"HELLO DAWA" GREETED PENJOR, AN ENERGETIC BOY who wakes up first than anyone else.

"Yes Penjor, any thing else?" I responded still yawning because of the nightly hours. Usually at night, fooling the Warden and the Night Guards, no place for the Captains, we enter through the pearly gates of our 'Divine House of the Heaven' for the mundane activity. Let me say it naive and simple, we usually blow the smokes or sometimes, teachers say feeding on the grasses. Mary Jane is the usual mandatory one and seldom psychoactive drugs like LSD and DMT.

After that, we feel divinely euphoria and even the stars seem twinkling in the dark obnubilated night. Laughter is another feature, we laugh like mentals and think like an ass. Study is another fucking stuff , my teachers keep on advising me that I have to burn my midnight candle and often say I am performing very poorly.

Parents and teachers exhortations make me hurl, I am fade up of behearing. My ears seemed operating very poorly due to pressurised advice. One day it so happened that I was referred to the school counselor, a real chump. He questioned me which I don't wanted to disclose, I simply said, "I am not able to perform well as wished and awaited for because my brain is fucking poor." When I used a word 'fucking' in the conversation, as in the Bhutanese context it is understood as filthy and inappropriate, he was exasperated and whanged his broad hand on my face as he considered the talk to be official. I said , "I am a follower of Gandhi", so I willingly gave my left. He was extremely fierce then, so he forced me out of counselling service room.

"Let us go fast to the school. Today is Chemistry test, you know that?" He asked, sashing for the final round around his waist.

Chemistry? Stoichiometry, Mole Concept and Gas Laws? All are the toughest chapters.

"Chemistry? When is the period?" I interrogated him solemnly and somberly for sake I cannot conjecture chemistry teacher, a real sorcerer. He roughs out without having mercy. I still reminisce how badly he had beaten the stuffing out of me when I couldn't state the Gay-Lussac Law. I still have contusions to prove.

"It's second period, you heard me?" He said earnestly.

"Then, what is the first period?" I asked him, totally psyched and brought into life.

"Haha...why do you ask that?"He asked rather mortifyingly.

"If it's free, I can get time to study." I mused, finding myself oblivious of what is really happening around.

"Haha...unfortunately, it's Mathematics, dude!" He said simply. He might have studied thoroughly looking at his pride.

"Ooops! Bad luck, Dawa?" I whispered to myself, unheard by others; mused to the land of unknown dilemma.

"What did you say?"He asked, smelled the rat.

"Nah..." I responded dully.

Maths teacher, another nutcase if it's in Japan, arrives before time and never leaves the period free. Swotting up on maths is like sweeping the awful lavatory with rich in pungency which takes to the bed for weeks. The best mark that I ever hatched in my so far attended Mathematics exams was forty-five out of hundred, it sounds funny!

"Penjor, then show me your answers during test." I pleaded, melancholia indeed burnt my root of hopes and strength through.

"May be, if situation permits." He replied with theatrical smile.

Before I could get dressed, he left the room and other mates too. I was the tail end hippo to go to school with morning blessing from the warden. It took me almost fifteen minutes to reach, almost behind time by twenty-five minutes for the study. I was seriously dealt by the TOD , you know what? Classmates made me a play of fun and animadversion when they saw imprints on both sides of my coarse face. I was embarrassed. I opened the Chemistry Text Book and tried to scan and if possible mock up. But, my efforts were dissipated, no single definition entered my brain. I repeated again but my exertion had no positive impact. It rather caused cephalalgia, so I just turned my blind eyes on it and went for sleeping.

"Why are you sleeping Dawa? Today we have Chemistry test, you know that right? At least read and turn over a new leaf, my poor chap." Yethro woke me up. She oftentimes provides me flowery smiles and advises me not to take drugs. I too like her said that not too madly though the fact is that she is the most beautiful angel in our institution. Every boy follows her! She is medium sized, with shoulder length reddish hair, white complexion and has loveable body physique; a callipygous! She looks more beautiful when dressed in her favourite attires.

"Haha...really? My angel?" I teased her.

"Haha...you keep on praising me, Master Druggist! You will score zero later. I know you like me but..." She said incompletely that led to the suspense of my heart.

"But...?" I asked her back, heated up.

"But....you will know as time passes by." She replied with different impression.

I found myself dumped and in the climax of her say. I was too shivering with excitement and I could feel the increased heart beat and my mouth was dry.

"Haha...don't vex much. I meant you will again get the dog beating like what you get oftentimes." She switched the topic and teased me but I felt teetotally different. I kept on gazing at her face that looks brighter than the moon , which is taken into account the most beautiful in the entirety and gasped at her way of laughing. Those cute and pearly eyes that resembled the twinkling stars, those snowy face, the way of laughing, the way she wiggles her waist while walking.....

