The Temporary Transfer: Aaradhya's Story

Chapter 1 - The Nail Paint

Reader note: This story contains scenes of teasing, bullying, and humiliation in the early chapters. These scenes are included only as story conflict. They are not shown as acceptable, funny, or something to copy. Bullying, forced humiliation, harassment, and pressure around clothing or identity can seriously hurt a person. The story supports safety, consent, dignity, family support, and respectful treatment.

In Green Park Society, Aarav was the only boy in his age group.

That was not a problem for him. He had never known anything else. After homework, he went down with his bat, football, or cycle, and somehow all games became games with the girls.

Riya was his elder sister and was already in Class 10. Anaya and Kavya lived in the same building and were in Aarav's age group. Pihu was Kavya's younger cousin, two standards below them in Class 6. She had come to stay at Kavya's home for a few days during a short break. Because she had visited since childhood, everyone in the group already knew her well.

Aarav did not mind.

Their mother was raising both children on her own. She worked, managed the house, checked homework, packed tiffins, and still knew which child had gone downstairs with which water bottle. Riya had become the elder-sister type who helped before being asked, and Aarav had grown used to a home where Mother and Riya were his whole team.

He played carrom with the girls in the lobby. He became a student when they played teacher-teacher. He stood in the last row during their dance practice and copied their hand steps. If they sat in a circle and shared chips, he also sat cross-legged with them. If they lowered their voices and told secrets, he also lowered his voice.

Nobody in the society laughed at it.

"Aarav, hold this dupatta," Riya would say during dance practice.

He would hold it.

"Aarav, you are the monitor today," Anaya would say, giving him a broken plastic scale.

He would stand near the sofa and say, "Silence, class."

Sometimes they clipped a tiny hairclip on his hair for fun. Sometimes Kavya tied a rakhi ribbon around his wrist and said it was a friendship band. Sometimes he held Riya's dupatta during dance practice and waved it exactly when she told him to.

Aarav laughed with them. He never thought it was something big.

At home, these things belonged to ordinary afternoons. Mother might pass the room with folded clothes and say, "Don't make the floor sticky." Riya might scold Pihu for losing the sketch pen cap. Anaya might make a rule and break it herself. Kavya might arrange everyone's notebooks by size because a game also needed order.

Aarav was simply part of that world.

The other world was school.

The school campus had two buildings under the same educational society. The boys' building stood near the main gate. The girls' building was on the other side of the ground, behind a row of ashoka trees. Riya studied there because she was older. Anaya and Kavya studied in the Class 8 section corresponding to Aarav's standard.

Aarav studied in the boys' building.

The school was not far from Green Park Society. In the morning, Riya, Aarav, Anaya, Kavya, and a few other children walked together until the campus gate. Then Aarav turned toward the boys' building and the girls went across the ground.

Coming home was different. Class 10 often had extra periods, and the Class 8 girls had different dispersal timings from the boys' side. Many afternoons, Aarav walked back alone.

One Sunday afternoon, it was raining heavily. The society garden was full of mud, so all the children gathered in Riya's room. Riya spread an old bedsheet on the floor. Nail-paint bottles, sketch pens, hair bands, and small stickers were lying around.

"Today beauty parlour and school both," Kavya announced.

Aarav was building a tower with playing cards.

"No, I am not customer," he said.

"You are not customer," Riya said. "You are staff."

That sounded better, so he agreed.

For one hour, they made attendance registers, drew stars on each other's hands, and painted only one nail each to compare colours. Pihu, being the youngest, wanted everyone included in her beauty parlour list.

"Aarav dada also," she said. "Only smallest nail."

Aarav pulled his hand back. "No."

"One nail is not anything," Pihu said. "Don't act like principal."

The others laughed. Aarav tried to look strict, but Pihu kept holding the pink bottle toward him.

"It will go by evening," Riya said. "Don't worry."

Aarav gave her his left hand. She painted his smallest nail pink.

It looked funny. He showed it to everyone and made a face.

"Madam, fees please," he said.

The girls laughed so much that even Mother came to the door and smiled.

At night, Riya said she would remove the nail-paint after dinner.

But after dinner, Mother asked Riya to finish her science diagram, Pihu called from the balcony about a missing sketch pen, and Aarav lay down only for one minute.

He slept.

By morning, nobody remembered the nail-paint. Tiffin was late, his maths notebook was missing, Mother was searching for Riya's compass, and the walking group was already waiting downstairs.

Aarav ran downstairs with one small nail still clearly pink.

In the boys' building, Aarav remembered it only after assembly.

He was opening his compass box when Nikhil, the boy sitting beside him, caught his hand.

"What is this?"

Aarav pulled his hand back. "Nothing."

Nikhil leaned closer. "Nail-paint?"

Two boys from the next bench turned around.

"Show, show," one of them said.

Aarav closed his fist.

"It was from my sister's game," he said. "We forgot to remove it."

Nikhil smiled in a sharp way. "Oh. Sister's game."

The words travelled faster than the teacher's voice.

By lunch break, three boys had asked to see his hand. One boy copied his soft way of saying "please pass the bottle." Another asked if he also wore hairclips at home. Someone said he should sit with girls only.

Aarav tried to laugh once.

It came out wrong.

After that, he kept quiet.

On the walk home, he rubbed the nail against his shorts until the skin around it hurt. Riya had extra class that day, and Anaya and Kavya's timing was different, so he walked back alone. The pink colour had started scraping away at the edge, but Nikhil's smile stayed in his head.

That evening, Riya asked, "Did we remove it?"

Aarav hid his hand under the table.

"Yes."

"Good," she said, not noticing his face.

He wanted to tell her that the nail-paint had become something else at school. He wanted to ask why a game could be funny in one room and dangerous in another.

But the words felt too small.

So he only opened his homework notebook and pressed his thumb over the pink nail until the colour looked broken and dull.

The colour would go away.

The joke did not.