by Milind Bokil
I continued to look at the sign boards of the bungalows we passed, hoping to see her father’s name. We passed by a two-storeyed bungalow. ‘Devgiri’, said the nameplate. A lady in a white saree stood there, hanging some clothes in the balcony. She looked at us. I got nervous. Perhaps it was her mother!
After some time, Misal stopped near a gate and, pointing towards the house, he said, ‘Shirodkar stays here.’
My heart was pounding. A brick wall, partially covered in green moss, surrounded the house. The gate at the entrance did not have a board proclaiming the name of the occupants. The house was not clearly visible from the gate, hidden partially by a tree. It was a two-storeyed house. There was a big garden with a cement stand for the tulsi plant in the middle. A yellow bulb burnt in the verandah with a window partially covered by a curtain. I could not see the door from the road.
Not wanting to sound too curious, I kept quiet. Two coconut trees stood adjacent to the gate intersecting each other at the top. It was a good landmark. One could see them from a distance.
‘She has two sisters and a younger brother,’ Misal said. ‘Her elder sister is in college. The younger brother Pintya plays with our neighbour’s son sometimes.’
I was relieved to know that she did not have an elder brother.
‘God knows where her father works.’
‘He is a hapisar.’ He meant officer. ‘Works for some big firm,’ he said. I wondered how this fellow knew so much, but I kept quiet. The road ended in a square flanked by Phadke Hospital on one side. There were a few shops, a Shrikrishna Bhawan hotel, a medicine shop and a huge tamarind tree. There was an open library around the tree, where a few old men sat reading newspapers. I observed the place carefully. Shirodkar’s house was clearly visible from the tamarind tree.
We turned left and reached Misal’s house. I was not keen on having tea, but I did not want to raise any suspicion, so I sat down. I was hopeful that Misal would share some more information about Shirodkar, but the idiot continued to blabber on about the well.
‘Which tuition class do you go to?’ I asked, changing the topic.
‘Saraf sir’s classes,’ he said. ‘He is from Subhash Vidyalaya. He does not have a formal tuition centre. He just teaches at home.’
‘Are there a lot of boys?’
‘About seven or eight of them. Nobody from our school. All of them are from Subhash Vidyalaya, except one from Tope.’
I decided to leave. Misal seemed to have enjoyed my visit and said, ‘Do come again.’
‘Come again. You can study with Sunil,’ his mother added.
‘Sure. I will,’ I said. I meant it—from the bottom of my heart.
Saturday afternoons are usually reserved for Scouts’ practice. These days they have made Scouts and NCC compulsory for eighth standard and above. I was actually keen to join NCC, but I was unwell on the day the list was drawn up. Boys shorter than me are in NCC! But Chitre had his own views and volunteered on my behalf to enrol me in the Scouts’ list. He says Scouts is brain work while NCC is just brawn work where you are expected to simply follow rules.
He is right. We can hear the NCC practise when we play in the ground. Parade! Agey badhenge agey badh; peeche mudenge, peeche mud. Parade, aisa karange. Parade, waisa karenge! They are led by a pot-bellied Sergeant who shouts out such crazy orders. And the uniform they give never fits anyone. The boys looked like jokers when we saw them wearing their NCC dress for the first time. Earlier the cadets were given glucose biscuits in each session. Now they get a stipend to polish their boots and starch their clothes.
Most of the big girls are in NCC. They wear funny brown pants and a grey shirt. Surya says the dress suits the girls a lot, even though he would have preferred them a little tighter! Surya and Phawdya are, quite expectedly, in the NCC. They consider Scouts sissy. They say we look girlish in those funny caps and with the handkerchief tied around the neck. I love the red pompom that the NCC cadets sport on their berets. Most of the girls are in the Guides. They have a blue dress. The Scouts and Guides practise together in the grounds in the afternoon. Rajguru sir is in charge of the Scouts and Adhav ma’am looks after the Guides.