"What happened? " She prodded and woke me from my reverie.

"Nah...nothing. Nothing!" I revived my consciousness, a reality.

Our conversation was cut in by a bell. Hostel life is all about bell, we wakeup, bell; we study, bell; we eat, bell; we work, bell; we sleep, bell...and what not to bring in?

"OK, you keep on sleeping, a bone-idle pig!" She taunted me so pleasingly.

"Tee hee..."

She went for breakfast and I too followed her in the kitchen. There were queues of students waiting for the meals or comestibles to be served.

"Class tens, you're last today." Announced the school boys captain.

"What the hell? Class ten last?" I growled in dismay.

"Yeah, why not?" Thinley, a Jewa House Captain as well as COD of the day, replied shrugging his shoulders.

"Really a fucking day!" I muttered angrily. Serving the meals last is directly proportional to no time to study. I was intensely tensed. 'Chemistry, chemistry, chemistry....let it study by the chemists, why we?' It resonated and echoed to and fro on the circular wall of my unproductive brain.

I compelled myself into the tight buzzing procession. Those sounds of falling plates and mugs on the ground are really choleric and disgusting.

"Hey dog? Why you in the front? We have been waiting for long, our legs are paining....Go back to your own place!" A black-naked crane by appearance, affronted publicly and forced me out from the line.

"Please brother, we have Chemistry test today. I haven't study, let me go." I pleaded though I was internally burnt with his pride.

"No....we too have mathematics test today, you got me?" He grunted like a pig, no condolence in the least.

I, like an under dog, went putting my head between my two skinny shoulders. I was at the tail end. I missed my earlier place. Eventually, after a long wait, my turn rolled. I received my share. It was fried rice mingled with raw cabbage. I ate speedily but unfortunately, a lump of bolus stopped its acceleration at my vocal cord. I hicoughed, water seemed to force itself from inside and came out of my nose mingled with alimentary mucus forming viscous homologous mixture. Luckily, Yethro saw a fuss going on me and she brought water and made me to drink. She hit on my slimy neck to make the bolus flow in. Everyone concentrated at us. I was extremely ashamed.

Yethro, a Lucifer in comparison, took me to the classroom. I felt ever so ashamed as everyone watched us going to the class. I trembled with fear as illicit relationship was strongly proscribed by the school and if the administrators see us, by misfortune, I would be mercilessly chastised though in actuality we weren't. She seemed to be bold enough to catch hold of my arm, which is shivering, after all.

"Aren't you feeling anything?" I asked her, shivering like in the cold as mine legs were emasculated.

"Why? What are you talking about? Which stuff are you referring to?" She inquired raising the firmness in her tone piercing her pearly eyes on mine.

"Nah...nothing. Nothing at all! Just asking for a sake. " I replied forcing a fake smile, still quivering.

We ascended the lengthy steps to our classroom. Finally, I reposed under the spinning fan at a celerity of level five. I could feel the cool sweat on my body. She looked at me differently. I felt uneasiness. "Why are you looking so differently at me today which you never did before?" I enquired her uncomfortably.

"Nothing special, just felt like looking at you." She said and continued , "Can you imagine how you would have looked like when a stuff stopped at your Adam's Apple? Haha" She taunted me, masking her merrily laughing mouth with her snowy and nesh palm.

"I don't know. You are the one to witness, so you should know better than me, isn't it?." I replied sternly.

"Tee hee!" She just laughed and I kept on looking at the happiness her facial expression revealed. Her way of laughing is teetotally different that nobody has and had. I have never seen any. Ever.

With some elapsed of time, assembly came into existence. I was just standing in the line and trying very hard to recollect those RAM, GMM, Dalton's Law, Partial Pressure, Ideal Gas Law, Finding the Empirical/Molecular Formula, Percentage Composition,....but nothing seemed to favour me. I was pathetic. I just looked at the lofty pine and homely oak trees where various birds sing sang with their melodious voice and looked at how they fly in utter freedom, after countless attempts to recollect but in no avail.

Yethro was earnestly looking at me from her line, perhaps seeing my pathetic condition. I smiled and she too did but obviously theatrical because her mien spoke more than that. After the demise of Assembly, first period started. I went piercing through the hissing and buzzing disorganised lines of the students. It was a good irony that despite the door being too small to support those many students but they were piercing themselves into, though they knew its carrying capacity to allow them to enter, some even hurting their arms or heads.

Before I reached the classroom, Mr. Govinda Karariya, M. Phil., M. Sc., B. Ed., our Mathematics Teacher was teaching on 'Precision and Accuracy'. "Sir, may I come in?" I asked for.

"Oh! Where were you?" He inquired rather flat.

"I am just coming from the assembly." I replied, stunned and scratching my porcupine-like head as always--as I was inured of doing unwittingly.

