Brazenly, Renu flung the piece of chalk at one of the students while the principal peeped through the window on one of his visits. Paring at her nails, a girl from the last row hurriedly jotted down from the board while the sleepy one beside her woke up to find out that her teacher has moved on, after waking her up. A deep crack in the black board ran all the way up the length of its face. The easel on which it stood, bickered under its heavy weight. The teacher was in her early twenties; her hair was long and she woke up early every day to wash her hair and braid them up. It made her look a tad taller, and a lot matured for her age. Through the golden yellow glasses, her eyes peered at every student in turn. Wind wheeled through the dusty outdoors, packed up dry leaves and dropped a couple of them in the first floor class room. Principal Daniel, a man in his forties, brushed the lovely forelock into his hair. With one hand in his box pleated blue trousers and the other on the wooden frame of the window, he was peeling at an Azharuddin sticker that was pasted to the green window on one side.
Renu’s class was the last one for the day, girls and boys in their tenth standard now, were impatiently eyeing each other. Renu handing over the text book ‘Moonstone’ to a short boy from the first row, walked out to confront the principal. Dazed but stricken with joy, Daniel pursed his lips involuntarily. Renu’s theatrically astute gait; her absent minded gentle push of the rim of her glasses as they sloped down the orange tinged soft skin on the bridge of her nose; firm shoulders; withdrawn and placid face contrasted that of Daniel’s buoyant attitude. He was a man of charm and grace. Girls often found excuses to see him. His thin mustache, plump round face, elegant dressing lent him an air of charisma.
Throwing her head back a little, Renu asserted an interrogative pose to which Daniel rendered a hopeless reflection and after a moment responded with a nod that meant nothing at all. Niveditha, a tall and beautiful girl from the last bench sneaked at the couple over her shoulder. Noticing this, Daniel left to his office downstairs without uttering a word. Niveditha was fond of Daniel, she would sneak into his office with lame excuses; there behind the gleaming brown table, Daniel would be seated with an air of unusual charm about him. Niveditha found the principal’s room radiant with its dusky interiors. With a flower vase to one side, heap of files behind it and a calendar atop, the table appeared wonderfully decorous. Glass slate on the table top with school emblem embossed on the table cloth beneath the glass; drawn blinds on the windows to his right; glass cased polished wooden cupboards to his right with a row of trophies standing erect in the first row followed by photographs of school’s recognition over the years at different levels; Niveditha rejoiced the setting inside the principal’s office and more so the man himself.
On the school annual function day, Renu compered; with her shrill voice, she froze the audience. Some would pause in their wholly sensible act of sitting down; some would find their arms frozen in mid air while others silently acknowledged the charming elegance that Renu possessed. Standing behind the mike, Renu read out from her writing pad while Daniel seated behind her relished in following with his small chisel brown eyes, the soft plumes on her nape as they sinuously danced beneath the thick black braid.
Niveditha receiving an award for the best performance brushed Daniel’s hands plentifully leaving him blushing on the stage. A girl with pig tails in the front row fainted into the hands of PT teacher with exhaustion and soon others followed in the wake, eventually leaving the principal to close the function earlier.
On rainy days, the walls were damp, the tables to sit on had no back rest but the students managed by resting their small cocoon shaped backs on the writing table behind them. And so on rainy days all one could see was rows and rows of students with wet feet pulling a sock open, sticking their raincoats dripping with water up a lonely nail on the wall or hang them up on the top of the doors. All one could see was drugged faces propped into the closed palms after rubbing them for warmth; the cracked roof dripping slimy wet and the floor with tiles cracked open and water sinking into it. The closed doors on staff rooms fascinated students, rarely one would find the staff rooms empty, and one or two naughty students let themselves in. mostly it would be tuning forks and Bunsen burner flames, if you get lucky, perhaps exam papers to sneak a peek. And those rare occasions fascinated students. Closed doors separating two adjoining class rooms, closed door behind the black board in a room, closed door in the far end of the balcony with rusted iron bars and broken window panes. On one of the days, students would sneak up and the victory of such a sneaking would earn them attention with everyone keenly interested now.
A suspended piece of metal and a bell tong by its side stood lonely awaiting its turn to be struck every hour beside the leaning balustrade on the first floor. The marching feet would rally all the way up to their classes after prayer; shuffling feet impatiently knocked out and stamped on few. Amidst the cries of new shoes being muddied and shrieking squelches of new pinches, one would slosh water and wet his pants while the others ran up behind the bugger for vengeance-shoving him into the muddy parts of the ground.
It was Niveditha’s birthday. Rule was to visit the principal first. Rain splattered on the window sill and sprinkled silvery white streaks of tiny droplets on her expectant young face as she gazed outside through the window. Outside, water gushed out of drain pipes lodged in the furrows between floors; sound of rain drowned the teacher’s voice and many just sat up to savour the evening. The commuting from school to home involved rolling the bottom of the trousers high up for the pools of muddy water on the road would slosh into auto rickshaws by a two wheeler who did not care and drove through it or by a four wheeler who was too big to care any ways. The rolled down leather blinds did come to rescue at times, the sound of thud of a fallen vehicle or a compound wall was muffled inside, people ran helter-skelter on the roads, sewage pipes gurgled water, traffic stalled and the rainwater flew into the auto rickshaws where it was knee deep on the road, and the auto driver cribbed.
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