It’s fun to have these sessions in the grounds. Rajguru sir is sometimes joined in by Manjrekar sir. They are our favourites. Sometimes they invite people from outside to teach us things like tying different types of knots, signalling using the whistle, identifying insects, climbing trees, and other such activities. There is a book by Bedon Powell which Rajguru sir reads out to us. Then there are songs like ‘Lord Bedon Powell, tere chele hum’ and ‘Ooncha sada rahega jhanda, ooncha sada rahega’. We are divided into groups based on names of animals and birds. I am in the Eagle group. We have our own scout notebooks. Chitre got a few stickers with a picture of an eagle, which we have stuck on our notebooks.
The other day Adhav ma’am was absent and Manjrekar sir asked the girls, who otherwise march ten miles away from us, to join us. Manjrekar sir made us sit in mixed rows. He began with the usual recitation of the oath and our motto. Surya says the Scouts and Guides may be sissies, but he loves our motto—‘Be Prepared!’ Always ready, he says, adding his usual ‘bhenchod’ for effect. He is eager to join us for the khari kamai when we are supposed to go to a few households and do some chores and earn our own money. But that is still quite some weeks away.
While we were reciting the oath, I managed to steal a glance at Shirodkar. She and I were sitting in the last row, meant for the team leaders. I was not aware that she too was a team leader. The playground was enveloped in warm, yellow sunshine. There was greenery all around and a cool breeze blew. We were wearing our usual blue cotton handkerchiefs around our neck while the girls had a pink silk scarf. Shirodkar sat there fiddling with it. Her hair blew in the soft breeze. She looked like a goddess.
Shirodkar did not initially realize I was looking at her. I had read in one of Naru mama’s psychology books that if there is silence all around and you concentrate on an individual‘s back, that individual is bound to look back at you. I looked at her from the corner of my eyes, but I was sure that she was aware. Someone cracked a joke and all the boys laughed out loud. She turned to look at the boys and saw me staring at her. It is natural for anyone, finding the other person staring at him or her, to assume it must have been a coincidence. The person is tempted to check out once more to confirm whether it really was a coincidence. I was sure she would check. So I continued to stare. She turned and, finding me staring at her, quickly turned away.
I knew that she would not turn to look at me again. Not so quickly. I kept my face straight but, through the corner of my eyes, I was keenly looked her.
There were a lot of fruit flies buzzing overhead. One had to swat them or shoo them away. Shirodkar waved her hand to shoo away the flies and took a chance to look in my direction. From the corner of my eyes, I caught her checking on me. She did the same once again, but I did not try to catch her. But the next time she turned around, I looked straight into her eyes. She quickly turned away, knowing she had been caught.
The game was getting enjoyable, despite the emptiness in the pit of my stomach refusing to go away. I played with grass and made a makeshift doll out of it. I could make its arms move by pulling its legs. Then I made the doll walk a few steps on the ground. My eyes, all this while, were constantly on the alert to catch her sight.
She was watching me for sure. Listening to the entire oath of the Scouts and Guides is boring and one cannot help getting distracted. She must have seen me making that doll. She turned to glance at me and I could see a slight smile playing on her lips. She probably wanted to say the doll was cute. Her eyes, her face—they had lit up. A lightness filled me—it was like the feeling you get when you have a sweet, soothing ice-candy on a hot summer day.
‘Joshi, what is going on over there?’ I heard Manjrekar sir’s voice.
I looked ahead with a start. Thankfully he did not seem angry. His raised his eyebrows in question. I quickly threw away the grass doll.
Some of the boys turned back to look at me.
‘Nothing at all, Sir,’ I blurted. We were usually not intimidated by him and I was more surprised than afraid.
‘What do you mean nothing? Are you listening to what I am saying?’ he asked. ‘Okay, tell me the last rule which I just read out.’
Had he asked me to repeat what he had just said, I would have been in trouble. But he had framed the question differently asking me to repeat the last rule—the tenth rule. I knew it by heart. I said, ‘A Scout is clean in thought, word and deed.’
He gave me a knowing smile. He knew I had managed a narrow escape but did not say anything. The other children could not guess, but it was enough for me. I dared not look at him despite having given the right answer.
