"Come and get your answer sheets as I call out your name!", Loukya mam said.
"I'm a goner", I whimpered to Riya who was sitting on the bench like it was a throne, looking least perturbed.
"Why do you say that?", Riya snapped "Have you never failed before or what?"
"I don't know what is wrong with you people these days! You won't get into any college if you go on like this. And it's my head on the block! I have to answer the Principal. I fully expect more hardwork from the next revision exam or I'm calling all of your parents. Now come and get your answer sheets!"
And then to our utter dismay, she began reading out the most atrocious answers from each paper for the whole class to listen before handing it over to concerned person.
"Abeer, please tell me how exactly is it possible to obtain cyclohexanol from benzene?"
"Er..it's not possible ma'am", Abeer said innocently.
"Then why have you written that rubbish here? Oh God!"
Abeer had had enough. Before Loukya mam could read any further he leaned forward and scooped up the paper from her desk.
"Take it! Take it and throw it in your house dustbin", Loukya mam said angrily and moved to the next paper.
"Maya Malhotra. Failed again! I don't understand how you can write two sentences for an essay question. I feel like resigning from my job!".
"I feel like she should resign from her job too", Reyansh muttered next to Mishti. I broke into giggles. Even Mishti had to smile.
"Now look at this people", Loukya mam was saying "When the alkyl and aryl amines react with nitrous acid, a dope compound called N-nitroso amine. It is yellow. Not yellow like SpongeBob but yellow like Nicki Minaj's hair in Starships. A dude called Libermann came up with this super cool discovery which is why...who is the hell is this?!".
Loukya mam flipped over the paper to see the name.
But I already knew. Only one person in our class was capable of such cheek and sure enough the next second Loukya mam thundered, "Riya Dixit!"
Riya stood up and sashayed over to the teacher's desk, got a slap on the cheek and came back clutching the paper looking she had just won a beauty pageant. If you asked me, she got away pretty lightly.
After all the papers were given, Loukya mam looked around the class in unconcealed distaste. It looked like she was debating whether or not to throw another diatribe at us.
"Mishti Kanwal remains the only one in this class to get a centum in Chemistry since last year. Come here dear", she finally declared and beckoned to Mishti who was now pink with pleasure.
Mishti walked up to the teacher's table and we watched enviously as Loukya mam pulled out an enormous bar of Diary Milk Silk from her handbag and handed it to Mishti.
"Just come here for a second Mishti. Let me smack you across the face", Riya drawled as Mishti came back to her bench looking highly pleased.
Mishti merely stuck out her tongue as she carefully placed the Diary Milk into her bag.
Riya rolled her eyes and leaned back on the bench while I stared at my answersheet feeling depressed. I imagined trying to conceal from Riya and Mishti that I had failed the boards and instantly resolved to work harder.
My chain of righteous thoughts was disturbed when Riya screamed next to me, "AAAAARRGH!"
"What?", I asked turning to her. I was not the only one.
"Rat! There!", she whimpered to me lifting her long legs onto the bench and crouching on it.
Two feet below us, an enormous rat, the size of the Diary Milk, Mishti had just recieved was happily gliding away on the floor.
Loukya mam had only just noticed the commotion, "Riya, have you not already created a record for failing the maximum times in my subject? Now you want to create another one for making the biggest racket in my class?"
"Mam, there's a rat!", Riya cried loudly in dismay.
Several people retreated at once, pulling their backpacks upto them and stepping backwards.
I recalled the time, last year, when we'd come across a snake in the school bathroom. This was better than that to be honest. But all the same, I swung up my own legs to safety. Riya was now standing on the bench.
Riya picked up my wooden ruler which was lying on the desk and bent down to strike the floor next to the rat hoping to scare it away. But the guy seemed to have decided that Riya was inviting him and tried to leap onto the ruler.
"Riya idiot! You do that for lizards", Mishti said exasperatedly.
Riya screamed louder and dropped the ruler. She was not the only one who screamed this time. People were shouting and jeering. Most of them not as scared as Riya but merely enjoying the distraction.
