The Ordinary Life

"Time stands still best in moments that look suspiciously like ordinary life."- Brian Andreas

The one story of Lord Krishna that has endured the test of time & my forgetfulness is when Draupadi was being humiliated in court and he appeared (in a hologram) just moments before she and everyone else lost hope. Even though I am not religious or ritualistic or sometimes even a believer, this image provided by B R Chopra has remained with me always. But of course I never expected anything of this sort to happen in real life, I mean …lives are so ordinary and boring, there is no place for magic in it? Is there? But then I remember a hot and humid school day in Delhi, very long time ago… it feels like it happened just yesterday……

I paused for a while to catch my breath. With the building of new business school, our secondary school campus was becoming a large and complex maze structure with constructions & out-of-bounds signs cropping up here and there. I had just gone to the Primary Building to submit my school fee and was returning just before the start of the last lecture of the day.

It was a particularly lazy school day; nothing much was left in the syllabus to cover and the teachers would generally just declare “self-study” as the teaching plan and all of us would either play “FLAMES” or Book cricket. I climbed up to the top floor and stopped when I saw my classmates carrying their bags and walking in a straight file. Someone told me all the corner classrooms in B block building were being shifted for the new construction beginning next week. The teacher told me the new location of the classroom and walked away with the rest of the class. I sighed and began packing my things. I really did love my seat, it was perfect position to be in. It was just back enough that I could eat during classes and the teacher wouldn’t notice but wasn’t so far back that she would pick on us. I was sitting next to a quiet girl and my best friend sat in the next row so it was easy to exchange meaningful looks, again without catching the teacher’s eye. Damn this construction! By the time I was done the class room was empty and silent and I felt a sudden strong feeling of loneliness. The irrational thought came up like sudden vomit: My friend should have waited for me, hell! She should have gone with me to the finance department so that I would not be the last & lonely one left. I felt my eyes welling up …why was I being so stupid? With great effort I put the thought & the urge to cry aside, and started walking towards the new wing thinking about new sitting arrangements. Classroom arrangements were tricky, the teacher would try her best to separate good friends, make back-benchers first-benchers, make sure introverts sat with extroverts, make sure people who didn’t get along didn’t sit together and most importantly people who got along too well didn’t sit together either. She did all this to maximize an uneasy peace in the classroom. What a waste of talent I thought; She should have gone to solve the Kashmir problem. After taking a few wrong-turns I finally saw my “friends” through a classroom window and turned to enter the correct room. My friends were all sitting together and there was no seat left for me, I noticed this very stoically; but maybe my face betrayed some emotion before I even registered it in my brain and all the girls started giggling looking at me. I was upset at them and embarrassed, there is something truly irritating about group of girls giggling in high voices that I noticed when I was at the receiving end of it. I looked at the teacher and she just stood there wondering how she could have forgotten about me. That’s exactly what happened isn’t it? I thought to myself. They had all forgotten about me. It was then I felt my eyes water again- stupid girls… I couldn’t cry. It was just a silly thing…they are silly…don’t cry..don’t cry... Suddenly a voice broke out from across the other corner of classroom “over here!” I knew who it was; I looked at the boy’s section and there he was, sitting next to a vacant seat. The prefect who would clear IIT JEE exams and win the house cup as well. I saw the unexpected jealousy on my friends’ faces, a surprise on all the guy’s faces and plain incomprehensible shock on my teacher’s face. I think now that I felt more than saw that. Specially when I walked past my teacher, I could feel her face muscles moving, trying to figure out a way to stop this from happening (a girl and a boy sitting together- A cardinal sin!) but I walked on and sat down next to him without letting any feeling of happiness escape, the tears subsided the hotness left my face and I felt the cool breeze on my face. I don’t remember if I spoke to him or even looked at him or spoke about this incident to anyone afterwards- till now. Of course I was just trying to downplay this Knight-in-Shining-armor moment, but truly… for the 16-year-old-silly-ordinary-me, it was time which stood still and a prayer that was answered just moments before I was losing hope.