chapter 4

The days just passed by. Anirudh finally got into the race to top the class and to create records. He read and re-read everything, memorized the complete lessons, the formulas and the proofs every single line of his class notes. They didn’t do any good, but neither did they do any harm. He slowly picked up the pace. The other things he did were to join the NCC, the weekends generally involved the NCC parades or some extra classes. In the summer, he spent most of the time in the cashewnut orchard of his grandpa. Anirudh lead a group of the fruit pickers to another part of the orchard while his grandpa has his group in the other end of the orchard. The orchard spanned nearly 20 acres, the house was situated by the main road. Working in the orchard was fun for Anirudh, he climbed the trees, picked up the fresh fruits and ate them on the trees and then running around for water, after turning his mouth sour. Though he grew up at his grandpa’s since his childhood, he still couldn’t distinguish the sweet ones from the sour ones.

Soon, he passed the ninth standard and the summer classes began for the tenth. Summer, was again fun, they played kabbadi after the classes, cycled down the streets of the town, saw movies and chit chatted in the back benches while the teachers kept up with their regular stuff about maths, physics, chemistry and biology. Soon, the school began. One day in the biology class, the guys were having tough time in the reproductive system class. The teacher somehow drew the diagrams of the male and female reproductive organs. While the guys didn’t even dare to look at the teacher and were looking into their biology text-books, even those who didn’t own one, opened some other books and pretended looking into the textbook. And then of the guys, gathers some courage, raises his hand and says – “Madam…!!”. The teachers stops the reading and looks at him. This guys stands up and points at the blackboard and asks – “What are those??”. The guys and the three girls(well, there were just three of them….) look up and to their surprise and shock, the standing idiot was pointing at the scrotum. And all the class slowly turn their attention from this idiot to the teacher. She was already fuming red. And then she bursts out – “You idiot, don’t you know what are they? Don’t have have balls? That thing holds your balls together. Do you want me to show them to you?”.

The air of doubt around this idiot, clears out and he sits down, scratching his head. The class again looked down into their books and teacher started reading out the lesson aloud. The bell rang in a couple of minutes and the second the teacher crossed the door all the guys burst out into laughter rolling on the ground and hitting the desks. It all looked like a room full of mad people, while this idiot sat at his bench looking at everyone laughing all him.

The day after the class, while returning home, Anirudh felt something strange in his stomach. He went home and dozed off. When his granny woke him up for dinner, he was high with fever. Somehow he managed to eat a little and then again sat down the in the verandah. He again had that strange feeling and then he felt nausea and suddenly he puked out, everything he ate since morning. For a week, he couldn’t even drink water. Anything he ingested, came out in a couple of minutes. He last around twenty kilos in a week. And finally he was diagnosed with jaundice. Later, it was further diagnosed that his bile duct was blocked out by fat and the liver juices couldn’t reach his stomach. He was down with jaundice for almost three months.

He got back to school, only to find out that he has a loads of syllabus to cover up and the board examinations are just a few months away. He had diet restrictions, he couldn’t go and play, he had lost too much weight in the three months. Anirudh could barely cycle from the school to the house nearby, which his grandpa rented, so that Anirudh could stay close to school. He had his first pre-board examinations in January and to his surprise he topped the class. He pushed down the topper who stood at that position since the year he joined that school. He felt like the return of a hero. He was just recovering from jaundice and he topped the class too. Everybody in the school knew about Anirudh. Last time, he pulled such a stunt was back in Ambani in the half-yearly examinations of his eight class, when he scored 2/100 in the Sanskrit paper. That time even his juniors came upto him and asked – “Bhayya, how did you manage to get 2 marks?” and giggled away before he could explain his debacle. But, this time it was different, everyone looked upto him. And more over the teachers were proud of him.

Finally, he passed his tenth boards. Ad got admitted into the best of the residential junior colleges in the state. It was located nearby a small village near to Vijayawada.

chapter 3

Anirudh switched school. This time it was a thousand miles away from the previous one he attended. It was an ICSE school in the town nearby his grandparent’s place. His grandfather had been living in the same village for the past forty years and owned a cashnewnut orchard, spread over twenty acres. He has a house adjacent to the farm. Anirudh was kind of ‘deported’ away from the city to this granny’s place to study, so that he could do something better with his life. Though it was same place he always grew up during the summer breaks, the idea of staying there for another two years pinched him in the mind.