I noticed Loukya mam edging her way upto us, "Er..is it very big?", she asked tentatively
Nobody answered. But they backed off to make way for her. Sure enough, Loukya mam turned pale seeing the rat and said in a strained voice, "Go and call the janitor somebody!"
"Mam!", Abeer piqued up "I can try and shoo him out if you want".
Loukya mam instantly seemed to have forgotten Abeer's abysmal explanation about uses of Benzene and said, "Yes, please Abeer! Go ahead!"
Reyansh stood behind Abeer as a backup. There was a great deal of chaos and noise and excited screaming as Abeer picked up the rat (I couldn't believe he had touched it) and stormed out of the door carrying it.
Unfortunately for us, Romil sir was taking Biology in 12 A and it wasn't long before she stormed upto to see what was going on.
But the class was such an uproar that nobody noticed him standing at the threshold.
"Mrs Khanna!", he finally called out in a loud voice, "What is going on here? I can barely hear myself speak in the next room!"
"Oh Mr Chaudhary", Loukya mam said finally turning around, "I'm so sorry about the commotion. We were just...er.. trying to get rid of a...".
"Be done with it quick ma'am. I'm trying to take a class here!", Mr Chaudhary said and gave us all a disapproving look before marching away.
The bell rang and Loukya mam left the class in disdain.
"Man, Abeer! You were so cool!", Reyansh laughed when Abeer came back.
"I let him in. So it was easy to get him out"
"What? You own that thing?", Mishti asked looking revolted.
"Of course not", Abeer said "I found him in the playground".
"But you let him in?", Riya croaked "Why?"
"Just to have some fun", Abeer said "Did you guys like it?"
This explanation appealed to the class enormously and everyone instantly seemed further impressed.
We all gathered around Abeer fawning over him.
"Did you see Loukya mam's face?", I said eagerly "You actually managed to frighten her".
"And all of us", Mishti added faintly but she was smiling.
"It was brilliant man!", Reyansh said.
Riya, however remained in the background. She didn't look happy at all. She was clearly not able to stomach Abeer's moment of mischief.
I frowned at her. Her tongue was as sharp as a knife and it would do her good to be outbeaten at coolness for once.
Riya's bitterness however seemed to have evaporated by evening and she asked me if I would like to take the second trip on the school bus that day and use the time in-between to join her at the McDonald's outside our school.
I agreed at once.
"But Mishti has gone off home to start learning. So it'll be just you and me", I said.
"No problem, let's go" Riya said and I ran to get my bag.
Soon, the two of us were walking down the road to grab our burgers
On the way, we passed across a single storey cream coloured house. We had seen the house several times in all the years that we had loitered around that area but we'd never seen any inmates.
But this time, an old lady stood at the foyer looking stricken and pleading with a siamese that looked very much like Versace to get down from a beech tree in front of the house.
"What happened ma'am?", I asked in spite of myself.
"As you can Zoya, her siamese has climbed the tree and is unable to get down", Riya hissed in my ear.
Though we didn't know each other, the old lady seemed pleased to see us, "My Milo is stuck up there. Beta can you climb trees?", she asked looking at me.
"Err.."
"I can", Riya said confidently opening the gate and walking in. Before the old lady could say anything more she was groping her way up the tree.
I grinned inwardly. I knew, Riya loved to play the hero act more than eating burgers.
Within seconds she had the siamese down in her arms. As soon as she reached the ground, Milo jumped from Riya's grip into the old lady's arms.
The lady thanked Riya and invited us to have coffee with her. We didn't know how to refuse politely so we followed her into her living room. So much for our burgers!
Within ten hours I had done two things that mom would've highly dissapproved of : Failed in chemistry and accepted a stranger's invitation for coffee.
But to be honest, Mrs Arora, which we found out was her name, didn't feel like a stranger at all.
Half way through the espresso, I and Riya were chatting with her like we did with our own grandmothers. She knew quite a lot about our school as her house was just a stone's throw away from St Xavier's.
"Seeing you reminds me of my only grandson", Mrs Arora said, "He must be your age now".
