6th standard B- Part 2, Inside Princi's room

Click to Read Part 1

Disclaimer: For the record, The story is 40% true and rest fiction. Hope that clears it all.

"Dei Amit, thats a bad word ,no da", I asked Amit in a hushed tone. "Yes,definitely it is", Amit said still looking at the board in horror. "Pradeep, rub it da.", I screamed at him ,while he was still decorating the abusive word with a dotted underline . To my horror Miss. Jayanthi,who was walking past the corridor heard my scream and came over to the class. She peeped inside shouting"Whats the noise? Pin drop silence everyone.". We all became still like somebody had said "Statue" to us. Miss.Jayanthi shared baleful glances at me,the deep brothers,amit and Sundar who was standing beside us. She went out of the class without uttering a single word. My heart was still pounding. I kept my hand on my heart and felt it for a moment.

Lunch break was over. The board was rubbed, the bad word gone and replaced by the ovals of set language.Yes,it was maths class. Miss. RamaLakshmi, playfully called Jill Jill Ramamani by us, was teaching us the simplest book examples and writing them on the board,none of which I listened to. I knew there was some impending danger. The biggest problem was that I did not know the meaning of the bad word.Somehow I felt the quantum of punishment would be proprortional to the profanity of the word. Suddenly, there was a disruption in the class. The office boy stepped into the class. Everybody usually heaves a sigh of relief when the office boy comes along, and the teacher reads us some notice about some holiday , Saturday timetable or sports day practise , thereby giving us a much wanted break from the monotony of the class. But this time it was bad news. "Sendeeb, bradeeb, kuldeeb, nerasimhen,amit, sunder. You are wanded at the principel office", Said Jill Jill in typical Mallu accent.


"Shit. I did not do anything. Why should I be punished?" , said Sunder, walking vigourously outside the principal's office. It was a huge office room with low hanging fans ,with ladies sipping tea and doing some monotonous and relentless typing.They were looking both dull and sick with not an inch of enthusiasm on their face. The wall had a few framed photos. One of the men in the frame had a moustache and wore a turban .He looked like a perfect man to be photographed to promote Rajasthan tourism. The next photo was that of a Sardarji who was smiling. I started mentally picturing him in all of the Sardarji jokes I knew. And next to that was the picture of Nehru and Nelson Mandela. The founders thought that putting their photos next to famous people made them seem like world leaders.

"I am going to tell the truth, the deeps did that. They need to be punished " said Sunder. "No . Dont say anything . Nothing will happen", I said trying to reaffirm him. Aarthi our class leader walked into the office room with a huge pile of arithmetic notes. She stopped beside us , looked at me and said,"Say Principal sorry. Only that will save you" and walked past us keeping the notes on the nearby table. Amit said," I think we should write a letter saying we are sorry. That will save us.". "Good idea", sunder seconded. I went forward and asked Aarthi for some paper. She took her Arithmetic note(we used to write landscaped on Arithmetic notes, because each step was long for equations).I noticed a ninja sticker on the front and "Arithamatics" written on it. She gently tore the middle page,seperated it from the thread holding it and gave it to me. "Its arithmetic not arithamatics",I said in an attempt to correct the typo(or rather writo). She gave a dirty look.


"Ok, So amit you write the letter", I said and handed over the paper to him. Amit readily took out his '35 rupees new hero pen' and tried to make a start. He wrote in big letters "Apologization letter" and double underlined it with a pillayar suzhi at the top. "Its for luck", Amit said . "Oh ok . Apply some turmeric along the sides of the sorry letter too",I replied in 6th standard sarcasm. Amit did not budge at that and asked," Should From address come first or to address". I was'nt too sure. Sunder replied,"its from address". The deeps said in unison, "Its to address da. ". "Ok, 3 hands in favour of to address first and 1 in favour of from address first. So to address first wins",I announced the results of my democratic and fair address selection process. Amit continued writing vigorously and stopped only after 5 minutes .I then took the sheet from him and looked at it. His writing was slanted to the left and looked like the big rice grains you get to see in Kerala meals. The letter looked something like this.

Apologization letter

To,

Principal sir,

Principal office,

1st floor, near office room,

Nehru Vidhyalaya,

coimbatore.

