Chapter 1
Replacing the glass bulb from an overhanging plastic socket, Zafir realised that the spider web had caught onto the suspended wire. His wife Anjali handing over the torn piece of the chequered table cloth implored that he make no fuss about the old cloth which had to be replaced with a new one. Turning the newly purchased bulb slowly in its hold, slapping a mosquito up his shins with the other leg, Zafir accidentally dropped the tester that was lodged between his jaws. With a shrill cry, squeaking like a prey that has befallen the wrath of a hungry forest king, Anjali flopped her pink nightie to the ground. Before Zafir could apologise for the accident, she was nervously tucked in the corner of the room with all but her lingerie on. Zafir, with words of consoling and strict rapping of the nightie, reached her with a loving embrace and Anjali with a quick leap of fear, hugged him with her eyes closed. It was not a lizard, there was nothing at all to worry about, but she wrapped her arms crossed around his neck like a child would. He slipped the nightie up his wife’s tenuous body, comforting the throbbing heart at every instance.
It was raining heavily, TV’s antennae on the roof had to be fixed. Zafir grabbing a towel that was hung about the kitchen window slipped out of the house to fix the antennae. Anjali caught with cold, sneezing and feverish, reached out to the wooden window panes to close them shut, for rain was beating down the window to muddy the exteriors of her aluminium plated vessels. Rain water was dripping down the slanted roof tops with pleated red tiles and the smooth cement roofs, some had even gone to the extent of collecting water in buckets, some had emptied their barrels of rice or wheat so they can accommodate water.
Zafir worked at a cycle repair shop; fixing the punctured tubes, oiling the chains and assembling cycle parts. Anjali worked from home; sewing plain pieces of cloth to mould the bosom of many a women. They lived a happy life under the two rooms that housed their son Rahul; their son was about six months old. Rahul’s lactation needs had left Anjali in need of protein diet and Zafir with more than the usual share of work. Zafir was a man of his times, a tall lean personality, and dark complexion. He drew his hair back without parting, his nose protruded out and he had an elongated neck. Peering through his grey eyes under thick straight eyebrows, he squinted at the complaining kids who came to rent bicycles at his shop.
Anjali had a lean figure, sometimes she would pin her hair up into a braid that made her look a lot wiser. She had her mother’s features, so they said. Memory of her mother saddened Anjali, for she eloped at the age of eighteen and her mother never forgave her for that. She was awarded the best student for science on the day she fell in love with Zafir. But that was four years ago.
Chapter 2
Rahul was about nine years old. A bearded man with a long brown overall worked as a security guard at Rahul’s school. Zafir picked up and dropped off Rahul everyday. It was a three storied building with all the windows painted green and walls white. Each floor opened to face the rising sun that dropped a straight contoured invisible curtain of light that hugged the walls as it unfurled floor by floor pushing the dark curtain below it to the ground. At times zafir stayed up there just to watch the sun lovingly embrace the building’s top floor where his son’s class was. The bearded man found this intriguing, that someone should be so enthralled with the sight of sun.
On the school’s annual function day, Anjali and Zafir accompanied their son who sang the national anthem with a group of sixth graders. During the course of the evening, the bearded security guard approached Zafir with a proposal. Zafir’s initial reaction was that the man was delusional, back home when he narrated the incident to his wife who had been a passionate student of science, she reasoned with him to maintain calm.
The school would be closed for a couple of months during summer starting next week. Rahul, as all the kids of his age did, restlessly finished his last exam and was returning home when the bearded man approached him with a message to his parents. Opening the envelope, Anjali found a letter addressed to her. It read “school is closed from tomorrow, have you made up your mind yet?”
Chapter 3
Rahul liked the early days of his fifth class; it was all very new, the subjects, the teachers and the notebooks. There was enough time for all the students to buy their new textbooks; for a week or so, teaching was relaxed, the teachers more tolerant to guffaws and shouting in class. Some students came to school with a mere notebook and a pen in hand, where once they all carried a bag full of books on their back. Even the teachers were filling in for the permanent faculty; they were just make-do most of the time. Students sat up all day long chatting up; if the teacher was understanding, singing and storytelling was allowed. All the teachers usually took this time to declare their rules-how many notebooks (long or short), what to write with (blue or black pen), what was the grading system and the discipline that ought to be followed in his/her class.
Mostly the classes remained empty for the first week with just a few students turning in. most importantly, the addition of new faces excited everyone. And, there was a new addition this time at school.
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