Tears streamed from my eyes. I wipe them with my hand while clutching the knife, tightly. "I can't do this!" I yell. My hands grow weaker, second by second. "Just do it already", the man beside me prompts. I whisper that I can do this inside my mind repeatedly while I'm subconsciously praying that this all stops. At last, I manage to steady my hand and cut the skin with the knife. I whimper involuntarily. "Seriously, Ihana? Give yourself an oscar already. I asked you to cut onions not kill people." I look at him teary-eyed. "Fine, I'll do it." He grabs the cutting board and knife from my hand. This is Vihaan. He had the privilege of enjoying the 'single kid' status for two years before my birth. After helping in the kitchen and eating dinner, I sleep on the bottom bed of the bunker. Apparently, the street dogs decided that this was the perfect time to have 'Who can bark the loudest" contest. "IHANA!" I jolted, right from sleep. I fell down again. This is why they don't allow me to sleep on the top bunker. I'd break my skull then. I see my brother holding a mug of water, ready to pour water in case I don'. "I don't wanna go." I shift on the floor, hugging my pillow.
"It's your second day and you already gave up on 10th grade. I never expected this from my own sister", he releases out a dramatic sigh. "My day will not go nicely anyway." "Why?" " Waking up, first thing in the morning, I saw your face." "Tch. This is why you should not read a book at 2 am under the bed light." He said. "How did you..ah!" I put on a sly face. "You would know the time because you were obviously texting" He put a hand across my mouth beforeI could complete my sentence. "Don't", he warned. "I won't tell if you won't," I tell him. "Deal." I get up and look at the clock. We have like 5 clocks in the house but none of them show real-time. It's either 5 minutes forward or shows some other country's time as if we travel a lot. My dad came up with this 'awesome' plan so that whenever I look at the clock I would think that I have very less time and I would do things fast. Hasn't he heard of math? I could make out that there were only a few minutes left to get ready. Good thing, I had my haircut during summer. It saves time. Before that, I had long hair that came that reached my waist. Our school has a rule that if the hair is long, it must be braided. Convincing my parents for this was hard since they are kind of those orthodox Hindus who believe that 'long hair adds beauty to a woman'. First of all, I'm not a woman. I'm a kid who's 14. Secondly, Comfort is more important than beauty. I had to make a whole presentation on why short hair is more sensible indicating that only braiding my hair everyday (excluding the hair baths and hair care time) can consume almost 2000 minutes of my precious life, every year. I dash towards the bathroom, counting numbers inside my mind while I brush and remove my nitrogenous wastes. I make it in the nick of time to school. I enter my temporary classroom. Since there is some construction work going in the main block, we shifted to the lapset block. It's a building inside the school premises where all the lower grades are present. My class teacher didn't come to our school yet so the class is a mess. I also agree that my class is a mess even though a teacher enters but anyway I take a seat in front of Arjun and Mayank. Khushi comes and sits beside me.
"You think we'll get to meet our class teacher at least today?" She asks.
"I heard that she still has to work at her previous school for a few days. We have like a whole year to see her face. Why are you so excited, re?"
The bell rings, national song, prayer and prayer song followed by meditation for 2 minutes. That meditation period is the longest 2 minutes of the day. It's the time most of the use for staring into the ceiling. We are informed that nobody is going to come as a substitute. That part was enough for my classmates to go crazy like our government decided that it is hereby illegal for teachers to take games periods. Everybody's true colours come out. Since the benches are small, some boys decide to clear the middle rows and to play student cricket. It's term that we made up. It's like the student version of actual cricket. The rubber ball now is a paper rolled tightly and the cricket bat is an exam pad. Mayank and I solve a sudoku that he cut from today's newspaper. Although at times Mayank can be the geekiest guy in class, he knows how to have fun too. I look around to find a group of girls near Kaira.
"What's up with that person?"
"Apparently, Karan dumped her yesterday after school. She started crying in the morning."
"It's good since summer's around the corner. Ask her to go to Rajasthan and cry. There, there's some water shortage."
