from the outside world. Naturally, being good friends, Neha and I always remained as a separate group. That day we got bored of our usual study place and decided to find a new place. So, we ventured out to the back of the school. And you know what Neha and I found here in this place?” she asked looking around the clearing.
“What?”
“Our enthusiastic and world-exploring eyes found a young boy and a young girl sitting here.” Malati pointed to a small rock in the clearing. “See! This is the same rock on which they were sitting. This girl was almost on the lap of the boy.”
“Oohh! Interesting!”
Malati smiled, with a girlish shyness. “Yeah, it was more than that for our young minds. We watched them from a distance, our eyes popping out. We don’t know who they were and what they were doing in this secluded place. But one thing was sure – something fishy was going on.” She paused dramatically and looked at Neeraj. He was listening to her keenly. “Then Neha whispered into my ears, ‘they are lovers’. I asked her, ‘how do you know?’ She said, ‘only lovers sit like that. I watched on TV’.”
“Oh my dear Neha!” Neeraj laughed. “She had already gained so much knowledge by that time.” They both laughed.
“Such was our childhood!” Malati continued. “From that time onwards, we used to come to this place often just to see this couple. Twice or thrice a week they used to come here and I still remember how happy and excited we used to feel seeing them and how we used to derive a lot of fun watching them. Their laughter, their cuddles and their kisses – all excited us a lot.”
“Naughty girls!” Neeraj said.
Malati laughed. “Yes, we were very naughty. And, mischievous too. One day we decided to frighten this couple. We wanted to derive cruel joy from their fear of being caught.”
“That’s absolutely crazy!”
“Don’t blame me. This idea was originally conceived by Neha. Your Neha…” Malati stressed the last two words.
“Hahaa… I am just finding out how naughty my Neha can get. Dying to know what she did.”
Malati continued. “We made a master plan and Neha had taken the responsibility of execution. We, Neha and I, waited for the lovers’ next appearance. As usual, they met after two days at their usual time and place. Poor things… unaware that two little devils were waiting for them, they started their playful and romantic chatting. We let them enjoy themselves for a few minutes. Then, as per the plan, Neha took a small stone and, mustering all her courage and strength, threw it into the nearby trees. Our thought was the stone would make some noise among the trees and the couple would be frightened and run away, thinking somebody was coming. The stone did make the noise
, but they didn’t run away.” Malati stopped.
“What happened then?”
“The girl asked what the noise was. The boy assured her it was nothing but twigs falling from trees; he said there was no need to panic as nobody knew this route. And they resumed their usual conversation. But we, little devils, were hurt by their response. ‘How dare they remain seated here,’ Neha muttered. I was also disappointed that our plan had no impact on them. This time, Neha got bolder. She picked up another stone and threw it right towards the couple. I remember, even now, how Neha’s hand quivered as she threw the stone, which landed hard on the girl’s head.”
“Oh my God! That’s foolishness!”
“Yeah! It was our foolishness,” Malati said regretfully. “What we saw was blood instantly running down the girl’s cheek. She touched her head and was appalled. ‘Somebody found us out. They will kill us,’ she shrieked looking around. ‘It’s bleeding,’ the boy too cried and panicked. They held each other’s hands and began to run, towards where we didn’t know. We were transfixed for a few seconds, seeing the blood and their horrified looks. We saw what we wanted to see. But we had never imagined, even in our dreams, that they would be so terribly frightened. And we never wanted to hurt them. Both of them were so shocked, they didn’t have the guts to look towards where the stone had come from. We didn’t know love was such a forbidden thing in our town then. When we came out of our initial shock, we too began to run towards the school, tears running down our cheeks.” Malati stopped and looked at Neeraj for his reaction.
“You both were real devils,” he declared.
“It’s our childishness,” she replied. “You don’t know how much we regretted our act later. We had least expected our mischief would turn into violence and we would see blood. The next day was this maths exam of ours. Neha was so disturbed by the incident, she got this zero in the exam. She confided in me later that for many days she used to see in her dreams the horrified and bloody face of that innocent girl.”
“She deserved this zero and all those nightmares. Didn’t you see the couple again?”
“No! In fact, we dared not go there for a few days. After one or two weeks, mustering all our courage, we did venture into that place, only to find it empty. We waited for the couple every day, but never saw them again. We missed them terribly.”
Neeraj and Malati slowly began to walk back to the school. “Neha has never told me this story,” Neeraj said. “Isn’t it funny that she used to be very frightened when coming out with me in the initial days of our relationship?”
“She must have thought of that poor girl she had injured years before,” Malati laughed.
Neeraj could not suppress his smile, remembering all those beautiful moments when they, in the initial days of their blossoming love, used to meet secretly and how she used to look around frightfully. Maybe she had been searching for the devil-like-her girl.
***
After finishing his handiwork, Neeraj was pleasantly surprised he had done it so well. “Mmm… I never thought my school drawing classes would come in handy to draw my sweetheart’s school incident,” he smiled a satisfied smile at the painting. “How naughty my Neha is looking. I should get this drawing framed tomorrow.”
