Once in a lifetime

Upasana Biswas

Class: 12

Ex-Student

My last year. Yeah, it is, the very last year of my school life.

A yell came from below. “Avantika! We’re getting late!”

‘Coming!’, I shouted. I grabbed my tennis racket and my small suitcase and ran down the stairs.

As I got inside the car, Dad looked around in astonishment. “Where is your Mom now? I saw her right here. Oh! There she is.”

“Sorry, I had forgotten to give this to you Avantika”, Mom said, and handed me a small idol of Lord Ganesh. “Bye dear, be a good girl, eat well, sleep well and study well. Mumma will miss you”, said Mom and a drop of tear rolled down her cheek.

“Don’t worry Mom, I’ll be fine. But, I’ll miss you too.”

“If you all are done, shall we go?” , Dad asked impatiently.

“Yes Dad, let’s go.”

The journey was long and quiet. Dad drove while I spent three hours listening to my favourite songs and munching some snacks. As we reached Vidya, I felt a queer sensation in me. With its four great towers, one at each corner, the big, grey stone building with the hoarding “VIDYA RESONANCE”, my school looked like an old castle.

As I jumped out, clutching my racket and bag, I was immediately engulfed by a crowd of excited girls.

“Avantika! Didn’t get even a single text from you!”

“Hi Avantika! How were the hols?”

“Hey Avantika! Have you seen Julie?”

Finally I met my best friend Keya. “Long time my friend. Gosh! You’ve grown fat!”, Keya exclaimed as we hugged.

“Oh really? Had no control over my apetite these hols”, I said.

Keya and I went up the steps and into our small, cosy room that we shared.

“I wonder who’ll have this room next year”, I said, going to the window and looking out. “It’s one of the nicest.”

We dumped our luggage on our beds and went down to have a look around.

And there we met Zara.

‘Hello!’, Zara said. “Had good holidays?”

Yeah, and yours?, I said.

‘Fair’, said Zara.”

The same old Zara, conceited, snobbish and silly.

Inside the class all the students were making a racket as usual, and hey look, there’s a new girl. Ms. Roy entered and turned to the new girl. “How do you call yourself?”, she asked the sturdy new-comer.

“Stefani Jones”, she said.

“Yes. So class, you have a new friend here. Poor Stefani – her school got burnt few months back. St. Peter’s High School – it exists no longer.”

“Gosh! Yes, I did read about it”, said Keya, remembering. “St. Peter’s! That’s about the most famous school for sport in the country, isn’t it? I mean – you win every single match you play, and you win all the tennis shields and swimming cups?”

“That’s right!”, said Stefani. “Well, it’s gone. There wasn’t time to find another building in a hurry, so we all had to scatter, and find other schools. You don’t have much of a name for sport; do you, at Vidya Resonance?”

This was rather too much from a new girl. I stared at her coldly.

“Perhaps you’d like to give us little coaching?”, said Julie, in a smooth voice that most of us recognized as dangerous.

“I might”, said Stefani, and said no more.

We glanced at one another. “If you are so great in sports, I suppose you’ll be going in for the Olympic Games,” said Alice meaning to be sarcastic. “They’re held next year in...”

“Oh yes. I should think I shall go in for about five different events”, said Stefani, calmly. “My coach at St. Peter’s said I ought to win at least two”.

We gasped. Alice looked taken aback. Stefani was a great hefty girl, about five feet ten inches tall. I shall find it hard to deal with her. Although I am the head girl, yet it was going to be difficult to give orders to her.

“Well class, do maintain silence, I’ve got some work in the office”, Mam said and walked out.

Immediately, the entire class had turned into a room full of monkeys. We made sure to enjoy to the peak during our last year. We jumped around, danced, sang, and ended up forming a line and playing ‘trains’ behind Smriti, chuffing like engines.

Stefani watched disdainfully. “What a school!”, she said. “Now if I was in St. Peter’s, everyone would be out practising tennis strokes or something.”

“Hold it, Stefani, hold it!”, said Smriti, suddenly spotting the unpleasant look on Stefani’s large face. She took out her sketch book and started drawing.

Smriti was famous for this. She had some hilarious sketches of Ms.Roy’s face too.

“Hey! I didn’t look like that”, said Stefani enraged, and tried to snatch the book but Smriti dodged out of the way.

Stefani went to the corner and began to fiddle with the wireless place there and managed to find a recording of some sporting event.

I nudged Keya and nodded to the window. It had stopped raining. Keya grinned. Keya and I made signs to the others to creep out of the room without disturbing Stefani and I slowly closed the door. We slipped in our tennis shoes, grabbed our rackets and ran out to the courts.

“Let’s hope she sees us!”, panted Maanvi.

Stefani did. The recording came to an end and she was immediately struck by the silence in the room and swung around. She went to window and scowled, “Beasts! “

The girls came back, laughing, when the bell went. “Pity you didn’t feel like a practice Stefani!” I said. “Never mind – better luck next time!”

The days went by, studying and preparing for the board exam. The thought that we would be sitting for class XII boards itself haunted us. Soon we got bored of the same, monotonous pace of life. There was no fun, no entertainment. I couldn’t afford to see my last year being wasted; wasted as in spent without enjoyment, until one day, Alice asked Julie about the magnet. Julie grinned at her and put her hand into her pocket and pulled out the neat, powerful little magnet.

Ms. Sethi entered the class. Lessons began. And just before the end of the lesson, Ms. Sethi gave her usual order. “Clean the blackboard, please.”

Julie stood up and walked steadily to the board near Ms. Sethi. Ms. Sethi was searching for a book in her desk. It was a great chance to use the magnet.