I was beginning to think that this year she would be a less attention grabber but it seems like I was expecting too much from her. We play dumb charades cause that's what dumb people do. I and Arjun are a team. Mayank and Khushi are one. May asks me to act the sentence 'My friend is dumb'. Arjun cracks his knuckles, ready to guess. "C'mon June." I point out a finger towards me. " You? Ihana? Girl?" I shake my head. "Short girl?" I slice my finger across my neck indicating that his death is very near. We lost the game so we had to do 20 squats.
"Do you even have a brain?" I ask him, disappointed. "Yes, I do have a brain."
"Then show me."I look at him with an expressionless face. He stands there defeated. "Do you have a heart then?" He asks, trying to make a comeback.
"No." He opens his mouth to ask me to show but then realises what I said. "Why are you so depressing, re?" He asks me. I shrug, not knowing the answer myself. Some random teacher peeks into the classroom, confused. As soon as a strand of her hair was visible from the inside classroom, we immediately went our places, sat down, opened the books and put on the most innocent faces that we could muster up acting as if we don't know what the word 'noise' is. It's not even been a week and we have a better coordination than Indian Cricket team. It's as if we've been doing this for years. The one thing I'm sure about this year is that it's going to be TOTALLY NORMAL.
Our English teacher enters. He didn't bother coming yesterday so introduction part is still pending. He starts ranting about how important is English in our life. Arjun pulls my collar from behind. "Can't you tap my shoulder like a normal person?" I ask with annoyance. "How do you know how old is our English teacher?" He asks me, expecting a reply back. "By their languAGE." "Tope joke re." smil sarcastically. If there's one thing that sets Arjun apart from others is his ability to annoy people with stupid puns. Everyone starts introducing themselves. Soon my turn comes. "My name is Ihana Badam. I'm from class 10th D. My hobbies are" I take a pause. Whenever someone asks a question about me I suddenly forget who I am. The teacher looks at me expecting to finish my sentence. ".....listening to music and reading. When I grow up I wanna be an archaeologist." I have no idea where I'm going with this introduction thing. Yesterday, I said to one teacher that I want to become an astronomer, to one of my biology teacher I said I wanted to become a meteorologist. I'm pretty sure she couldn't even spell that. One thing I noticed that the biology teacher had some weird north Indian village accent and she was not that good at spellings. So, you could say that English and communication were not her strong abilities. I always say different professions to various teachers. So that when I grow up and become a professional sleeper or a water slide tester, they all get disappointed equally. The one teacher is the one who teaches our class geography and economics. I'm pretty sure everyone hates her just as much as me. All she does is bark and blame people. She tends to target me in every single class. I don't even want to waste my time thinking about her. We have to bear her for a whole year. The activity continues and everyone suddenly has a hobby of reading books. Half of those people stutter while reading out the lesson when asked. The only books they even open is textbooks and too, is because of parental pressure. One boy from second row says his hobby is composing songs. That guy? He sucks at sentence formation. What songs, my foot. Preliminary two days, anybody barely teaches stuff. We were then asked what kinda superpower we would like if we can choose one. Someone gets up and tells that she wants to fly. Kunal from the last row shouts that she should try red bull then.
It's useless to bring all the books since there are no big, proper shelves to accommodate our books here. The benches are a little small. I have no problem since I'm also a little small. Arjun and Khushi, unlike me, find it extremely uncomfortable and start complaining. "Adjust, dude. You think they'll put a sofa or you both or what?"
