When you finally almost feel like you can melt into the sofa, and soak into the TV…you feel like you have the rest of your life to do whatever has to be done and nothing can come between your droolsome holiday comforts – and wasting time becomes the most splendid, attractive almost magnetic engagement for you, you get awakened!
Much to your annoyance, the ‘pack your bag, and keep your things ready for tomorrow’, most unwanted – by – every ‘middle – school student’ instruction comes your way.
Somehow, you half – heartedly (and headedly) drag yourself to get that Holiday Homework headache done…..“You had an entire month – and – a half to complete it” comment goes above your head.
Before you even know, you’re wildly chopping and pasting, half – hazardly and in the hustle bustle, stumbling and hobbling for an answer, you end up calling a dreaded classmate, the answer you receive, sounds even more dreadful like a rocket scientist who’s probably found even juice along with water on the moon…
…..Feeling like an idiot, with your mouth still open you – wonder – ‘why you had to call up this super – smart, super disciplined, always – on – time neat and tidy ‘dread’, when you could have called up your good old chaddi – buddy Champu Chashmish, who is much like yourself ; at least you would have understood somewhat of the answer!
Around 9.45 PM before your Holiday Homework could sink into your head, you have sank into your bed…snorting like a piggy…..
…you wake up late in the morning, and walk around the house in total confusion, not knowing where to find what, and where to start. Till you hear – a stern ‘hurry up’! You open your dusty school bag, and find your tiffin box, still lying in it; with whatever was inside since the last day of school turned into some sort of a fermented, awful smelling something.
Then, holding your bag upside down; you jerk it like a mad – hatter, and with the dust blowing all over – the rest of your treasures come out : old comics, note books, textbooks, a heap of crushed, bizarre shaped things made up of Tutorial advertisement bills.
Chunks of sandwiches hardened into fossil. Crumbled biscuits, breadcrumbs, rotis,….
….broken pens, pencils, sketch pens, rulers, empty refills, cartridges, a hundred pen covers, marbles, coins, chewed gum and candies, stuck to just about everything !the unbelievable amount of bits and pieces of candy wrappers, your favourite ‘Raja – Rani Chor – Police’ chits…and a million other things………….
You realise your school bag had more collection of Kachraa than the municipal truck itself!
At 7.10 AM when you’re fanatically searching for your belt and tie in the pile of everything else, those first five pages of your school diary pop up before you.. the ones you never even look at once, but you can never seem to escape….as you’re filling the irritating pages, you’re mother’s ‘hurry up, hurry up’..starts to sounds like a road driller drilling through your ears….
If all this was less, you can hear in the back ground; your bus Uncle, Chacha Moongerilaal – honking as though the world had begun to end, starting right from behind him.
Finally; you pull out your school shoes from the rack – only to find it has now become into a compost pit, with your only pair of school socks almost rottening inside.
Kya hua Beta? Last – minute tayari, paad gayi bhaari?
A Note From Roshni 