We were left free once the Scouts’ anthem had been sung. ‘Go and observe the nature around you,’ sir said. The two of them sat down on the chairs, and we were free to roam around. We could hear the parade practice of the NCC cadets going on amidst incessant whistling. We boys too had our long, narrow whistles with us and we blew them whenever we liked. The sky was clear and blue just the way described in the Scouts’ song, ‘the blue sky spreading the love of brotherhood’. Wildflowers bloomed in the grass and the blue hills beyond the tiled, sloping roofs of Umbarpada village looked inviting. The girls looked like flamingoes in their pink silk scarves.
My heart went wild with joy and I wanted to dance around. We had the entire ground to ourselves; our two favourite teachers sat on the chairs and chatted; the woods were green and dense and the sunshine was warm and friendly. Shirodkar and her gang were a little away, but I could spot her from any distance. She looked like a fairy queen. Her image seemed to fill up the entire playground. The grass and the woods around reminded me of the African grasslands in Lord Bedon Powell’s stories. I was not concerned with other characters in the story. All that mattered was her presence. Everything else was irrelevant.
We were sitting in the mid-break in the woods when Dashrath suddenly announced, ‘Chaila, my bottle burst yesterday.’
We had just finished our ice-candies. For a change, I had got some money from Aaisaheb and had bought one on my own. Surya sat on a rock while Santya was hanging on a branch when Dashrath made the remark.
‘Don’t tell me!’ Surya said, getting down.
‘Really, bhenchod,’ Dashrath said, looking down at the leaf he was busy tearing into pieces. Chitre and I looked at each other.
‘What happened?’ Surya prompted. ‘Were you watching some photos?’
‘No. Nothing of that sort,’ Dashrath said, looking at us sheepishly. ‘It was in my dreams. I slept off at ten and when I woke up in the morning, I discovered this!’ he said, pointing at his groin.
‘Better be careful,’ Phawdya warned. ‘If you lose too much of your juice, you may die.’
That scared Dashrath. Earlier Harishchandra and Surya had confessed of their ‘bottles’ bursting, but they seemed relaxed. They were not worried. Dashrath was petrified hearing Phawdya’s warning.
‘Don’t worry. There is nothing to fear,’ Chitre said. The nonchalance with which he said so made us wonder whether he knew much more.
‘What do you mean nothing to fear?’ Phawdya erupted. ‘Do you know each drop of that thing is made up of millions of blood cells?’
‘There is nothing of that sort,’ Chitre continued authoritatively.
‘How the hell do you know all this, bhenchod?’ Phawdya challenged.
‘My Kaka is a doctor. He had explained everything to me and even gave me a book to read. He said it is good if the bottle bursts once in a while. It is quite natural. In fact, you need to worry only if it doesn’t.’
We looked at him with newfound respect. Dashrath moved closer to him. Santya came down from the tree branch.
‘What if the bottle bursts every night?’ Dashrath asked.
‘It won’t happen every night,’ Chitre said. ‘And don’t bother even if it does. But don’t play around deliberately. I will give you the book to read if you wish.’
‘No need. I am fine as long as you are telling me the truth.’
‘Yes, of course. This happens to all of us.’
‘Just don’t go about fingering girls,’ Surya said, getting back to his elements.
‘Who the hell is asking for your advice, bhenchod?’ Dashrath said, flinging a stone at him.
‘Arre, Arre. Don’t hit me, saale,’ Surya said, dodging the stone. ‘Hey, Joshi. Why don’t you get that magazine from the library? What is it called Apsara or something?’
‘No,’ I said firmly.
‘Saale, why don’t you get it?’ He pleaded. ‘It is fun to read. When was the last time we read it?’
‘Joshi, get the magazine, please,’ Phawdya said. ‘Remember that serial? That fellow Govindrao and that woman Leela!’
‘Yes!’ Surya said. ‘Let us read what they are doing now.’
‘No way,’ I said. ‘I would be damned if I bring it again.’
