As my dad walked me from our new home to the bus stop, he explained how I will travel to school in a school bus, which will also pick me up from school later that evening and drop me at the bus stop. He asHe asked me if I would remember the way back home from the bus stop.
I promptly nodded.
My dad was recently transferred to work in Kerala. We lived in a two bedroom house that was allocated to us by his office. The bus stop was at the edge of the campus that contained three long rows of houses like ours and his research facility.
There were other kids waiting at the bus stop. But their dad’s did not accompany them. They talked to each other in a language I did not understand. They also spoke very fast.
Yaabadabadabada yaabadabadabada…
I couldn’t stop but giggle at how funny they all sounded.
One of the boys had a handful of stones, which he pelted one after another at a yelping dog that tried to run away from the bus stop. He wouldn’t stop until this one particularly large stone hit the dog at the back of its right leg and the dog, instead of yelping more, turned around and growled at him. The boy quietly let go of the rest of the stones in his hands and pretended to look away.
I felt this was funnier than the yaabadabadabada yaabadabadabada that I tugged my dad’s hand for his attention and grinned at him.
The children must have noticed this as none of them came forward to talk to me.
I wished that their mums or dads accompanied them. If they would have, they would have awkwardly smiled at my dad and said to the kids ‘go talk to the new boy’.
Grownups smile and talk to each other all the time. Kids, on the other hand, stare at new boys and only play with their friends.
How I wished I stayed at my old school. I had lots of friends and we played all the time. There was one time when we played for so long that we even missed our school bus and our PT sir took us all home in a taxi. It was fun riding a taxi with my friends. The PT sir looked annoyed though.
The school bus was different. It was small and green. I asked my dad why it was small. He said it was a mini bus.
My dad spoke to the bus conductor before he ushered me into the bus. I sat in the fourth row on the left. As the bus left the bus stop, the conductor came to my seat and introduced himself.
‘Monae, my name is Kili Mohan. I will pick you up in the evening from school.’
I nodded while trying to control my grin. Why would anyone be called Kili – a parrot? And he spoke in the same yaabadabadabada tone but in English.
I liked him. I also think I like the new place. Everyone is funny.
I liked the journey to school. The roads twisted left to right and sometimes we went uphill and others we screeched down a winding road. I held the seat in front of me very tightly so that I did not fall off my seat, while the other kids didn’t mind the roller coaster ride and continued chattering to each other.
Yaabadabadabada yaabadabadabada…
I liked the Principal. He gave me a candy and took me to my class. He even pointed out to a mango tree and said that there were loads of mangoes to pluck from the tree in the summer.
I knew summer was a season. But I did not know when summer arrived. We did not have summer in the old school. There was only one season and we didn’t have a name for it.
I was tempted to ask the Principal whether summer arrived before or after the summer holidays. But before I could muster enough courage to ask him the question, I was handed over to my new Maths teacher, who was teaching my class.
She smiled and nodded vigourously as the Principal explained that I was a new boy from another state and that my dad was a scientist in that research institute.
That is when I realised that the Principal spoke like us and not them.
‘Students, this is Raejaa Prasannae.’ I grinned. She is one of them.
The grin did not go unnoticed and the teacher pointed to a girl in the first row and said, ‘you will sit next to her. Yaabadabadabada yaabadabadabada…'
I did not like the school. I was sitting next to a girl. It was raining heavily and they should have declared a holiday like they used to in the old school.
The day meandered. The girl next to me kept talking to me throughout the day. Why doesn’t she understand that boys don’t talk to girls? But it was a blessing in disguise. Some of the boys noticed this and came forward to rescue me.
‘Yendhada peru…’
And suddenly, I liked the school again.
During the lunch break, they took me to the lab and showed me a skeleton and a brain in a jar. Then we went to the well to play with the pulley but shortly after that the bell rang for us to get back to the class for more lessons.
We hitched a plan for me to sit next to the boys and lie to the English sir that the Maths ma’am asked me to sit at the back with the boys. We even memorised our lines.
As I settled into my new desk, the Maths ma’am entered the class and without exchanging words, she looked at me and pointed to the first row. I dragged my bag and sat next to the girl from the morning and turned back to look grimly at my new friends.
The Maths ma’am must have been able to round up my gang just by looking at our guilt filled eyes.
She chose to move on.
As the bell to mark the end of lessons for the day rang, the entire class grabbed everything they could and bolted towards the door. I turned to look at my friends at the back but before I could, they lined up in front of me for a split second and said ‘Pinnae kaanaam’ and disappeared.
It is going to be a hard time playing tennis ball football with them if they were this fast.
I took that as a cue to pack my bags and head out of the class. I stopped for a minute at the school gates and looked out for Kili Mohan. But he was not to be seen. So were the kids from the morning. What I noticed was that all the kids ran through the gates and out on to the street.
I decided to follow them.
The street joined a large road with crisscrossing vehicles. Kili Mohan asked me to wait at the school.
This clearly was not part of the school as there were grownups on the road.
Just as I was about to turn back towards the school, I saw the bus. It was green but looked bigger than the one from this morning. But I also saw several kids getting on to the bus. So I was convinced that this was the bus.
My dad once told me that as kids, sometimes, things seem large to us when in reality, they were just normal in size.
