3 decades later

In the week just gone, he had completed his third trial to get across the main gate of his house by climbing its top to go out and buy a kite. Second trial was a grand success while the first and third were disasters. From the top he had landed heads down and bled badly.

That day the small kid was standing next to the entrance door of his house as he waved to his friends. It was the month of December, year 1978, and he was to join the school of his elder brother from next day.

His mother was very happy; the news of admission of the kid in a reputed school had just been communicated by his dad. His elder brother always stood first in his class in same school. That had paved the way for the admission of the younger sibling; otherwise, admission during the mid session in a convent school is impossible!

‘They admit children older than 4 years only during the regular session itself, so I had to …………’, his father was expressing hesitatingly.

But that had been happening in all the schools they had tried for admission, so it was understood. This urgency had come up only recently as the mother of the child had been appointed a lecturer in the university and had to join immediately.

They knew that the kid was a bit (just a bit) naughty and if both parents worked in university, leaving him alone at home, it could mean more problems. So the admission meant a safe home for the kid.

But the first day in school for the kid was not so good. The Aaya had taken him to the first seat in the class; he was so small for the size of other kids in the class. But other kids are possessive of their belongings, all the fronts seats were occupied for six months now. He had been driven away from the first seats to second row, from there to third and finally to the last row of three empty seats.

He had walked to a see-saw, designed like a boat, on the side of the class and wept nonstop.

That was clear cheating. He always had cried when bhaiya and didi went to school on their rickshaws. He wanted to accompany them on the rickshaw. But bhaiya had dropped him here, at the door of this class and disappeared!!!!!!!!!!

‘Bhaiyaaaaaa…….’, he cried; the more he thought of his elder brother, the more inconsolable he was. Where is his brother? Why are they not sitting together when he had come all the way with his brother? It seemed, his brother had left him there forever and forgotten him forever.

He wanted to go back to home. But the Aaya was trying to get him off the see-saw and get him back to his seat. Everyone in the class was laughing.

For some time everyone croaked something behind the teacher, he didn’t know what? He had again burst into tears and everyone had again laughed at him.

Finally the class of the smallest kids in the school had got over.

The second day in the school was better, there was a PT class and the class had gone to a playground. Each kid knew his place in the queue as they walked holding the shoulder of the kid in front. Since the last kid did not like a smaller kid to hold him from the back, he declined to forego his coveted last position in the row.

So be it! Be it! He had walked all alone as a jealous class had watched him.

As the teacher missed him all together, while the class was made to sit in one place in circles, he played around the entire field. He played with bigger boys and girls of other classes, who were allowed to play on their own. What was even better his brother was there with all his friends. And as usual, slightly elder girls started behaving grand-motherly to the young kid.

‘Ye bhi apni class mein first aata hai kya?’ and ‘Ye khata kya hai?’ were two memorable questions.

But that half an hour was too short and the classes had fallen in their queues to start for their classrooms leaving the smallest kid decked at the highest slide in the ground (and sadly being noticed by his teacher also).

He was asked to slowly slide down, then there was ‘Chooha bhaag billi aayyi’ played between the kid and the class teacher which the teacher lost and so she finally resorted to violence. As the chooha was being mauled by an angry cat, he had happily bitten her arm to escape her claws.

It seems all the young teachers are fascinated by bandits and dacoits, even that class teacher was! She had proclaimed that the kid would ‘Bada hoke Daaku banega’.

Leaders are born!!!! They are never made!!!. That day an undisputed leader was discovered by Class Nursery D of St. Francis Convent School, Wazirpura Agra. People look forward to their leaders; for all the schooling years to follow his class looked backwards, towards the last seat of the class, with respect and reverence.

That day his ‘bhaiya’ had been called back from his class to get his younger brother back to the Nursery class, since the teacher and staff had failed to lure him back into the trap. Bhaiya had borrowed money from his two friends to buy two candies for his younger brother.

Next day parents were summoned. They had simply lied that their son was not spoilt and that he would not become a ‘Daaku’.

The story almost ends here. The records that got the kid admission in school never changed. He became a Daaku, almost! But, he would never have become what he could, had he not been asked to compete with bigger kids and better them. There is joy hidden in the biggest pains in life, you only need to have an eye to search for it.