A boring story

This is a story of a girl and it begins at the end. And you might be wondering what freaking story it is that ends before beginning. Actually, it’s the ending of one of the stories that she lived and beginning of the one she is going to start. As quoted by Mitch Albom, “Well, all the endings are beginnings. We just don’t know it at the time.”
Her last few hours in home were not spent, like most of the other days. Her bags were being packed, trunk was being locked with padlocks, clanking and rattling. Her grandma was preparing “tika” and “prassad”. Her mother was getting ready to accompany her. Her sisters were hovering around her begging for five rupees, their farewell share of money. Her neighbors were cluttered around her house waiting to put tika on her. And there she was in new dress beaming, carrying her baby sister for one last time, fighting with them for prassad for one last time, cramming those rupee notes in her kurti’s pocket while her neighboring friends and sisters eyed her with envy at her sudden richness.
Suddenly someone cried, “Bhauju, bus is on the way. You better hurry up.” The honking of  vehicle got louder(Doppler effect, she learned it recently) and she hopped into the bus with her mother waving goodbye to her home, family, village,  her granny trying to catch blurry vision of her granddaughter disappearing into dot while thick mist conjured her watery eyes.
Portus!
The next moment she was there. The place her father had described to her for hours in phone. The fairyland her mother had inscripted in her mind where her all dreams were to be fulfilled.
She had asked her, “Mummy would they give me anything I want to eat?”
Her mother caressing her hair softly replied, “Yes, but only if you behave nice.”
“Momma, will they give me a cake too?”
“Yes, sweetheart. They’ve got tonnes of cakes.”
Umm, she got the cake as promised but I wonder if she liked it.
She was waiting in “Hawaghar” nervously tugging at her mother sleeves. Quiet and shy. Clustered among the bunch of strangers. Actually strangers for time being only, because within that crowd there were her soon to be housemates, roommates, set mates, seat mate, team mates, sweeping duty partners, house duty partners and above all friends for life time.
It was raining but light. She set her eyes here and there. She observed people around her. She saw kids like her, smaller then her, bigger than her, taller than her, shorter than her, skinny like her, haughtier than her, fragile than her, with homes nearer than hers, further away than hers.
Finally, it was her turn to be interviewed. Three gentleman dressed in suit were sitting behind the long table, smiling to eyes showing their perfect set of front row of teeth. And they fired questions. Very easy. But interviews are scary whether you are ten or twenty. And finally at the end one of them asked her, “Ok! Now are you ready to leave your mother, family, home and stay with us here in hostel?”
Oh my god! That’s when it her hurt the most. She was not told that she had to stay in school all day and night for whole year and years ahead. She thought she would be living in Kathmandu with her mother and would be attaining school like normal as usual. But reality was not normal. Her heart twisted with all ventricles and auricles contracting at the same time at once. Her stomach felt hollow despite of having the very first tiffin “samosa” and banana few minutes back.
And she cried. Her mother cried seeing her daughter cry. Seeing them crying her relative grandma who had come with them also cried. The girl cried so ugly and hard begging her mother to take her back home. And what hurt her more was that coming Monday there was Mother’s Day for which she had planned for ages but the dim prospect of not being with her mother on that day just made tears flow like cat and dog rain. In her first school assembly she wept silently as Principal Sir talked about Mother’s day and all. She was such a crybaby. She wept in phone for hours every day, wept in classroom, wept during photo shoot for identity card, wept in clinic, dining hall everywhere. Such a weirdo child.
As one year turned to two and two years turned toward three she learned why her mother didn’t take her back home that day. She learned to do cat walk in Miss MD1, she learned to dance kathak, she learned to cut glitters in class and at night after light off hours without letting class teacher and duty teacher know it, she learned to play in team, she learned to lose and win, she learned to toss curry, dal, pickle in glass and make it edible, she learned to make strangers her family and BNKS her home.
Though, she was not life of her class as she rarely contributed to horrendous rupture of laughter, nor the one with those heroic stories of skipping the classes and jumping off the walls. Never did she sneak off to staff’s kitchen gardens to steal those appealing cucumbers, neither her story revolves around those ground breaking, daring and adventurous trip to black gate and so many other gates smuggling food. Nonetheless, that doesn’t mean she didn’t have best of times and neither that makes her moments here less enthralling than of bunkers, smugglers, mischief doers and trouble makers.
And mostly, she learned to live her life with grace, sincerity, and respect yet flavored it with minces of fun (singing at the top the lungs in the room with her people holding hairbrush or nothing as microphone), minute joys (getting best chicken piece), happiness (permission from HOH to watch one extra movie, one extra marks out of nowhere, dancing crazy like havoc in house, in rooms, in dayrooms, in assembly hall) and moments to cherish.
Well, today nearly nine years have passed, she has grown into big girl and she still cries in phone. She calls her mother saying she doesn’t want to leave this place. The sight of her first classroom, first house, her first desk, pitches, teachers, courts, and roads, trees of bhogate, guava, and pears leaves her feeling hollow and sad as she sniffs the air trying to hold back the tears.
The ending of her novel which she doesn’t want to finish but have to, is approaching but we, behind the scenes characters of her story know that her another story is about to begin soon outside these walls. After all every endings are beginnings.

P.S: Hope you find it interesting

Article by: 7033 Susmita

A-Levels