"Oh, where does he live?", Riya asked conversationally.
"Here in Mumbai. His name is Darsh. But I don't even know which school he goes to".
"How come?", I asked looking surprised.
Mrs Arora looked suddenly nervous, "I don't why I'm confiding in you girls..but it's just..you see, my only daughter went abroad for studies and she met a very wealthy Indian guy. They got married but my son-in-law didn't want her or their son to meet me after that. My daughter brought Darsh a few times to see me when he was a baby but her husband prohibited even that after sometime. I've never met Darsh or my daughter after that".
It was down to the more outspoken Riya to convey what was in both of our minds, "That's horrible", she said. I nodded fervently. This sounded like a TV show.
"I don't want a chaos in their family. My grandson is comfortable as far as I can guess and so is my daughter. Not talking to them is hard, but at least they're happy".
"It's still horrible", Riya said stoutly, "Your daughter should be able to stand up to her husband. It's so unfair for you that you don't get to see your own daughter or grandson at all. I can't believe your son-in-law is such a bast.."
I stamped on Riya's foot.
"The only picture I have of him is when he was four years old", Mrs Arora said as though she hadn't heard us. She scrolled through her mobile, landed on a particular slide and thrust it infront of us.
A little boy with a dusky complexion and bright laughing eyes was looking at us from the screen.
"He's cute", I said politely. I was surprised the old lady was sharing so much with us. Maybe she was just happy to have someone to talk to.
"He'd be as big as you are now", Mrs Arora smiled sadly "I just wish I could see him sometime".
We bid goodbye to Mrs Arora feeling quite bad for her. Riya had asked for her Instagram handle but the old lady had shook her head saying she was not on any social media.
Riya and I walked back to school debating about families when we ran into Suhrit sir.
"Sir what are you doing here?"
"Lost my wallet around here somewhere", Suhrit sir said in his usual absent-minded manner. He might be quite evasive most of the time but me, Riya and most if the others liked him because he never came down hard on students.
"Sir why don't you go back to school? We'll look for your wallet and bring it you", I said.
"Would you? That's really sweet of you two", Suhrit sir, said and hurried back into the school.
"Why did you that for?", Riya snapped at me angrily, "I was hoping to go and sit on some stone bench and relax a bit before I walked home".
"Come on. I'm sure the wallet is around here somewhere. If we pitch in together, we can find it soon".
"Yeah because Mumbai is full of naive and stupid people like you and nobody ever steals anything from anyone", Riya said, "You can search all you want. I'm not going to help you".
"You don't have to because I've already found it", I said holding up a black wallet with the initials S.M on it.
We raced back to the staffroom and I stuffed the wallet into a delighted Suhrit sir's hand.
"I will think of a something to repay you girls", Suhrit sir said.
I and Riya looked at each other in delight.
"Thank you very much sir", I said.
"Not at all", he said "And is there anything else I can do?"
I shook my head but Riya looked thoughtful, "Actually there is, sir", she said slowly.
"What is it?", Suhrit sir asked kindly.
"Would you be able tell us something about the next week's question papers", Riya asked tentatively, "You see, my aunt was sick and I was at the hospital most of the week. If you can tell me anything, I promise I won't tell anyone. I just want to pass somehow next week. After that, I have vowed to start working hard", she finished looking teary eyed.
I stared at Riya. This was utter stupidity. As much as Suhrit was being nice to us, he was still a teacher. And who was this sick aunt by the way?
Suhrit sir thought for a second and said with, "You know girls, I'm afraid I might not be able to help much there".
"Oh", said Riya sounding dissappointed "Alright. It's okay sir".
"I'm really sorry Riya", Suhrit sir said, "That is confidential information. I can't tell you that the question papers are in the library. I also can't tell you that the librarian Ms Fanaa will be away tomorrow afternoon. You must understand that I can't tell you such things."
I and Riya looked at each other for a second in disbelief.
And then we broke into grins.
"Of course sir", Riya said turning to Suhrit sir grinning wider, "we totally understand".