"Till now? Oh my goodness! Come in and listen this is the last chance being given to you and the class. I don't want to see such thing again." He warned, seemed I did his head in. But he too was mingling with such an itsy bitsy fuss, a minute late or less.

"OK sir!" Buzzed the class.

He taught numerous ways of reading the significant figures abbreviated as SFs and taught the ways to take into consideration.

"Dawa? How many significant figures does this number has?" He asked me writing the integer '2000' on the green board.

"It has four." I responded, the class burst into laughter and I was embarrassed.

'What! What the hell you are talking about?" He boomed into flame and rage. "How dare you say? Can you prove it to the class?" He questioned me harshly.

"It's simple. I just counted all the numbers." I replied forcing myself to make presentable.

"What the hell is this son of a bitch?" He slammed the door and retired. I heard someone murmuring, 'only one' but unfortunately, before I could correct my boo-boo he went out of the classroom.

••••••••••••

"Your Chemistry Teacher asked you to come in the MP Hall." Said one of the junior boys.

All the classmates were rushing towards the hall and some even deceiving by saving the formulae in the calculator while some writing the definitions and important notes illegibly on the back cover of their supporting books that they use to support their answer sheet amidst the coarse surface of the tables. I was blank and so the gloomy was Yethro's face. I didn't know why? We twain too ran in the hall. Subject teacher was meting the question papers and the sheets, when we entered the hall. I too took the papers and searched for Penjor but he was too far in the corner and the nearby seats were already reserved by the mates. No option left, I had to sit next to the subject teacher.

All the questions seemed strange like an alien for me. I was ineffectual so my brain was a blank page. To be honest, I could only answer the unit of pressure and state the Boyle's Law that is worth of three marks; 1 for the unit and 2 for stating the law. I could vividly appraise that I scored 3 out of 20 marks. My body lurched time and again when I came to normalcy from the reverie of teacher again beating me to a pulp like making a traditional 'desho' from the bark of 'daphne' tree.

"Dawa! Where are you? Did you finish answering the questions?" Chemistry Teacher hollered.

I was awakened completely from the unconsciousness and nodded my head to signal I didn't.

"Write fast, there is no enough time." He replied.

How much I exerted to write still and all my attempt was next to nothing. No solution left than carbon copying the questions on the answer sheets. So I sighed one deep breath of relief and went out of the hall.

"Hey Dawa! How was your test?" Penjor asked smilingly.

"You know it very well. No better than the former." I replied and without the mood of having further conversation I went to the class.

Most of the student faces showed how well they had attempted the questions, so I, too, once again sighed as I was not only the one. The next day was scheduled for giving our papers.

••••••••••••

I was totally lost and couldn't stop from hallucinating. The Chemistry teacher came and all the students stood up to greet him. I too tried hard to stand up but I felt my spine and my skeletal systems are turned to a rubber. I was emasculated and melted through by the thought of apprehension.

"How did you do in your test?" He asked the class providing a greeting smile.

I couldn't dare to look at the cane stick he was carrying with him. I could construct a perfect scene about his beating in mine cow-dung brain; applying all his effort on the stick and whooshing so hard at my skinny caboose.

"Ah!" I outcried unknowingly.

''What happened Dawa? Are you OK?" He asked me.

"Umm...Nothing sir. Well...I am...uh...okay" I replied stuttering the sentence.

"OK then" He said and continued, " I'm not really impressed with your test."

Everyone was looking at each other's face as if lost somewhere.

"Some have done good and maximum of you have done very badly." He said flipping the answer sheets and continued, "Let me start from the good ones. Those who got below ten will get the beating according to the mark you scored"

Then he started calling out the names. "Som Nath scored 18, Penjor 15, Dendup 14.5,.....Karma Cheki 10.5 , Tshering 10 , Bhim 9....and so on."

Bhim was the first to get the taste of cane stick and trailed by others. Everyone was called including Yethro who scored 8.5 and she looked so gloomy and yes my name was not called out. I started to grew skeptical about my own mark.

"Who didn't get your paper?" He asked, affrontingly.

I, with all the energies stored for me, raised my hand and responded, " I didn't"

Then he asked, "How did you do your test?"

I couldn't answer to his question and remained stuttering.

''Come here Dawa!"He asked in a consoling manner.

I neared him, unable to pace further and not able to support myself, shivering. I couldn't directly look at him and just bent my head like a branch of a tree unable to withstand the charge of its fruits.

"Haha..."He started to laugh looking at my answer sheet and remarked, " Class, he is very intelligent boy. I am really proud of his shrewdness. Haha....he just carbon copied the questions in the answer sheet, that's pretty good. He scored one out of twenty for writing the unit of pressure. " He said, still unable to control his fucking laughter.

Then the beating started. I couldn't withstood his strength applied in his cane stick. I got five sticks on my butt and I am sure I was passed out.