His grandfather arranged for the local school to have Anirudh picked up and drop him at school. Again, Anirudh hated the idea of traveling in a school bus. He thought he was big enough for public transport. But, his grandfather didn’t feel the same way. The first day at school was quite strange for him. His Telugu was not so fluent and had to use broken pieces of Hindi and English in between, to express himself. All the students gathered around, as they heard the rumors of some chap from ‘Bombay’ getting admitted in their class. But, Anirudh wasn’t the expected ‘Bombay’ cool dude. Before the class could feel the presence of the new guy, Anirudh adjusted himself to the class and the environment. He got adjusted to the customs around and the ways of the people. He had his first unit tests quite and he didn’t perform much to the expectations. The teachers expected more, his classmates were looking upto him, the toppers were afraid of getting toppled down, and the juniors looked at him for inspiration. And he let them down, scored as usual 60’s. And that was it, the whole pressure of the world came down upon him. By the time the half yearly examinations approached, Anirudh was into THE SYSTEM and working his ass out, to run that extra yard.

Meanwhile, all through the trips in the school bus, one of the girls in the bus, had a crush on him. She was so stupid. She asked Anirudh, what does he understand by  – 143? Anirudh pondered for a little while and replied – “Ya, I got it, it’s 11 multiplied by 13, a product of two primes”. She stared at him for a while and then gave a naughty smile and whispered – “You fool, 143 stands for I love you and I love you!!”. Anirudh looked around, pinched himself and then again looked around. He was absolutely clueless. And the God’s answered his prayers, the bus got to his house, and got down and ran pushing opening the gate dropped the bag and the basket and then ran into the orchards. He was scared to hell.

The next day, she asked. She asked something different. She asked – “OK?”. Anirudh again looked at her puzzled – “What OK? No, it’s not ok with me”. She again gave her naughty smile and whispered – “You silly ass, grow up, OK stands for One Kiss and I want you to gimme one.” Well this time he was shot for a direct six, he had no where to run or to hide, gave his confused look and turned away from her. But she still kept tickling him. He just sat for the whole 30 minute ride to the school.  The same day on the ride back home, Anirudh said something to that girl – “1443, go home and figure it out!!”. He wanted to kid her, but she was too smart for his sick jokes. Her eyes glowed and she blushed and Anirudh looked like a lost puppy. She figured it out – “1443″ stood for “I tooo love you”.

He thought for the whole day in the school to play that stupid joke and it just took a few seconds for his plan to backfire on him. Well, he lost to her again. He stopped thinking about the next thing to do and started thinking about an excuse to skip the school bus and to get himself a bus pass. Nothing, could convince his grandfather. He had to stick to the bus for the rest of the year, until he was rescued by the extra classes back at school, at the end of year. And they were his saviour. He had his life back, away from the giggling, tickling and the fear of getting kissed back.

He was afraid of getting kissed, by the girl, because a few days after the 143 stunt, he looses a bet with her and had to offer a lip service to her. From that day, he started dieting on lots of onions and anything that would give his mouth foul smell for the bus ride. But, he lost out again, on a fine day she whispers to Anirudh again – “i like the smell of you..!!”. The next moment he knew, he had a strange feeling in his stomach and he almost puked, but controlled himself. He puked out the next moment he got down the bus. He was down with fever and nausea for a week, which later turned out to be food poisoning. But, he still believed it was ‘the’ whisper that brought him down.

chapter 2

All the geeky things apart, Anirudh had a secret spot of love in his heart for the girl who sat two desks behind him. He was all afraid of her, but still always tried to get along with her. The attempts of which once got him almost slapped by the same girl, on whom he had a crush on. All he did was to call her by some nickname he devised, thinking it was cute and cool of him. But, still that never worked and always backfired on him.

Apart from getting thrown out of the class and have crush on ‘the girl’, Anirudh had quite a lot interesting hobbies. Rather, interesting ways of spending his time. On his way to school and back from school, he had a petty big gang of friends, who were always upto something or the other.  For a few months during his first year at Ambani’s they used to fantasize about ghosts and demons that lived on the peak, seen from the highway on their way to school. And then came the age of ‘WWF’ trump cards, each had his own collection of them. Most of the time was spent playing them and quite a bit time was time was also spent on fighting over them. Slowly, the ‘WWF’ cards faded out, with the arrival of ‘Center Fresh’ cricket cards. But, they too weren’t around in the bus for long.