So this must be the green mini bus.
I have crossed the road a few times. Besides that, the other kids were crossing the road too. So this cannot be wrong. How else would I get on that bus and go home?
A helpful man helped me into the bus and got on it too. Why is he getting on the school bus?
I looked around, and to my surprise, found the bus filled with grownups with only a few kids dotted around.
This was not a school bus.
I heard a bell and the sound of a slamming door and the bus trudged forward.
As my brain processed all this information and froze at the same time, I was shoved deep into the bus as more grownups got on.
A friendly man motioned for me to sit between him and an old man by the window.
As I squeezed between the two, the consequences of my action began to flood my brain.
What if the bus did not pass through my home? What if it did and I did not recognise my bus stop?
Will I ever see my parents again? What will I do if I do not meet them ever again? How will I tell the people of this land in yaabadabadabada that I need help?
As panic, thoughts and ideas took turns to elevate my heartbeat, I noticed a statue of a Dravidian God on a plinth by the side of the road next to a brook.
That is it! I have come across this statue. I remember it all. I crossed the statue two days ago in a Jeep packed with furniture, bags and suitcases as we made our way towards our new home.
Now, all I had to do was to keep looking out for my stop and I will be home again. The old man saw me looking out of the window eagerly and assumed that I wanted to sit by the window and count cars or auto rickshaws or other automobiles. He motioned to me to ask if I wanted to swap seats with him. I declined with a rigourous shake of my head and continued to look out.
My mind worked fervently trying to work out when my stop would arrive. I clenched my shoulder bag and sat at the tip of the seat so that I could bolt at the sight of my bus stop.
By now I had worked out that the bus stopped when a bell rang twice and drove off after a single bell and the slamming of a door. I just didn’t know who was ringing the bell or slamming the door. But my mind was preoccupied with other important things. I had to spot my stop.
I had to spot my stop.
I had to spot my stop.
Ding! Ding!
Ding! And the door slammed.
‘Hey, that’s my stop. Can you please stop.’
By the time I recognised my stop, the bus had already started to continue on its journey.
I yelled. I thrust my bag against all the bemused adults and pierced a path towards the door in that overcrowded bus. I made little progress but continued to yell and shove my bag.
Some of the bystanders looked at me pitifully and all at the same time asked me what seemed like a number of questions.
Yaabadabadabada yaabadabadabada…
Boys don’t cry. I told myself. Boys don’t cry. But I wanted to cry. I wanted to go home; to my mum.
‘Please let me through.’
As tears were about to trickle down my cheek, I finally heard something I understood.
‘Did you want to get down?’
‘YES! My bus stop just went by. I want to get down. Please could you stop the bus, uncle. Please…’
Ding! Ding!
By then we had reached the next stop and the man who could talk said, ‘I am getting down here as well. I will take you to your home.’
As I got down, I complained ‘But I had to get down at the previous stop.’
‘I know the way to the previous stop. Tell me, where do you live.’
For a brief moment, I contemplated whether I am allowed to talk to a stranger and tell him where I lived.
I told him about the nice school that I used to study in and how I had so many friends. I told him about my dad’s transfer and that we moved here two days ago and our family lived in the quarters provided by the research institute.
As I continued to elaborate on my new school and the green school bus, he held my hand and walked up a steep road.
I spotted the rose garden. I was there the previous day. The garden only had rose plants. But a lot of them. Perhaps a hundred. Or a thousand. But it was big and covered in fluffy green grass. Dad warned me that snakes sunbathed in the grass and that I should keep off it.
He is probably right. Dad is always right. He knows a lot of things. That is probably why he is a scientist.
As we walked past the rose garden, I next recognised the bamboo shoots. I made a mental note to come later that evening with a sickle and cut a few bamboo shoots to build a tree house. I was going to build my tree house on top of the mango tree in our back garden. That way, if I am hungry when I am in the tree house, I wouldn’t have to get down the tree but just pluck a juicy mango from one of the branches. I can’t wait to build my own tree house.
The man who could talk knocked on our front door and introduced himself to my mum with a smile.
‘Madam, I am a lawyer and I live in this area. I have heard of your husband…’, he continued. I had no patience for this chit chat. The smell of hot bajji drew me in and I ran into the house, slinging my bag off my shoulder on to the sofa and towards the dining room.
The sight of hot bajjis instantly filled my mouth with saliva and gave me a tangy buzz in the head. I took two - One for each hand.
As I stuffed myself with the bajjis, my mum walked back and asked, ‘he said you got lost and took a city bus home.’
I nodded, all the time wondering why mum would have ask questions and talk all the time and not let me eat my bajji peacefully. Dad says the same thing.
‘But…’ she continued.
I was rescued by a knock on the door.
I followed mum to the front door to an out of breath and pale Kili Mohan.
Yaabadabadabada yaabadabadabada…
Mon veeti vantho?
As mum and I looked at each other and grinned, he shifted to Yaabadabadabada English.
‘Madam, we were ten minutes late arriving at the school to pick up the kids and he was nowhere to be seen. The Principal, the teachers, we all searched the school. We were all in panic.’
He looked at me and asked, ’how did you get home?’
I nonchalantly replied, ‘City bus.’ My mouth still stuffed with bajjis.
