Chapter 7

Life was running at a frantic pace. As quick as this blog!! Life was getting lonelier by the day, in one way good, but in another way very depressing. Those days, I got into depressed moods too often. Sailesh had lost all the friendship he held for Suresh and me. We were devastated for a while. But the strong guy he was, he took it in his stride and tried to cheer me up at every possible instant. After all when the leader of a gang gets depressed, you need the henchmen to cheer him up right?? Ahem!! Yeah, so that was how stuff were going.
I was starting to miss people already, and was scared about missing them after schooling got over. Looking back at the people I had missed badly at various stages of my life were, at first, Prashant and Varun Shenoy, when I had come from Bahrain. Then, it was my uncle's daughter Gayathri, who had been more than a sister to me, when she had gone to Bangalore to work. Then, a host of friends after class 10. Now, it was going to be even more difficult, to miss people I had lived my most productive years with. Souls I had loved, some I had hated, but still I had wanted to stay. One such session of thinking, and my mind started singing some feelings song in karaoke module 4. And I was back to study after a good laugh!! Some of us are really bad at percieving serious stuff, aren't we??
At around this period, one of the revision exams was of great significance. This particular day, was when the Physics and Chemistry olympiad first round results were to be announced. That day was to have a computer science revision, but almost half of class 12 was sent out, not allowed to write. And why? Because we didn't come in proper uniform. What the heck? I had worn a aproperly ironed white shirt and blue trousers. I had a properly fastened belt, in contrast to many people who wore their loose trousers without belts and were clinging on to it, fearing the moment it would cause them infame. Then I thoroughly inspected my body. And guess what? I was wearing black socks instead of blue!! Screw myself, I thought and walked out of the room, and another surprise!! A pleasant one at this!! Suresh and Karthik were there too! And for an identical reason. We planned to rush home first thing as the bells rung, so that we could go home to check the result first. This gave us an advantage in comparison to the others who were writing the revision. A rush home after the bells only saw the three of us disappointed. The only PS'ite who had made it to the next round of the Physics olympiad was Sairam. Something that highly distressed Suresh, Pradeep and me, considering we had sweated our lives out preparing for this. Chemistry olympiad saw an expected Rahul, with Pradeep and Raghav excelling from PS. For the record, Jayakant had excelled obviously too. For the record, the three of us did really well in the re-revision of the computer science test we had!!

It was time for the pre-boards and the preparations were on in quite some earnest. People were finally sitting with their notebooks. But the most memorable of the tests was the Physics one. The previous day, we had a full JEE mock test, and so the preparation for the exam was not even near sub-standard. We hadn't studied before the mock test either, as the day before the mock test we had taken our Chemistry exam, and done a decent job at it. But for Physics, we had gone with what you hardly call revision, forget preparation. A last-minute entrance, following some touch up outside the examination hall, followed by a quick all the best signalled to Vidya, was all I had time for before the examination. Came in the question paper, and Mr.Inconsistent in Physics had finished the paper within an hour and a half!! I left the hall with the feeling of a hero, only to be given a 56/70 at the end of it all!!!
The following week, our farewell party had been arranged. It was going to be an official goodbye from the school. I had loved my school, and the very thought was difficult! It was time to get gifts for the teachers. Once again, Vishnu and I joined hands in working stuff out together. It was just amazing that in spite of all the rivalry we maintained for each other, we could make things work together, and that too grandly if it was for the school. Vishnu did half the deciding and getting of gifts, while I did the remaining along with the accounts management. We had sent Vidya and a few more girls to get a handbag for our physics teacher and pens for our electrical gadgets sir and typewriting ma'am, while another girl Waheeda was asked to get something for our chemistry teacher. Vishnu and I got coolers for our PT sir, a perfume bottle for Subhash sir, watches for our two computer science teachers of the two years. They had been a great inspiration on us, and in spite of all the trouble we gave, they had backed us enough to get us through some really difficult parts. Raja sir, and M.S.Neelakanta Brahmachari sir, fondly called M.S.N.B simply rocked!! They joked in tandem, worked in tandem, screwed in tandem, name it, in tandem!! And that had worked dividends for the school in the previous years!!
Karthik and I got a private watch for our dear Shubha ma'am in the chemistry department, someone who proved very disastrous in my chemistry life, because after she taught me, nobody could actually make me like chemistry as much as she made me like it, and so the interest fizzed out, and of course, she was the reason Karthik did his last two years at school. It was she who recommended his name to even stay in the list of students in PS in class 11. Else, Karthik would have been outta school long back, for just his misbehaviour. And I also got my ex-Hindi teacher a watch because she made me top the district in Hindi, and also gave me so much of personal importance!!
So the only person left was our maths teacher, Rama ma'am. Not many people had actually liked her, because of her tyrannical solutions to problems. Whatever she intended to do in good light had also ended up making her look cruel, and this presented a very bad picture to the general student public. None of them wanted to gift her. But I did. For many reasons, one, she had been my godmother in PS and had helped to propel me to IMOTC, two, she liked me a lot and had done so many things for my convenience, three, she was one teacher who had made many of my minuses, pluses in PS, and four, because she was my maths teacher!! So, on my personal investment, I got her a good gold watch and satisfied the void I felt for her in my heart.
So the stage was set for a farewell, which was going to stay close to my heart for years to come!!!!