This is my first ever short-story . The names used in this story are purely fictitious.
I wrote this story for an event called HATT ( Have A Terrific Thursday ) at Infosys on 24th October 2013.
This is a story of a boy named Ramu.
That day was very special for Ramu. He got out of his house with his heavy school bag, unwrapped the plastic covers from his new gifted bicycle, hooked his lunch-box to the cycle’s handle and started cycling to his school. Ramu’s school was around 3 km from his house and all the way long , he noticed people staring at him for he was riding a new cycle with a school bag . His face exhibited immaculate smile , yet he was nervous. Ramu forayed into his campus , parked and locked the cycle before silently keeping the keys in his trousers pocket. After entering the classroom, all the students were amused at seeing him . Ramu suddenly realized that he was in the wrong classroom and walked out with sheer nervousness. Now this time, he correctly went to classroom with the label “ V - STD ” and walked forward watching the usual subject- related charts hanging to the walls . He quietly walked to the last bench(C-group) of the classroom and placed his lunch box and school bag under the desk. All the students were waiting for the teacher to come. As soon as the teacher stepped in, the whole class stopped making noise and all the students shouted with a loud voice “ Good Morning Bindu Miss”. So did Ramu. There was a quick morning prayer followed by the question and answer session.
Bindu miss started asking from Peter (A-group first bench student ). Peter did not answer and hence continued to stand while Miss Bindu passed the question to fellow students for which none of the A-group kids had answer. The question soon reached Charitha( of B-group ) who started rubbing eyes instead of answering. Within no time , the whole B-Group was on their feet. Ramu noticed that Malathi, Sindhu and few other girls who were standing, put their heads down in shame. Some C-Group students were glancing at their wrist-watches every now and then in anxiety waiting for the next teacher to come in. Soon the question was passed to C-Group . The whole class was puzzled when even Riyaz, the class leader had not given the proper answer. The process of making students stand continued. In next 10 minutes , the question reached Gopal (the last but one sitting next to Ramu). Finally Ramu was asked to answer after Gopal continued to stand with gloomy face. Ramu was confident of the answer and started to open his mouth as he felt someone patting his shoulder hard from behind.
“Get Up you lame duck , its already 6:00 AM . Go fetch the milk from the booth“ , the person shouted.
Ramu got up from the old Indian mat on which he was sleeping , opened his sleepy eyes , rolled in the mat as he realized that the school-thing was only a dream. He fetched the milk and gave it to his master . After sometime Ramu started serving “chai”(tea) to all those who were reading newspaper sitting on the long wooden bench placed beside the rusted signboard .
Then he took a dry cloth and started wiping the signboard that read “Saleem Chai – Biscet ”. By then it was 7:30 AM. Ramu stopped wiping for a while and watched few school students in tidy uniform carrying their bags and cycling on the road. He quietly called his master and told , “Bhai, next time if the painter passes by our shop, ask him to change the name Biscet to Biscuit on the signboard ” and resumed wiping the board.
Ramu never bunked his school because he never went to school.
I dedicate this to thousands of Ramus who only DREAM of going to school.
Absorb the theme and ignore the grammatical mistakes.
Conceived and Written By
Jayanth
