Love...continued

Continued From: Love...

The Story of My Shoe

It was always Uma Miss who used to come in with the good news–official holiday declarations, the unexpected half days, those free lunch distributions, outdoor excursions, inter school art competitions and many others. But this time it was a new one.

In small village schools, you don’t have different teachers for different subjects.  Very often the same teacher teaches social science, moral science and English and does other clerical tasks for the school office. Ours was no different; Vikram sir being the most strict teacher in the school (after our secretary) was assigned PT classes for junior section along with Math and Science. But that afternoon he was too busy setting up the half yearly papers. A paper forged with questions he expected to intervene our silly pranks and negligence in the class, as retribution to our formation breaking during PT class and accounting all the in-disciplinary acts at school as a whole.

But the fear of exam was suppressed by the fact that it was the last day before exams and Vikram sir’s absence was the cherry atop.

“Vikram sir isn’t cominggg...” she said, her voice cheerful like always and her glowing eyes almost identically wide as ours after hearing the news. The classroom turned into fish market instantly, everybody started running towards the tiffin rack to pack their bags and run home.

Wait! Wait...she shouted, even her shout was melodious. Everybody stood still! But you can’t leave for home now… she continued, half of the kids hung their face expecting double sleeping period. What a bad ending to a perfect day like this I thought, the day even started with a heavy shower. The crowd started to breakup and return to their respective seats for a ‘heads-down’. But if you want I can take your PT class! And all 30 odd pair of eyes lit up again.

“I looked at the small nepali eyes of my friend and we ran towards the sports room”

PT with Uma miss was more about playing and less about training. Everybody was allowed to play their favorite sport, even hopscotch for the girls. My class was filled with good cricket players (Read: who could stand properly with the bat and pick it up on time when ball is thrown towards them) and almost all either knew how to throw a ball swinging their arm or they were trying hard to learn. I wasn’t able to apply that much brain in sports, May be that’s the reason that I loved football more than cricket.

We already had a lot of cricket experts and critics, but very few were interested in correcting a wrong football shot. All I had to do is reach near the ball and kick it, goal…? Well every kick on the ball was directed to only one direction, the short lived water pond in the center of the ground, and about goals, well we hardly ever had goal posts. Architecturally wrong, this place used to store all the rain water and was a trouble for the top-notch cricket players of class 4 but was a treat for us. Though it was often spoiled by Chandan, the school peon who with his spade used to dig a long canal all the way to the drains to flush out the water, but it was saved till then.

The ball landed in the pond and all 5 of us ran towards it. The goal was not to kick the ball out of it, that’s a mistake! The goal is how long can you stay there with the ball. The bottom grass were uprooted and the clear water mixed with the feet-dig earth turned pale yellow. First just the color then its form, the watery mud mixture soon took a thick viscous form but we were far from stopping and being stopped.

Uma miss has left for office long ago to attend a call she received, but it hardly mattered us. Has she been there, we would have played equally wild, also it was our last year with those half pants “Let’s ruin it” was the word in my mind only to be interjected by a loud call by Uma miss to come-back to the shed, it had started to drizzle…”but this is the best part about playing football” a friend said. I thought of returning for once, but what the hell, she was Uma miss, she would understand, and we started to play again. There was another call from her, this time it was loud and in no way melodious.

Water- often visualized being drank by a boy under a tube-well, being sprayed and played with by children, flowing down a fresh dug canal to a paddy and countless other happy moments; has a darker side, and hailing from the riverbank of one of the most ferocious river in the country, I guess I already knew it somewhere deep down my heart.

"Ironically, the two most-dark side of water; comes in two completely different volumes, the one in drops is the darkest"

Not far away, after her two customary calls for us to come back, Uma miss headed towards the other end of the school, the fun was all lost as everybody started returning, and so we too decided to return back to our class, just then that small eyed kid kicked the ball out of the water shouting “today, you will go to keep it in the sports room” dammit! Vikram sir must be there, and he will be accounting much more than my muddy shoes to set a tougher paper. I looked at the ball and it went the other way of the field. I ran to prevent it from crossing the bamboo boundary but it kept on rolling, slowly but continuously, luckily it got stuck between two bamboo stick. Tired after the game I took my time and reached there to pick up the condemned ball, only to see Uma miss sitting on the floor near the seldom visited open godown, that place was almost considered the blind spot of the school.

Facing away from me, with her elbow on her knee and hand on her forehead, she was sitting there as if she was thinking something, quite an odd place and posture for a teacher to sit and think - I thought. But there were certain jerks in her moment, she was bringing her other hand towards her eyes - she was crying.

Just then few of the lady teacher reached there, it appeared like they were trying to find her. I stepped back and headed towards the tube well to wash myself. I didn't know anyone who would have seen her in this stage, moreover she wasn't from our village so that clears a lot of good people out of the list. But I was hardly 10 then and the best part of being young is that, you forget things that should trouble you.

I washed myself all alone with no one to pump the tube well. Already tired, I didn't had the energy to clean the shoes further and headed like that towards the sports room with the football in my hand without even thinking about the consequences. Our sports room was also the common room for most of the male teachers, and Vikram sir along with Rajeev sir and a few others used to sit there regularly to have male chats, but it was just before exams and I expected them to be busy setting the toughest paper of their lives. When I reached there, I was shocked to see almost all the male teachers in the sports room, even those who were seldom seen revolving around it. Some managed to grab a seat, others standing. Some perfectly quiet others murmuring to themselves. I managed to maneuver inside the room between the gaps and kept the football inside the cartoon full of other junk and started to move out using the similar route. Nobody cared to scold me or even have a look at my shoes. Seeing the Gods(We have 33 crore) smiling upon me, I ran from there.

On my way back I felt, something was odd in there, but that’s the best part of being young. By the time I reached my class, I have stopped thinking about it. But it's not always the same…not when you start recalling those things.

Few years later, I was awaken by a shocking news.