Well, while ‘gang’ was beaten by boredom, one of them found a way to amuse themselves. Throwing orange peels at passing by cars or people. Slowly all of them started bringing oranges to school. The mothers thought, the children were getting health conscious,  these fools were throwing them at the cars and pedestrians. The first incident, Anirudh happened to throw a peel at a truck driver, which hit him hard on his ear. Well, that was not it – while Anirudh stood at the window teasing the driver. The driver who happened to be a Sardar, drew out his dagger. That was something, that doesn’t happen everyday. Every kid on the bus was scared to shit and dunked under their seats. None of them even dared to get up and see where the truck actually was. And as soon as they got down the bus, they just ran to their homes.

That was the last of the peel’ing’ fun they had.

Evenings, was much more fun. Anirudh raced in the evenings, and he was the champion in cycle racing. Not because, he cycled hard, but he had the best cycle in he market – a green Hero Ranger Swing with 18 Gears & shock absorbers. He raced with his friends on the Mumbai-Pune Expressway, which wasn’t open yet.

On holidays and weekends, he used to cycle to nearby villages, cycle around rough patches of land and used to return home by noon. It was going happily. He sometimes played cricket, which he wasn’t good at. Most of the time he hung out at the club, playing pool with his seniors or hide and seek with the children.

He did some mean things, he never realize, but he broke the sewing machine of the club caretaker’s wife, when he jumped on it from the terrace. The watchman’s wife was a tailor, who had the machine to earn  and supplement the income of the house. Sometime later, he killed a squirrel by hitting it with a stone, instead of hitting a mango on the tree. Some other time, an old man fell down and got bruised badly, only because, Anirudh trying to speed past the old man, pulled an unsuccessful stunt of screeching to halt, beside the old man. Who just got clumsy and tripped down. And all these time, he just ran away, as fast as he could.

These were accidents but, when he realized the mistake, he was too afraid to face the reality and just skipped the truth, escaping from it.

Academics, life, future, career – all these never seemed to bother Anirudh, he had his own life.

But, then things changed. His parents had different plans for him.

chapter 1

As usual was the day, the buses coming along and the students rushing into their classes. Above looked Anirudh, towards the pristine blue sky. It has just rained and the clouds just cleared away. Everything looked brighter than usual. He just smiled at the sky and walked into the same old place. He loved the school, he loved his friends and all those who he hated belonged to the exclusive south-west wing of the school. The south-west wing was the nightmare of almost every student, expect those who frequented there trying to impress upon the block with their ‘intelligence’.

Well, the south-west wing had the Administrative offices, the secretaries, the Staff room and the Principals Office. Most of the students tried much to avoid the place, except for the students of VIII-B. They were special. They were more frequent than the ‘intelligents’. They were so called the ‘hopeless’ class in the school. And that was the only thing Anirudh was proud of – the guy from VIII-B. Slowly his classmates arrived and the class was starting to have the feel.

There were occasional sounds of ‘dhud’ which came of the back of an unlucky guy, who was mercilessly hit by others. The reason, there were some kind of tacit agreement between a couple of the students that when one gets up he has to say ‘Opts’ to at least one the members of his fraternity and when one sits they have to say ‘Bats’. Forgetting to do so resulted in the ‘dhud’s. A few students even had a backlog of the ‘dhud’s which were kept pending for future use. Anirudh tired that for a week, trying to look cool before the girls. But, unfortunately rolled out his tears when he was hit by five others at the same moment. And that was his last time, he decided not cool is better that a guy with tears.

The class teacher arrived and everyone settled down with the ‘partners’. The class teacher finally had found a way to keep the boys quiet during the classes. Each guy had to sit with a girl and the rows of boys where sandwiched between rows of girls.  Guys, had no other option but to stare at the teacher or stare at some girl in the class. Anirudh, was different he somehow manipulated the weekly rotation mechanism and settled down with a guy. And there started his woes. As usual, the teacher came in read out from the text book for a couple of minutes and then asked a question. The first question of the class is always for Anirudh, and no matter what the answer, he was made to stand outside the class or far away near the wall in the end, obviously with a text book with him.

The classes went on. The class Anirudh awaited the most was the computer science class. In late 90’s he was the proud owner of the best computer in the market- a Pentium II , 200MHz Processor, 32MB RAM and 2GB HDD.  And he had an appetite for computers.  Though he could not be cool, he could write a piece of code faster and better than most of others. Well, the examination answer sheets never did reflect that.