RINGG!
The bell rang, signaling the end of lunch. All the students formed lines and returned to their respective classrooms in class sequence.
"I'm telling you, twenty minutes is too short for a lunch break. The teachers waste our first and last five minutes just making us form lines, which leaves us with only ten minutes — barely enough to eat half our lunch," said Hero, entering the classroom.
"I think there's enough time to eat your lunch and play. It's just that you're a slow eater. Tell me, Kavi, who takes five minutes to eat a single roti?" retorted Guru.
"Don't know, don't care," Kavi said.
"Then you tell me, Peenu?" Unable to get a suitable answer, Guru turned to Parveen, who disappointed him further.
"..."
"Oi, answer me! Peenu! Oi, king of idiots!" Guru said.
"Huh... were you talking to me?" Parveen asked.
"No, I was talking to the king of idiots," Guru said.
"I have no interest in becoming your king," Parveen said.
"When did I say I wanted you to be my king?" Guru asked.
"HA HA HA, he's calling you an idiot and you're calling him king!" Hero said, laughing.
"You!! Are you asking for a beating again? First you ignore me, and now you're calling me an idiot!" Guru said angrily.
"Enough! Get back to your seats, class is about to start," Kavi said.
"I'll remember this, Peenu," said Guru and moved to his seat while glaring daggers on Parveen.
Few minutes later Ms. Poonam entered the classroom and start the class.
"Sit down everyone and take out your books, we will continue from where we left this morning. Last bench, start reading" said Ms. Poonam.
The class continue same as the morning but this time one student's mind was not in the classroom."You there stand up and continue" said Ms. Poonam.
"..." Parveen was of course unable to follow Ms. Poonam's instructions as he was still thinking about his cards which were with Tanya right now.
Seeing him the not standing up, Ms. Poonam along with the whole class looked at Parveen. Seeing this Kavi was about to wake Parveen up but stopped by Ms. Poonam's eyes.
"Oh, we got a new daydreamer this year class. Everyone let's clap for him dreaming so sincerely during my class" said Ms. Poonam.
CLAP CLAP CLAP
CLAP CLAP CLAP
"Huh?" Seeing everyone clapping for no reason, Parveen was puzzled but decided to go along with everyone and start clapping
Some students could not stop their laughter and start laughing, making Ms. Poonam more angry. At this movement Parveen understood the teacher was angry on him and stopped clapping.
The applause and laughter died down slowly, everyone turn their head around towards Parveen's direction to see what will happen next. Ms. Poonam let it die on its own. She didn't rush it. She never rushed anything.
"Stand up," she said, and her voice had dropped out of the sarcastic register entirely, back into the low, even tone that made the whole class sit a little straighter without being told to.
Parveen stood, chair scraping, ears already burning.
"What," Ms. Poonam said, walking toward him at her usual unhurried pace, "were you thinking about? During my class. On the first day of the session."
Parveen's mouth opened. Several answers presented themselves — my cards, my life, a girl blackmailing me — and every single one of them was worse than saying nothing.
"..."
"I asked you a question."
"..."
Ms. Poonam nodded slowly, as if his silence had confirmed something she already suspected. "Since your mind wants to stand somewhere else, we'll help your body catch up. Move towards the blackboard, lift your right leg and hands up."
Parveen moved towards the blackboard and lifted his right leg, bent at the knee, and raised both arms straight above his head — the universal, ancient posture of Indian classroom disgrace, one that every student in the room had either suffered through personally or watched a friend suffer through, and one that looked, for the first three seconds, almost dignified.
"Every time that leg touches the ground," Ms. Poonam said, circling him once like she was inspecting a poorly built statue, "or those hands drop below your shoulders — I will remind you why they shouldn't. Once. Try not to need reminding."
The class had gone dead silent, the good kind of silent — the kind where thirty-four other students were suddenly extremely grateful it wasn't them.
Ten seconds in, Parveen's calf started to shake.
Twenty seconds in, his arms, which had felt weightless a moment ago, had discovered gravity.
Parveen's leg wobbled. He caught it — barely — and the whole class exhaled with him, a tiny, collective mercy.
His arms began to droop, just slightly, the way a plant droops when nobody's watered it. He forced them back up, elbows locked, shoulders screaming.
Thirty seconds. His leg trembled again, harder this time, and for one horrible moment his foot actually grazed the floor before he yanked it back up mid-fall, wobbling like a man on a tightrope who'd just remembered he was afraid of heights.
"Close," Ms. Poonam said, almost approvingly, "but a graze doesn't count. Keep going."
Somewhere behind him, Hero whispered something to Guru that sounded suspiciously like betting odds.
At the forty-five second mark, his right arm finally gave out entirely and dropped to his side.
SLAP.
The sound cracked through the silent room. Parveen's head snapped sideways, his ears ringing louder than the actual sound had been, his cheek blooming warm and hot.
"Arm," Ms. Poonam said calmly, as though she were reading out a scoreboard. "Back up. Don't make me say it twice."
Parveen's arm shot back up so fast it nearly overshot and hit the ceiling. His eyes were stinging, though he'd have died before admitting whether that was from the slap or from something else entirely.
"Good," Ms. Poonam said. "Now stay very, very still — for the rest of the period, I would like to enjoy some silence."
She turned and walked back to the front of the room, heels clicking their familiar countdown, leaving Parveen balanced on one shaking leg with both arms trembling above his head, thirty-four pairs of eyes very carefully not looking at him, and roughly thirty-nine minutes left in the period.
To make him forget about the pain he decided to think about his cards problem
......
"I'm looking for a boy," she said. "You're going to help me find him."
"Sorry to say this, but I have no experience in being a cupid or a middleman. It would be better for you to find someone else," Parveen said.
"Tell me — do you have a problem with your ears, just like your brain? I said 'I'm looking for a boy,' not 'I want you to find me a boyfriend,'" Tanya said.
"Even so, how can I find a boy in the school with just his name?" Parveen said.
"Who said I know his name? Don't worry, I'll tell you his features, so you can find him," Tanya said.
"What do you see written on my head?" Parveen said.
"It says 'i will do anything for my cards'" Tanya replied