Watched by twenty-two breathless students, Julie held the magnet to the back of Ms. Sethi’s head, about two inches away from the bun of her hair and all the hair-pins that Ms. Sethi used for her beautiful bun flew and attached themselves firmly and silently to the magnet.

Ms. Sethi’s bun opened and her bald head was revealed. What a scene! Keya stuffed her handkerchief into her mouth to control herself from bursting into laughter. But then, the entire class was already laughing into tears.

“All my hair pins are gone!” said Ms. Sethi, her grammer going too. She searched frantically every nook and corner of her desk for her pins but they were nowhere. She turned red. I was laughing helplessly. Smriti produced several explosions and even the dour Stefani went off into fits of laughter. Ms. Sethi walked out of the room bewildered. We laughed and laughed till our stomachs started aching. I hadn't laughed so much for months.  

After class, Zara who had been having ten thousand cash in her pocket, walked towards her room but somehow the notes fell off her loose pocket one by one. Maanvi, who was in-charge of discipline, found the notes. Having such a big amount without handing it over to the safe custody of the principal was strictly prohibited in Vidya Resonance. Maanvi handed over the money to the principal.

Zara had taken that money from her father to go for night parties and discos.

As she entered her room and put her hand into her pocket, she discovered that the elastic was broken and her money was gone. Zara trembled. She ran along the corridor searching for her money but she could find no trace of it.

She found a notice by the principal on the notice board. “The student who dropped ten thousand rupee note on the corridor is expected to come to me.”

Zara was petrified. There was no use claiming her money because the principal would never give her money back.

“I must screw up my courage, snoop into her room, and see if I can spot where she has put my money.”

That night, Zara went to the principal’s room when she had gone to her garden. There was a pile of notes on one shelf. Zara grabbed some notes, stuffed them in her pocket and fled.

In her room, she discovered that she had taken fourteen thousand rupee notes.

Never mind!”, she said and went to bed, satisfied.

Next morning the news spread in the entire school that a theft had taken place in the principal’s room. “I give only a day for the guilty to own up. And if no one owns up, I’ll set teachers to search every room”, was the principal’s order.

Zara was now trapped. The only way she could escape was by running away. And she did. The next morning at dawn, she escaped the hostel gates. On the way, Mr. George, our horse-riding teacher who was out with his horse for an early morning ride had seen her from a distance but didn’t recognize her.  Zara took rest in a shack on the road and meanwhile the news went around the school, “Zara’s gone!”

The police were told. Our principal rang up Mr. Ahmed, Zara’s father and informed him that his daughter was missing, but she was amazed at Mr. Ahmed’s reception of the news.

Down the telephone came a below of laughter. “Ha, Ha, Ha! If that isn’t exactly my Zara! She’s just like me, you know. The times I played truant from school! Don’t worry about Zara. May be she’s on her way home. I’ll inform you when she arrives.”

“Mr. Ahmed, the police have been informed”, said the principal disgusted at the way Zara’s father had taken her news. “I’ll try to keep it out of the papers as long as I can.”

“Oh! Don’t bother about that”, said the surprising Mr. Ahmed. “I’d like to see my Zara hitting the headlines in a spot of adventure. Great girl, isn’t she?”

The police sergeant came to the principal and said, “Two of those stolen notes were given at an alcohol shop by a student of your school.”

Soon it was clear that the thief was Zara. Mr. George informed the principal that he had seen a student in the school uniform at dawn on the road, and no one had left the hostel except Zara.

There was a thorough search all over the town and Zara was found sleeping in the shack.

The dirty and frightened Zara was brought to the principal’s office. Mr. Ahmed was also called.

“What’s so serious about it?”, exploded Mr. Ahmed. “It was just a bit of fun. Zara is a high-spirited girl – nothing wrong in it at all.”

“There is a lot of wrong”, said the principal. “I want you to take your daughter home today and we cannot have her back. She’s not a good influence to the school.”

Zara and her father got the shock of their life. Zara expelled!

“But you can’t expel her for that!”, complained Mr. Ahmed.

“You see it’s not only running away, it’s a matter of stealing too”, said the principal.

“What? Zara can’t steal! She always had heaps of money. Okay! Let me pay – I’ll double the amount!”, said Mr. Ahmed.

“Dad, you always said that I needn’t bother about rules and could break them as long as I enjoyed”, said Zara.

“Good-Bye Mam, I know it’s me who is to be blamed not she”, Mr. Ahmed said and left the principal’s room with her daughter.

The car roared off down the road and Zara was gone – gone forever from Vidya Resonance.

“How important parents are!”, thought the principal. “Really, I think somebody should start a school for parents too.”

The next thing that happened was a good deal pleasanter. Exam fever was on. Two whole months of undisturbed studies and finally we, the class XII students sat for the board exams. Again one whole month of exams including the practicals and then at last we had got the exams behind us. But this time, the end of exams did not at the least make us happy; because this time end of exams meant end of school!

“LAST day, Avantika”, said Keya, when we awoke on our very last morning.

“Our last day! Do you remember the first day when we were little shrimps of twelve?”, I said. “How time has flown!”

Keya and I packed our luggage and went out to get a last sight of the roses in the garden, the blue water of the swimming pool, our horses that we rode, and bid good-bye to all of them.

We bid good-bye to all our teachers and took their blessings. Ms. Roy, Ms. Sen, Mr. Malhotra, Mr. George and of course Ms. Sethi.

“Next time be careful with your hair-pins Mam”, I said to Ms. Sethi.

“Ah! You naughty girl!”, Ms. Sethi said with a shy smile on her face.

“Good-bye everyone. And good luck!”, we told each other. I tried to control my tears but I failed.

“How much I’ll miss everyone, everything! These days I’ll never get back. Truly, there’s no place like school, which you get to enjoy only once in a lifetime”, I thought as I sat in the car and headed towards home.