It's difficult to choose

1

A day after a heavy cloudburst turned into a bright morning star shining to the fullest. My bike was punctured which I got to know last night and there was no puncture shop open so that I can go to repair that late so this morning I had decided to catch the bus. Trying to catch the last bus which had already left and then the only option left was to run on the streets before the first bell rings. The way from home to school was challenging, I was running very fast carrying a large load of my books kept in my bag but my speed was gradually decreasing as I am getting exhausted and feeling a pain in my thighs simultaneously, it seems like I am old mouse whose struggling to get into his hole before any p***y cat makes me her morning breakfast. Struggling to breathe, crossing every tunnel every street, and looking for the shortest routes to reach I was trying to move as fast as, I can but at the same time I got distracted by the smells of crispy tasty ‘pakodas’’, samosas’ and ‘jalebi’ coming from the ‘Dhaba’ in the way. One thing I cannot understand about these smells, whenever I inhale them I started to feel hungry even I had eaten enough in my breakfast- the main reason for getting late. Well I ignored my feeling and look into my watch, it is 8:10 am and until now morning assembly had surely been started. This sudden thought gave me a sense of fear which results in my steps getting more faster. The feet finally reached the destination, but the real struggle was waiting for me. I was absent for the last 7 days and that day, I was late. Running from the assembly ground and hiding from every teacher, just not be caught by them and watching around the students who were busy in prayers. The sweat on my face was shining like a crystal and my whole shirt was almost wet from the back. The morning sunrays were bombarded on my face, while I was rushing through the corridors like a drifting sports car. I finally reached the classroom doors printed “12th A” on them. What I saw was a bit confusing; a joker with his stupid spikes on his head was hiding behind the seats in a corner of the class. I joined him behind the seats with my bag on the shoulders. “Prateek, What the hell are you doing”, I whispered. He smiled, “welcome bro, how was your honeymoon”? “What” I exclaimed. “Yeah that’s what Aatish imagined the reason for your absence, self honeymoon only you involved” he chuckles.” Ok now be quiet for five minutes until the assembly is over”. “We should go to the late line,” I said, “Oh really, well I don’t want to run on the wet ground for being late, you can go!” The national anthem started and the respect for it made me stand in my place, but Prateek was still there, gazing at me. “What a patriot! Well, I hope you are ready for thermodynamics'', he smiled. His words created a sense of tension in my mind. The beating drums stopped, and slowly the voices started to echo through the corridor. But we two boys were still hoping for any student to enter the class before our Class teacher appeared.

We were hiding in the corner like a small cocoon shell. Walking steps approached inside the classroom, chattering voices, giggling, soft laughing, and girls walking inside the classroom watching both of us hiding behind the table from teachers just to save ourselves from scolding.“, what you guys doing there you cannot even hide properly do you”, looking at me. “Hey Aman, how was your self honeymoon by the way?”, she and her friend giggles. Ok now, this joke of my ‘self honeymoon’ is famous and it will definitely going to irritate me today I am sure.  I exclaimed, “Is thermodynamics present today?” the word ‘thermodynamics’ was not a topic of physics which I am talking about but it was the name given by the students to Mr. Shukla, our physics teacher c*m class teacher as he always remains heated every morning due to any reason and transfers his energy on the students by scolding, asking concept and demotivating them as like he is following the first law of thermodynamics. “Yeah I saw him going towards the staff room” she replied. Her answer was expected, but it was still hurting for me because I believed in miracles. My leave application was ready, with a fake reason and a fake parent signature. I had a legitimate reason for why I was at home, it was my love for self-study and the fact that school wastes most of the day time in doing unnecessary activities. It’s an obvious thing for any student in the twelfth standard. We started to lose interest in school because it was the final year of our school lives, well that was really ironic as for commerce stream students they think that last year must be celebrated more but for the science stream students, they only consider that school waste time in various unimportant things and they only go to school for main attendance.  

