Shala by Milind Bokil Page A

the points.
    ‘Wait, Sir. I know.’ I blurted out.
    Shirodkar stared at me in disbelief. There was complete silence in the class. Everyone looked at me while Shirodkar’s eyes bored into me, burning like two lovely lamps. I allowed the moments to pass, enjoying them. She continued staring into my eyes, blinking a few times.
    ‘Tell me,’ Sir said.
    ‘ Jal Bin Machli Nritya Bin Bijli ,’ I said, enunciating each word slowly for effect.
    ‘Wow!’ The boys erupted in joy. Surya and Phawdya drummed the bench to announce victory.
    I turned to look at Shirodkar. The lamps in her eyes had gone out. She went back to her bench smiling wanly and sat down without saying a word. There was no sound from the girls’ side. Within a few minutes, the bell rang and the free period came to an end.
    My body continued to tremble until school got over. I did not feel like going back home taking the main road. I excused myself telling Phawdya that I had some work and walked back silently through the paddy fields.
    The fields were serene as usual. The crops stood still without swaying in the breeze. Shankar’s father was nowhere to be seen. The water had receded and there was a sort of dry smell of ripe paddy in the air.
    I sat on the rock for a while. I felt a deep sense of achievement. Shirodkar had looked at me for eternity, it seemed. She continued staring at me without a care in the world. I was sure she would remember those moments too. Perhaps she would recount the episode to her family when she went home. I am sure I had left an impression on her.
    Then I stood up with a start. She must have gone back home disappointed and dejected. Would she not have written the words being sure that no one would be able to guess? The thought struck me like a bolt of lightning; her eyes had been pleading with me not to reveal the name. Like an idiot, I had read her all wrong and gone ahead. What an ass I had been! How could I ever hope to impress her again? She must be so mad at me.
    I had been a bloody idiot. Naru mama would have advised, ‘You should allow the girl to win. That’s how you impress them. You win even as you are defeated.’ I had lost a golden chance. All I could do now was sit and brood over it. I lost the energy to walk back home. A deep sense of sadness engulfed me.
    I promised myself that I would never make the mistake again. If ever we played the game again, I would refuse to participate. But such an opportunity did not arise, for Barve ma’am returned the next day.

    I t was Warhadkar Jayanti a few days later. The day is celebrated to remember Shri Sukhdev Namdev Warhadkar after whom our school is named. He was a great freedom fighter and, sometime in the 1940’s, he had sabotaged a train by removing the fish-plates from the track. He had also captured a post office for which he had been imprisoned for a few years. Each and every student knows this history only too well, for it has been narrated a hundred times over by the teachers, especially Appa.
    Even a passing reference to S.N. Warhadkar makes the teachers eulogize his heroic deeds and describe how he once ran twenty-three miles to escape the police, how his feet were cut and bleeding and how he spent an entire night in a dry well, and so on. The story is quite fascinating and the first time a schoolboy hears it in class five, he dreams of becoming a revolutionary. But when you have heard it a million times, it ceases to motivate you. There are a few thousand copies of his biography in our school. The teachers sometimes get a bundle of it to our class when there is a free period and give it to each student to read. The book costs ten rupees and is given to us at a concessional rate of three, but no one is interested in buying them. On Warhadkar Jayanti, we are called to the school to celebrate the founder’s day. We would rather have a holiday, but they insist on us coming to school. No classes are held that day, and the morning and afternoon batches are called