"Hey, your Beessssst friend is coming." Arjun nudges my arm. I roll my eyes. "What do you want?" I ask Kaira in a disinterested tone because I'm disinterested in what she has to say. "A pencil." She flutters her eyes. "I don't have any." She looks at Arjun still trying to keep a babyface. A baby that put on fake eyelashes. It's not even been one day since her BoYfrIEnd dumped her and she's already set her eyes on Arjun. I dare her to lay hands on him. I chop them like a potato. Everyone in the whole 10th knows how much I hate her. Since nobody in this world should have a happy and nice life, god created villains and in my life, she is the Villain. Villains come and go so that makes her my childhood supervillain. Since every villain is supposed to hav chamchas, she too has them -Komal and Vaishnavi and some other lady I don't know the name of. I never really talked to them much, so I can't judge their actual personalities but what I can confirm is that they have horrible taste in making friends. I don't know how they expect me to breathe in the same classroom as hers. I have a friend in the States so I have a brief idea of how their school system works. It is completely different from ours. We start our day with usual prayer and all or we have an assembly. Each class is supposed to perform one assembly. We have a total of 9 periods excluding snacks and lunch. We all have our classes in our class until unless we need to use to lab, library or something. We don't have any special lockers designed for us. So every day we need to carry books. Most of us put them in the cupboards. We don't have a choice on the topics we study till 10th. All the students under the same education board get the same books and curriculums. This year we have 2 math teachers: one for geometry and one for algebra part. Murthy sir handles chemistry and physics for us. He has a reputation for being the most popular teacher. He starts by giving some simple equations to balance. School taught me how to balance equations but it didn't teach me how to balance life. Other teachers give a slight introduction to the subject and lessons. The atmosphere is completely different from what we are doing. All around us, there are alphabet charts, moral values charts, paper flowers and trees and we are learning about wars and struggles. School ends.
I pack my bag and leave for coaching. I change my clothes and go join warmup. It's been 5 years since I'm taking badminton coaching. My coach is just one more person to deal with. He works as a PT instructor at our school itself but his coaching area is in a building nearby. We all gathered as we had a newcomer, a 5th grader named Diya. We were to do 20 laps around our respective courts. Mine was in the corner. "Now, shall we do warm-up?" He takes his whistle around his neck and blows it 2 times to start our other exercises. "If the 20 laps isn't warmup, then what is? My legs are numb." "You'll get used to the numbness." I assure her. "Coach, it's her first day. She'll not be able to play properly. It would be nice if you give her some concession." I ask him. He looks at me from top to bottom as if I asked his entire award collection or something but last, he agrees. "Thanks, Akka." "Show that thanks in your practice." I acted all tough with that kid but honestly, my legs are throbbing as if I climbed The Great Wall of China. My mom picks me up and we go home.
*
"We need to revise our Constitution!" Vihaan slams a thin brown covered book on top of the dining table. I look at him with a 'seriously now?' face. He then looks at me with a 'Seriously now only' face.
"Amma, Vihaan's bringing the books and putting them on the dining table," I shout to my mother who is the next room folding clothes.
"Isn't that against house rules?" She replies back.
"You want to revise the document but you already broke one rule of it. Tally that.
"Fine", he mutters and goes to the fridge and a cross in his account. To all the people who can't understand, don't mistake this dumb book we are talking about as Constitution of India. If we had the power to actually modify the Constitution, every day we would have a games period. Only a true Indian student knows the value of that 'games period'. Anyway, allow me to explain about this bizarre book. 'The Constitution of Badam's' is a document containing all the rules and laws of the household and apart from our parents, is the only thing preventing us both from killing each other. Although Vihaan started it as a joke, we ended up following it religiously. Our parents are fully aware of it but they break most of the rules since we all are living under their roof and they have every right to do whatever they want. My dad breaks the no cursing rule like a 100 times when he drives in traffic. I can't blame for that because half of the people in India act like they own the road. My mom breaks the no-sharing-of-inside-matters-to-anyone by saying by bringing up all my embarrassing stories to that nosy neighbour aunty whenever she asks. Symbolically enough, she even has a long nose as if that nosing into other people's business was her purpose of life. I'm not much of sticker for rules myself. At one point of my life, I saw so many 18+ movies, I learnt all the swear words in English, Hindi and Telugu. That month was the month I lost so much weight because I got a lot of crosses in my account. So, every time mom wanted some milk or something, I had to go as punishment. Nowadays Vihaan doesn't know when I break the rule because I curse in different languages. This is one of the core reasons why I like learning languages. You can insult people without them actually knowing that you insulted them.
I still don't understand how they decide on swear words. Who decides that a female dog, the act of making babies, a synonym for poop, a gardening tool, another word for butt are restricted words?
Indian Dictionary
Amma-Mother
Akka-Sister
Tope-Great (slang)
Re, Arey,da- dude (slang)
Chamcha- one who sticks to someone like adhesive; lowkey sidekicks