The Random Express

Manaswita’s arrival added two things hitherto missing in our class: the glamour quotient… and something that always tags along with it… endless trouble.

It didn’t take long for even the teachers to say: “Houston, we have a problem!” Mousumi ma’am was the first of the lot to fathom the potential in this new import to foment trouble. During the Teacher’s Day rehearsals that year, the girl had taken the initiative to teach the rest of us how to groove to the hit number from Mani Ratnam’s Anjali – Ambar hamara rasta, baadal hamare saathi. Angana, who didn’t realise the trouble she was getting into, volunteered to join the new Miss in teaching us a few steps. However, Mousumi ma’am, due to her mistrust for Manaswita, decided to sit through one of the sessions, and thus created a record of sorts: she became the first teacher ever to monitor our class as we trained for the D-Day. Apparently, she wasn’t happy with the way the young lady let her hair loose and did the unnecessary jhatkas and matkas, for she asked to stop that riot of a performance and even cancelled the song. She obviously found it to be an artistic burlesque of Ratnam’s timeless classic; but what everyone had missed out then was the fact that it also ended the babe’s hopes to show off as the new madame of the class. Nevertheless, this incident did subtilize some of our senses to the approaching menace.

Meanwhile, Deb babu’s love affair with Koustovi was peaking and everyone else had started talking about it. The whole school was scandalized by it; and most of us in our class feared that the news would soon reach the teachers and we all will be doomed. We were a generation that lived in awe of our elders, and love was still a hush-hush topic.

In the poetry recitation contest that year, the first boy had chosen Noyes’ The Highwayman, while I was chosen to recite the tale of Lochinvar. During the practice session, both Mondweep and I fumbled again and again, much to the dismay of Mousumi ma’am. “Houston, we have a problem—the word ‘love’ in the poems,” we cried out for help, but all we got was a heap of abuses from our teacher, who also proclaimed her shame at having to teach boys like us who scamper away at the mere mention of ‘love’. But what could we do? We were boys with strict parents at home who never really imagined that their sons would someday have dalliance with members of the opposite sex. And while reciting those poems, we felt the same fear as newlyweds do when they get ready for their first night together (I wonder how the same shy Mondweep scored that brilliant victory with Manaswita almost a decade later). Needless to say, we opted for other poems; and eventually, I opted out of the contest. In the finals, Mondweep made a travesty of Tennyson’s Charge of the Light Brigade by altering the great maestro’s lines to suit his purpose— “Charge for the guns! Don’t waste my time.” Tennyson must have turned in his grave!

For the better part of that year, a kind of tension prevailed…that of happy anticipation. Actually, Deb babu’s affair had a domino effect on the rest of the class: one by one, boys and girls started slipping, tumbling and bumping into love. This scarlet fever painted the school red; every other person either had a bruised cheek (a trophy won for valiant behaviour with some lady) or swollen eyes (due to extensive crying). Hearts were given out and smashed with gay abandon.

Only a few good men could withstand this deluge, including yours truly (Ok, I did like a few girls from Carmel School, but I wasn’t the most expressive of the lot). For us, life had become much more difficult, for not only did we have to keep our hearts within bounds, we also had to offer our shoulders to others to cry on. It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.

Meanwhile, a new element came to be added to Deb babu’s romance: the system of buying your girlfriend gifts with your dad’s hard-earned money. Although we don’t know what and how many gifts were exchanged (or if there was any exchange at all, considering the fact that buying gifts has one of those few areas where women have never demanded equal rights) Deb babu did gift his girl a newly released audio cassette of the movie, Beqabu — a Sanjay Kapur-Mamta Kulkarni flop. Not only was this movie a big disappointment at the box office, its title track was done to death by the girls in our class, who, almost daily, chanted it like a hymn whenever Koustovi was in the class and the teachers were not there. Good heavens, they didn’t even spare that poor girl in the school bus! We men were left to wonder what it would take to stop these women from battering us to death with that song. I remember seeking Pritom and Prakash’s opinion in the matter. They were upset, too; but more than that, they were smitten by the Manaswita bug, so did nothing to deliver us from the pain.

While all of this was happening, an ominous dark cloud was rising in the horizon: its name, Angelus Kandulna. It was his last year in the school, and the most dangerous one for all of us. Fear had clogged our veins and love, for once, had taken the backseat.

To be continued…