TN-641007

From,

6th standard B,

ground floor(near corridor aquarium),

Nehru vidhyala,

coimbatore.
TN-641007

Respected Principal sir,

We are writing this to say sorry about the bad word incident accident. We would to like to apogolise apologify apologise on the accident. We dont know who commited the crime, by god promise .We even dont know the meaning of the bad word. We also have no link to bathroom bomb blast last diwali. Hence we request you to kindly grant us leave forget and forgive us on this.

Your respectfully obiedent obidient students of 6th B,

(signed with a signature saying 6th B students)

Date:18-09-1998

Place:Nehru Vidhyalaya,Coimbatore

"Perfect.", said Kuldeep also peeping in at the letter. Sundar then looked at it and said "You will get only 3 marks for this". Sandeep and Pradeep were busy pulling the chained tumbler at the water filter at the corner of the room. "This is so stupid . Why did you mention about the bathroom bomb incident. This is the worst letter ever.", I yelled at Amit. He fired back,"Oh, if you were so clever why dont you write the apogolization letter". I wanted to call him a dog and cleverly divert the argument, but the office anna came and summoned us"Ulla vaa."(Come the hell inside).

Our principal Mr.Natrajan was looking busy . He had bunch of papers on his table. He signed them one by one and stamped a few of them. I had a sudden desire to become a principal and sit inside a room like that. He then licked his fingers with his tongue and turned the pages. Not for once did he even glance at us. His table had a beautiful paper transparent paper weight with shiny red stuff in it, which looked tempting enough to steal. I looked at his clock, his set of pens on the table, his unshaved stub on his face, the wooden deer with horns, hanging on the wall. It was 5 minutes since we went inside the room and he still did not even acknowledge our presence. I wanted to bring the typewriter from outside with the help of pradeep and throw it at him. "Why is he making us stand this much?", Sunder asked me in whispers. "He thinks we have Piles", I replied in a fit. Sundar gave out a laughter bursting like an empty tap blowing out air, inturn spraying spit of my right cheek. I wiped it with my shirt.

Princi gave me a menacing look through his specs. He finally got up and for some reason I was not scared at all."Do I look funny to you", he put a general question to all of us. I wanted to say Yes, but I did'nt. He walked along the side of his chair and went near the window,looked outside and asked,"So who did it?". Frankly we all thought he was speaking to somebody outside the window and we did not respond. He waited for 15 seconds ,turned towards us, looked at me specifically and shouted "Who did it ? Who wrote that word. Tell the truth, you young fellow with spectacles"and thumped his table. His pen stand fell down from the table making him feel slightly embarassed and deep brothers chuckled on that. In the meantime I removed my glasses. Princi picked up the pens and looked back at us. Nobody had glasses anymore. He looked bewildered for a moment.

"Dont waste my time and in turn your time. You know the consequences will be severe. Its better you tell the truth about who did it.",He said threatening us. Amit kept his hand in his pocket trying to get his 'Shakespearean Sorry letter' . I resisted and held his arm tight. Everybody was silent and Princi went about walking around the room . He restarted,"So looks like you chaps want to learn things the hard way. I ll tell you what I am going to do. Either you tell me the truth within a day, or you are suspended for a week and I get to meet your parents to tell them about this. Take your decision."

The three of us walked out of the principal room and moved towards the stairs. Sundar said,"Look what happened. If my appa knew, he will beat me with a belt. Why should I get beatings for what I have not done". Amit looked at me and said,"See, Thats why you should have submitted my letter.". I replied,"Oh yes Mark Twain!, your letter would have had him all wound up with your beautiful words. Lets talk about the real problem here". The deep brothers looked free from worry . "chalo, leave it. These people will just threaten. Nothing will happen. Remember what happened during the diwali bomb blast? Nobody can do anything",said Pradeep walking alongside me. Sandeep nodded along, he had stolen the paperweight and was playing with it. Kuldeep was walking with us gazing at a tree. Kuldeep suddenly asked out of the blue"How do we find out if that bird is a Koel or Cuckoo?". I thumped him hard on his ribs for that.

Tell the truth or get caught at home and get a week's dose? I was in a fix. I wished I could go 10 years forward in time where I had my own money and I could run out of home .

To be continued...

P.S: Thanks for the kind words as always. :).

Also, thanks Dinesh for making that pic. :)