The class slowly started to fill up with students. The strength of the class was not absolute but most of the faces were present. That morning was not very good, I was sweating, and the fan above me was damaged, the only fan hanging on the ceiling, which was not working and that was above the backbenches where I used to sit. My fortune was playing with me, if I want to sit under the fan; I had to sit on the front seats. The only good thing about that morning was to be left unpunished this time for being late. But happiness is just like a Chinese gadget, it doesn’t last for long. Like a storm Mr. Shukla entered the room, he took his seat, and started to call the names for attendance. I was trying to hide my face with the help of my register but it was really not necessary because my roll number was just about to come, that’s the worst thing about having a name starting with the letter ‘A’, your turn comes very soon. “Roll no. 9, Aman Rawat!”He called my name out loud, my mind was screaming, telling me not to reply but I had no choice, so I replied, “present sir!” My voice created a sensation in his ears, he turned his face up towards the source of my voice and spoke, “oh wow, you are alive!” Everyone burst into laughter, I was smiling too, not ashamed because it was not the first time I had violated these millions of years old rules. He continued, “We have completed Electrostatics and current, and I am not going to repeat it, what were you doing at home”.  I took the Application from my pocket and showed him, “sir, this is my application”.  From the back seat I started walking towards his desk, he scolded from his desk, “it doesn’t matter what disease you have because you come up with a new one every time, you have already heard that for appearing in exams you should have an attendance of at least 75 percent until the exams arrive”. As he said, all the students who were going to appear for the board examinations had to put that crap in mind. It doesn’t matter if the school teaches us something that is absolutely necessary or something that will barely help during exams, you had to attend all the classes of all the subjects every day until you reached that magical figure of seventy-five percent of attendance. But the fact that distinguishes the final year school kid from the other kids is that they don’t consider the rules of that ‘anti-democratic institutions’ the way they did when they were younger. It’s not a political statement but a figure of speech that represents the feelings in the minds of those young people, obviously not all students felt the same way; for some that year was the final chance to celebrate their youth with those who were there since they first started to speak English alphabets, and school was the bond which was acting as the common space for their friendship. I was unable to understand that sort of feeling, maybe because I was new at that school and left my old school friends behind. Still, that doesn’t give a satisfactory answer to my curiosity, and the reason was the distribution of their friendship in different streams.

The thoughts were flowing in my mind like a wild river during the monsoon, but I had to overcome the trauma that Shukla sir gave me. As soon as he finished his call to the last roll number, he jumped up from his seat and started to rub the chalk on the board in front of the students. In no time, everyone’s textbooks were on their respective desks, the pencils started to slide under the texts. “Magnetism and its effects, this one contains an equal marks distribution with other initial topics”, he was writing on the board. I had to come to my senses, it was not because I wanted to concentrate on the topic, but because the person teaching that topic could ask any question to anyone without giving any advance notice for his intentions to demoralize you. Just two minutes ago I was scolded by him; the most probable target for him was obviously me.

The definition of magnetism in his harsh voice was banging my eardrums, the concept and previous knowledge related to everything he was shouting about started to flood in my conscious skull. Studying physics was always fascinating to me. For others, it was merely a thing written on the board, but for me, it was the revision of the episodes of faraday's electromagnetic experiments which I used to watch on the discovery channel as a show a long ago when I was an eleven, at that time it was hard to understand those heavy scientific terms, but frequently asking a bunch of questions from a very early age, made me look myself as a scientist. That was a reality; my blasting curiosity made me what they called a “question mark!” yeah that was my bully-name. There was a time when teachers saw me as a threat to their respect in the class, the intensity of my question was sometimes unbearable for them. For a time of forty-five minutes, my doubts took about fifteen minutes. Some students were fascinated by my question, for others I was just a moron who asked a stupid question. Some teachers told my parents that my questions were intentional and were raised in the class for the purpose of wasting time. I used to laugh at those sick minds, not because they gave my parents illogical reasons but because they were unable to solve my problems and clear my doubts.

But circumstances changed to a higher standard. The physics I was studying seems quite tough and challenging. Not because the physics I saw on television was changed, but because understanding concepts was not the only thing I had to deal with. The application of those concepts to solve those mind-blasting questions in a limited time duration was the most horrific part of the subject. There were many times when I realized the guilt in my heart for misbehaving with those teachers, what happens when you understand everything but still, you can’t just c***k a question in front of the class; that’s the real nightmare. I wanted to apologize to everyone but I never could. Maybe that’s why karma was hitting me again and again through making me face the questions which I was unable to solve even after gaining the complete knowledge about the topic, or maybe I was wrong about having enough knowledge and understanding about the topic as some genius minds in my class used to say.