Anyone Else But You... (3 page)

For Rishav it was going to be sweet revenge. To walk around among those who had spurned him six years ago.
 
 
It would totally
be
an
“in-their-face” thing. He wanted to prove a point and he wasn’t goin
g
to rest
until
he had done so. The pile of certificates in his hand should be enough he said to reassure himself.

*

Jai
Chauhan
fell on top of his bean bag with a thud. An hour of intense work out had drained every ounce of energy that he
had. He barely managed to reach for his iPhone which was luckily lying somewhere close to his couch. He dialed the number of his personal caretaker and waited for him to answer.

He picked up after the first three rings.

“Omar
chacha
,
ek
Breezer
aur
ek
packet chips
le aana
,” he ordered in an exhausted voice and hung up even before Omar could reply in an affirmative. Jai knew that an order was an order and it was now up to Omar to arrange for what he asked. He turned on the Air conditioner with disdain as though His Royalty was doing a favour by allowing the Hitachi people to manufacture Air conditioners that would cool his sweaty body.

Jai lifted his t-shirt and observed his chiseled stomach. His abs
were
considerably well shaped now and he decided to name them after six random Wonders of the World. His next prey was the television
set
which he glanced spitefully
at
.
You tiny screened bastard
, he thought. It had been seventeen attempts since he had successfully managed to scale a level in the popular war game, Call of Duty and he took it upon his moral obligation to blame his 32” television (which he considered small by
his standards
) for every
wrong
button pressed as a result of his born incompetence.

The television was on, Xbox plugged in, Air-conditioner producing a chilling effect and his favourite falvour of potato wafers and Breezer beside him, the stage was set for Jai to exhibit his
jainess
and so he did. He clumsily ate the chips, took gulps of the Breezer in between and left his Commando to fend for himself in the game. And every time he lifted the analog to move further, his hungry stomach called for his attention. And as a result of which, his poor commando (who had already experienced 23 rebirths before that) continued to be denied
moksha,
over and over and over again.

Jai
Chauhan
surprisingly was one of the model students of
Delhi High School
. He was the incumbent to the post of the Head Boy. A shocking tra
nsformation in the ape that he wa
s to a more civilized form of a human being led to his teachers living under the illusion of
Jai
being a direct descendent of the old man who lived in Vatican City and ruled the hearts of a million with his holiness.

*

Singhal keenly observed
the young boy’s face
, the one who
was sitting in fron
t
of her. She could see that he was trying to be confident.
 
He tries t
o
o hard,
she thought
. If
only
he would just loosen up a little bit, it’ll do wonders.
 
His application is quite impressive though
. For an ordinary person, the
boy would seem over- confident and
too much into himself. But years
of experience had made
reading the
micro-expressions of a student,
cakewalk
for her
. She could sense a little bit of arrogance in his voice. But he was polite.

It’d be interesting to have him in this school.
 
Too bad I won’t be there to see what becomes of him,
she thought

Rishav on the other hand sat with
goose
-
bumps
on his arms. It wasn’t even that cold in there.
 
Weird
, he thought. But he quickly
regained his composure
,
ready to answer what was asked of him.

He was totally in awe of the lady in front him.
She looks so calm. Not
judgmental
about students,
he noticed
.
He couldn’t read anything from her face. It was contemplative. A little pucker between her eyes appeared as she scanned the application intensely. Like there was nothing more important than that.
He thought it to be a privilege to be studying in a school that was being run by a person of Mrs. Meena Singhal’s stature and caliber.

The classroom sized Principal’s cabin seemed smaller than what it appeared the day Singhal received the news that her retirement request was accepted. It was far more cramped than usual. Mainly due to the presence of eight different teachers who were an integral part of the Selection Committee.
 

On the extreme left sat Ms. Veenu Sharma (Vice Principal 1), next to her was Dr. Madhuri Singh (Vice Principal 2). On either side of Mrs. Singhal were Mrs. Neeti Chopra (Headmistress) and Ashish Dutta (Mathematics). Apart from them, there was the unimportant bunch consisting of a megalomaniac Physics teacher, a demented English teacher and a stern looking Economics person.

“Please go ahead,” Singhal directed the Eco teacher to start.

Rish
av
expected some subjective questions but to his utter surprise
,
the first question was totally something he was not prepared for. “Rishav, can you please differentiate between growth and development?”
Now, that’s what you call a bolt out of the blue!
He wanted to ask whether they had seen
 
the
certificates
.
Aren’t they goin
g
to ask about my
 
achievements
?

 
His throat was dry and it seemed his façade of confidence had shattered into a million or maybe a zillion pieces.
 
“Ma’am, uhh.. I beg your pardon?” he tried to buy time.

“What’s the difference between growth and development?”
 
 
The
stern looking lady repeated, with a hint of annoyance.

So much for patience
, he thought.

“Growth…ummm…uhhh.…uh….well.. It can be of two types!” Rishav thought on his feet.

“…p
hysical and mental. It can relate to growth of human body or growth of a plant.”
 
Wait
,
that makes it one. Wow, R
ishav!
So much for
getting
sweet revenge. Make a fool of yourself and get yourself kicked out of the school gates again
.

T
he E
conomics teacher smiled. One could hardly tell if it was genuine or sarcastic.

Nonetheless since she didn’t stop him, he continued to say crap.

“Yo
u see ma’am,” he began. “Growth, i
t is unidirectional. But development is a sense of all round development, a relative positive or negative change in the initial position of a person. It can be betterment or….”

“Tch tch,” Rishav thought he heard the Eco teacher make that noise. She shook her head.

“Nevermind Rishav,” the Headmistress smiled. The smile was genuine. “Tell me, when do we say that
a pair of linear equations does
not have any solution?”

Cakewalk, babe,
he thought
. Math was one of his strong p
oints.
“When a1/a2 is equal to b1/b2 but is not equal to c1/c2. A1, b1, a2, b2 being the coefficients of the variables and c1, c2 being the constants in the given two equations”

Rishav waited to see her response in baited breath. Even in the board exam he hadn’t written in so much detail. Not even missing a single point. She nodded in approval. Relief washed over him.

He waited for a few moments to see if any more questions were going to be thrown towards him.

“Thank you, you may go,” said Meena Singhal looking at the boy.

 
Rishav Sen got up and wished the teachers a good
day,
just
like a
n
obedient well bred and trained puppy.
He
stepped out of the Principal’s cabin breathing a sigh of relief that it was finally over
. Whatever the result,
at least
I gave my best shot,

That afternoon, when the list came out, the 26
^th
 
name from the top was that of Rishav Sen. Despite the stammering and absolute bullshit he spoke inside, his not-so-successful interview didn’t override his achievements. After all, they couldn’t afford to not take in the youngest writer
,
could they?

TWO

The famed front loans sprang into action and this time it was to host the grand Farewell Dinner Party of the long serving Principal of
DHS
, Mrs.Singhal.

The party which was organized to bid Singhal goodbye came to be known for a number of firsts. For starters, the Chairman, A.
Chandrashekhar
gave a short speech, the loud Principal of
Delhi High School
International was low key, the mikes didn’t malfunction, there was enough food for the hunger stricken guests, the lawn seemed neat and tidy, no-one had a runny nose in the choir and the greatest of them all was the never before seen camaraderie between the Heads of
DHS
who sat in a close huddle probably gossiping or discussing the brand of cosmetics they use. What surely appeared to a person observing them from a distance seemed to be a moderated discussion on the threat Pakistan’s Nukes possessed in wake of the unstable Government that ran Pakistan.