Chapter 03

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"Students, you are going to have your tests next week. Please take down the timetable from the board", our class teacher announced one morning.

Teachers do know how to spoil a brilliant morning.

As I had some problem coping up with the atmosphere of the new school, I couldn't concentrate on my studies for the first few months. As a result, my poor performance in the test wasn't something totally unexpected.

The announcement shook me out of my enjoyable trance. I did have to study. Even though I had made up my mind, but still I found it difficult to concentrate. No matter how hard I tried, my mind kept drifting to other things. Books never had seemed interesting to me, but by then they had become a boring disgust. As a result, by the time the half yearly exams had arrived, I wasn't at all prepared. Wounds of my previous performance were still fresh in my mind. There was no escape from my current predicament. Or so I had thought.

However, Dhruv gallantly came to my rescue.

It was his brilliant plan of group study. As our homes were not very distant, our parents didn't have any objections. For some days, even I had been kept at home, deliberately and forced to study. I was home jailed. Apart from the school, there was nowhere else that I was allowed to go. So this group study idea sounded as an awesome get away. Study is always the best of excuses. I was looking forward to hanging out with him.

But as it turned out Dhruv had taken this thing much more seriously than me. Not that he wasn't glad to get chance to hang out with me, but he also wanted to utilize the time efficiently, or so he said. And thus began our visits to each other's houses even more than before. Twice or thrice a week, either he used to come to my place or I used to go to his. Together we used to have fun, talk, laugh, and also study.

Dhruv was a better than me in studies so he used to solve my problems, or rather teach me how to solve them on my own. Slowly and steadily, time progressed. And so did our preparations.

A month and a half later, the exams arrived. By then, I was more confident than I had ever been. The fruits of our labor were sweet. I had acquired better marks than I could have anticipated. Even Dhruv did well. Better than his usual score by a stretch. Our little 'study & fun' sessions had benefitted us afterall. Seeing improvements in both of us, our parents encouraged our friendship even more. All was well when the end was well, or so they say.

After exams, fun begins.

We used to hang out almost every day. Explore places we hadn't gone before. Looking for playgrounds. There was no end to it.

There was this particular house, beside mine, with a large open area. It belonged to an old lady, perhaps the oldest in our colony. She was so old, that even her husband in the picture looked younger than her. But she was very kind and polite. But her gentle nature used to disappear into an angry glare whenever she used to catch us stealing mangoes from her trees. I don't know what made her so possessive about her mangoes. It sometimes felt weird. But mostly it was just fun.

This old lady had two sons, both of them settled elsewhere having their respective families. This left her all alone in the entire house. Maybe this was why she let us play in her backyard sometimes, but never without a warning about stealing from a tree. Sometimes she even willing gave us mangoes, as we sat on her veranda and chatted.

As to her name, I had always known her as Basu Dida.

During holidays, we used to gather in her backyard and play all kind of games. Hide and seek, kabaddi, even cricket. She would come and sit in her easy chair in the veranda and watch us. She enjoyed our company. Sometimes she would call us to sit by her and she would tell us stories. Wonderful stories. As evening would darken the sky, we would return home, she would lock herself up. What she would do, was known to none and no one ever tried to invade her privacy.

As our school would reopen, we had to stop playing our games and resume our studies. We would miss her backyard and her stories. But whenever we did get a chance we would find ourselves there. Basu Dida would be there too, sitting in her easy chair and watching us with a smile on her old and wrinkled face, which strangely used to fill my heart with some unknown delight.

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