Neeraj was excited to think of how Neha would feel when she opened the parcel and found this painting along with her old answer sheet with a zero score. She could not guess he was sending her such a beautiful birthday gift.
Neeraj kept staring at his painting for a long time. On the centre of the painting was a young couple sitting on a rock. The rock was too small to accommodate two persons, so the girl was almost sitting in the lap of the boy. They seemed to be in a blissful world, their eyes mischievously looking into each other. On the left corner, in the background, two girls were peering from the thickly grown bushes, their curious eyes shining with expectation. Among the two, the girl with a short ponytail was holding a small stone in her hand, ready to throw it towards the couple, who were lost in their own world.
At the right corner at the bottom of the page, the following words were inscribed: Once you were the girl, with a stone in your hand. Now you are the girl, with a lover glowing in your eyes.
When They Got Married
When they got married, both of them brought their dreams into their marriage.
After the engagement and before the marriage, which is naughtily called the probation period by some people, Sujit, during one of those meetings at restaurants, had asked his fiancée, “How do you want me to be after our marriage? Do I have to change myself in any manner?”
Happy that he had asked such a good and sensible question, Anu said, “I want you to be more responsible and careful. And most importantly I want you to help me in cooking, as you know I have never entered our kitchen so far.”
Sujit smiled. “Don’t worry, dear. I know cooking well; we together will reign over our kitchen department”.
She felt very happy with his reassuring response and asked in return, “What about me? Are you expecting any changes in me?”
“Yeah, give me a little freedom; don’t rebuke me if I come home late or go out with friends. You have already started putting restrictions on my food.”
“Ohhh!!!” Anu laughed. “I am worried about your health, baba; you eat a lot of junk food.”
“Ok! One more thing,” her fiancé continued. “I want you to be a little romantic. You cringe away when I hold your hands, as if I am a monster.”
Anu blushed. “Our hero is having designs…hah?”
Sujit thought she looked cute blushing. He wanted to see more redness in her cheeks. “I want simple things in life. One goodbye kiss while going to office and another after coming back from office.”
Anu blushed more. “Ok, hero. Your wish is granted.”
Thus our hero and heroine got married and the heroine, as usual, moved to the city where the hero was working. Everything was new for the new couple. New experiences, new relations, a new home, new freedom, new restrictions and new all.
“I have to find a new job here,” Anu complained to her husband one day. “I have to attend all those calls and interviews again.”
“You will get it soon, dear. This city needs your talent,” Sujit encouraged her.
Within two months, Anu did get a brand new job and felt very excited on the morning of the joining day. “Sujit, will you make breakfast today? I am very confused and worried about the first day,” she asked her husband, trying to shake him out of his slumber.
“Come on, Anu! Don’t act as if it is your first job. Let me sleep today; last night I slept late.”
‘Hmmmm…these days you are becoming a guinea pig; you do nothing but eat and sleep,” Anu grumbled and hurried into the kitchen to make breakfast.
Sujit gave a deaf ear to her accusations and woke up promptly when she completed making breakfast. “The omelette is delicious,” he complimented his wife at breakfast. In response, she stared at him angrily.
Anu wore her white formal shirt and black trousers, applied light makeup on her face and coloured her lips red with a lipstick.
“You are looking very beautiful.” Sujit looked at her adoringly. “I will drop my beautiful wife at her office today.”
“Not only today; you should drop me every day,” Anu said, picking up her handbag.
“Sure darling! Seems you are still angry with me for not making breakfast,” Sujit said taking her face into his hands.
“What are you doing?” she asked, pushing his hands away.
“A goodbye kiss, dear!”
“Sujit, can’t you see I am wearing lipstick? It would smudge all over my face.”
“Oh baby! Don’t do this to me. How can I work in office if you don’t give me the energy kiss?”
Anu stared at him for a second, as if sizing him up and then said, “Ok, only a gentle kiss. Remember this is my first day and I don’t want to be seen with smudged lipstick.”
“I know.” Sujit lowered his face onto her
and pressed his lips onto hers in a tender squeeze. But, then he suddenly moved his face away.
“What happened?” Anu asked, puzzled with his sudden reaction.
“Whack...” he made a face. “What lipstick are you using?”
“Strawberry flavoured! You don’t like it?”
“Horrible! Why don’t you use a normal one without any flavours?”
“Hmm… seems you have an aversion to the strawberry aroma.”
“Maybe! Please use a normal one from tomorrow onwards,” Sujit said.
“Ok sir! Shall we go now? Otherwise I would be late on my first day,” Anu pointed him to the door.
They came out. “Your lipstick spoiled my mood,” he grumbled, starting his two-wheeler.
Anu sat in the back seat and lovingly smoothened her husband’s hair. She was smiling inwardly. Like all wives, Anu too knew how to make her husband enter the kitchen and help her enormously. She was never going to give up her strawberry-flavoured lipstick, at least until he started waking up early in the morning and making her a cup of hot tea. This was just the beginning, dear!