Revolution 2020: Love Corruption Ambition Read online

  ‘Aarti? She got me into trouble the first day we met,’ Gopal said.

  I dipped a biscuit in my tea and listened.

  1

  ‘Lazy parents, bread-butter again,’ I grumbled, shutting a blue plastic tiffin in the second row. Raghav and I moved to the next desk.

  ‘Forget it, Gopal. The class will be back any time,’ Raghav said.

  ‘Shh …’

  ‘I’ve brought puri-aloo, we can share that. It’s wrong to steal from others.’

  I battled a small, round steel tiffin box. ‘How does one open this?’

  Neither of us had the sharp nails required to open the thin steel lid of the stubborn box. We had skipped the morning assembly for our weekly tiffin raid. We had ten more minutes till the national anthem began outside. After that class 5 C would be back. We had to find, eat and keep the tiffins back within that time.

  ‘Its pickle and parathas,’ Raghav said, having opened the lid. ‘You want it?’

  ‘Forget it,’ I said as I returned the steel box to the student’s bag. My eyes darted from one bag to another. ‘This one,’ I said, pointing to a pink imported rucksack in the first row. ‘That bag looks expensive. She must be getting good food. Come.’

  We rushed to the target’s seat. I grabbed the Barbie bag, unzipped the front flap and found a red, shiny, rectangular tiffin. The cover had a spoon compartment. ‘Fancy box!’ I said, clicking the lid open.

  Idlis, a little box of chutney and a large piece of chocolate cake. We’d hit the jackpot.

  ‘I only want the cake,’ I said as I lifted the huge slice.

  ‘Don’t take the whole thing. It’s not fair,’ Raghav said.

  ‘If I eat only a bit, she will get to know,’ I scowled.

  ‘Cut it into two. Take one, leave the other,’ Raghav said.

  ‘Cut with what?’

  ‘Use a ruler,’ he suggested.

  I ran to my desk. I brought back a ruler and made a clean cut. ‘Fine?’ I said. ‘Happy now?’

  ‘It’s her cake.’ Raghav shrugged.

  ‘But you are my friend,’ I said.

  I offered a bite. He refused. I had not had any breakfast at home. I gorged on the cake, my fingers smeared with icing.

  ‘Why don’t you get your own tiffin?’ Raghav said.

  I spoke with my mouth stuffed. ‘It will mean extra work for Baba. He makes lunch and dinner anyway.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘I tell him I don’t feel hungry.’ My father taught in a government school. He left home at six, even earlier than me. I licked the chocolate cream off my fingers. We could hear the national anthem.

  ‘I can bring tiffin for you,’ Raghav said and made me stand up along with him for the anthem.

  ‘Forget it, your mom cooks boring stuff. Puri everyday,’ I said.

  We heard students chatter on their way back to class. I stuffed the remaining cake into my mouth.

  ‘Hurry, hurry,’ Raghav said.

  I shut the red tiffin box and placed it back in the Barbie bag.

  ‘Who sits here anyway?’ Raghav asked.

  I fumbled through the pink rucksack and found a brown-paper-covered notebook. I read out the label on the cover, ‘Aarti Pratap Pradhan, Subject: Maths, Class 5, Section C, Age 10, Roll number 1, Sunbeam School.’

  ‘Whatever. Are we done?’ Raghav said.

  I hung the bag back on Aarti’s chair, in its original place.

  ‘Let’s go,’ I said. We ran to our back-row seats, sat and put our heads down on the desk. We closed our eyes and pretended to be sick, the reason for skipping the morning assembly.

  The entire 5 C entered the room, filling the class with the simultaneous cacophony of four dozen ten-year-olds.

  Simran Gill madam, our class teacher, arrived a minute later and the noise died down. ‘Multiplication,’ she wrote on the board, even as the children were still settling down.

  I sat up straight and craned my neck to see Aarti Pratap Pradhan, roll number one. She wore a white skirt, white shirt, red cardigan and had ribbons in her plaits, and she faced the teacher most seriously as she sat down.

  ‘Eww,’ Aarti screamed and jumped up. She picked up a chocolate-stained ruler from her seat. The back of her skirt had chocolate stains. ‘Oh my God!’ Aarti’s shrill voice made the entire class take notice.

  ‘Aarti, sit down!’ Gill madam screamed in a voice loud enough to make the back rows shiver. Gill madam didn’t like noise, even if it came from girls with cute plaits.

  Raghav and I exchanged a worried glance. We had left behind evidence.

  ‘Madam, someone has put a dirty ruler on my seat. My new school dress is spoiled,’ Aarti wailed.

  The whole class laughed and Aarti broke into tears.

  ‘What?’ the teacher said. She placed the chalk down, dusted her hands and took the ruler from Aarti.

  Aarti continued to sniffle. The teacher walked along the aisles. Students shrank in their seats as she passed them. ‘Who brought chocolate cake today?’ she launched into an investigation.

  ‘I did,’ Aarti said. She opened her tiffin and realised how her own cake had been used to ruin her dress. Her howls reached new decibel levels. ‘Someone ate my cake,’ Aarti cried so loud, the adjacent class 5 B could hear us.

  Half your cake, I wanted to tell her.

  Raghav stared at me. ‘Confess?’ he whispered.

  ‘Are you mad?’ I whispered back.

  When Gill madam walked by, I stared at the floor. She wore golden slippers with fake crystals on the strap. I clenched my fists. My fingers were greasy.

  The teacher walked back to the front of the class. She took out a tissue from her purse and wiped the ruler clean. ‘Admit it, else the punishment will be worse,’ she warned.

  I pretended not to hear and opened my maths notebook.

  ‘Who is GM?’ the teacher asked. She had read my initials. I had scraped them with a compass on my ruler. Damn!

  We had two GMs in the class. One, Girish Mathur, sat in the first row. He stood up without provocation.

  ‘I didn’t do it, ma’am,’ he said and pinched his neck. ‘God promise, ma’am.’

  The teacher squinted at him, still suspicious.

  ‘I swear upon Ganga, ma’am,’ Girish said as he broke down.

  The Ganga reference worked. Everyone believed him.

  ‘Who’s the other GM? Gopal Mishra!’ the teacher shouted my name.

  All eyes turned to me. The teacher walked up to my desk. I stood up.

  I didn’t say a word. Neither did the teacher. Slap, Slap! Both my cheeks were stinging.

  ‘Stealing food? Are you a thief?’ the teacher said. She looked at me as if I had stolen the Kohinoor diamond from the British queen’s museum, something the social studies teacher had told us about two days ago.

  I hung my head low. She smacked the back of my neck. ‘Get out of my class!’

  I dragged my feet out of the class, even as the entire 5 C stared at me.

  ‘Aarti, go clean up in the bathroom,’ Gill madam said.

  I leaned against the wall outside the class. Aarti wiped her eyes and walked past me towards the toilet.

  ‘Drama queen! It was only half a slice of chocolate cake!’ I thought.

  Anyway, that’s how I, Gopal Mishra, met the great Aarti Pratap Pradhan. I must tell you, even though this is my story, you won’t like me very much. After all, a ten-year-old thief isn’t exactly a likeable person to begin with.

  I come from Varanasi, which my social studies teacher says is one of the oldest cities on earth. People came to live here in 1200 BC. The city gets its name from two rivers, Varuna and Asi, which pass through the city and meet the Ganga. People call my city several names – Kashi, Benares or Banaras – depending on where they come from. Some call it the City of Temples, for we have thousands of them, and some the City of Learning, as Varanasi apparently has great places to study. I simply call Varanasi my home. I stay near Gadholia, a place so noisy, you need to put cotton