I had made the mistake once in the beginning of the year. The magazine was issued from the Municipal Library. Aaisaheb does not care, but Ambabai does not allow me to read it. She does not mind my getting it home for her from the library; she loves to read it. I had carried it to school the next day to show it to my friends. We read it first at our adda. In Pethkar ma’am’s class, Surya poked me in my back with his pencil and took the magazine away. For some time, he and Phawdya read it without making any noise, but then he got excited and whispered a tad too loud, ‘Hey, just see, bhenchod, what is written,’ he said and then read out; ‘Govindrao lifted Leela off the ground and threw her on the bed and then with his rough hands, started to paw at her ample bosom…’
The boys around us giggled. The girls too must have heard as they sniggered. Pethkar ma’am, otherwise quite absent-minded, quickly identified the source of the disturbance. She came over to Surya’s bench. Surya did not see her coming. It was too late to hide the magazine by then.
‘Oh, so this is what is keeping you busy, is it?’ she said. ‘No wonder you are not interested in History. Why would you be, when you have such interesting stuff to read?’ So saying, she snatched the magazine and put it on her table and her purse on top of it.
I was in deep shit. It was a library magazine. If I confided at home, I would be thrown to the wolves. I had to find a way of retrieving it. I asked Surya to go and get it from the staff room, but he just laughed out stupidly and walked away. I had no choice but to go the staff room myself. I went in with an excuse ready: how I had got it for my mother from the library the previous evening but had forgotten to remove it from my school bag; how Surya had seen it in my bag and had started reading it. I was prepared to plead the magazine belonged to the library and was on the verge of tears, but I soon discovered there was no need for concocting a story. To my surprise, I found ma’am engrossed in the magazine! She asked me to come and collect it after school hours.
That taught me a lesson. No more magazines to school. Of course, I still enjoy reading the magazine when there is no one at home. A frisson of excitement runs through my body when I read the stories. Once Chitre had got an English film magazine with awesome photographs. He says seeing is not as much fun as reading. I agree. But these days nothing gives me as much pleasure as thinking about Shirodkar.
The much acclaimed Sholay was finally being screened in our town. We were familiar with all the dialogues, having heard them on radio for months on end. Our town did not have a seventy mm screen but then something was better than nothing. Having seen the movie, Surya went about singing ‘mehbooba, mehbooba’ all the time. Santya had bought the audio cassette and it was fun to ask him to repeat the dialogues in our free time.
Except for a few such diversions, school continued as before. It was the month of October and the sun burnt brightly. The paddy fields were dry and the crop had turned yellow. The frogs had vanished long ago. It was no fun watching the playground in the harsh sunlight of the afternoon. The roofs trapped the hea
t inside, making the rooms hot and muggy. What was worse, we had to deal with dreary lessons and boring teachers. Marathi was okay except for some dull songs and abhangs. Hindi was easy. The French Revolution in the History class seemed unending. Geography was luckily being taught by Manjrekar sir, but the portions were tough including different types of winds, moving of continents, types of rocks and what not. Algebra had simultaneous equations and division of whole numbers. We had the entire classification of plants and animals in Biology. Simple trees and plants were given complicated names like coelentrata, plantohelianthis, and echinodermata. It was difficult to even pronounce them! Chemistry had its own share of difficult equations. Newton and Edison’s experiments made our life difficult in the Physics class. We were at our wits’ end.
Bendre ma’am continued to torture us as before. One day, on a whim, she decided to check our notebooks. As expected, they were not covered. Most had photos of filmstars like Rajesh Khanna, Dharmendra and Hema Malini or cricketers like Wadekar, Engineer, Bedi, etc. It enraged her. She issued instructions to get our notebooks covered the very next day. The paper had to be specifically brown. We were left with no choice. Santu, poor fellow, did not know where to buy the paper. He seemed petrified.
I took his notebook home. Baba had got the paper from his office long back. I used that to cover our notebooks. Phawdya’s mother was upset; she had to spend money to buy the paper. Surya loves such tasks and covered all his notebooks with brown paper. Chitre, meticulous as always, had had his notebooks covered with wax-coated paper since the term began.
Ma’am inspected the notebooks the next day. Amongst the boys, Dashrath, Memane and Kadam were caught. They were given the usual ‘cane treatment’. Santya was grateful I had saved his day. Sundri, amongst the girls, was not spared. Ma’am, disappointed at having caught only a few offenders, was itching to catch more. She decided to inspect each and every notebook carefully. Seeing Shirodkar’s notebook, she commented. ‘This is not brown colour. It is yellow. I had asked for brown, don’t you remember?’
