Chapter 4: Changing Desks

She stopped talking to me.

That wasn’t all, she wanted to change seats.

During a break before evening tuition ended, she wandered from bench to bench, her chappals slapping the floor, asking if anyone would switch.

No one paid attention to her.

Most girls didn’t like her—she was messy, not clean, and liked to lie.

The boys just made a scene.

Joking that no one dared touch Rohan’s samosas.

She kept asking, as if she couldn’t understand what people were saying.

After asking everyone, no one agreed.

She had to stand next to me again.

The second tuition was about to start, the bell rang, and to get inside she had to ask me to move my chair a bit.

She looked down at me, her dog-bit bangs drooping, silent.

I’d held my bladder for a whole class, could I move?

We stared at each other in silence, I spun my pen, all my attention on her, waiting for her to call my name and ask me to move, just call my name, just cough once.

But she didn’t.

Just as I couldn’t hold it anymore and was about to speak, the class beauty spoke up, saying she would switch.

She sat right in front of me.

Her new desk mate was a chubby fellow, talkative, easy to fool, willing to listen to her boasting for homework help.

It annoyed me.

I’m a rotten person; when I see things that annoy me, I can’t help myself.

One day, she was telling the fat guy about her mum practising piano with her as a kid, how her mum listened to her, if she said her hand hurt, her mum would massage her fingers one by one, then blow on them.

She looked so proud.

I said: “If your mum loves you so much, why doesn’t she give you money for food? This morning you ate the fat guy’s again, why should he feed you? Aren’t you ashamed? Every day, your mum really taught you well.”

She blushed, stood up suddenly.

I stood up too, and now that I wasn’t standing on the desk, I was a head taller than her.

“What?”

She paused and sat down.

She still didn’t talk to me, just turned to the fat guy and said: “My mum is the best mum, she treats us all equally. Over the years, I’ve spent way more than my sister—living expenses, hostel fees, tuition, all together, even rounding down it’s two lakh. So—”

So that’s why she was so tightly controlled.

She said her mum used to bring rice to school to steam, didn’t have so much living money.

Her sister’s classmates in the village only had ten rupees a week in high school.

“So, I’ll study hard, I must be number one, my mum will be proud of me, she’ll be happy.”

Her big black eyes almost touched the fat guy’s face, and in her eyes only those words seemed certain.

The fat guy was busy copying her homework: “Oh, oh, oh.”

I suddenly felt a strange feeling I couldn’t describe.

I muttered: “Fine, so what?”

She didn’t speak.

She kept saying: “My mum will definitely be proud of me.”

After that, she ignored me, and the fat guy too, and focused even more on studying.

I secretly felt pleased.

But she really stopped eating, and looked thinner and thinner.

During evening tuition, she drank at least three bottles of water.

I’m a moral person, I can’t let someone starve to death because of me. That’s not okay.