Young Writers Society

The very next day, both Kate and Krrish prepared for school, unaware of each other’s existence and so fortunately, unaware of the serendipity of how things ought to work out in the universe.

KATE:

The first day at my new school, I entered through the front gate, which was a high grill silver-painted door, inside of which existed a whole world. The guard was a little crazy though, kept calling me his daughter and just to be clear, enough crazy people already call me their daughter.

As soon as I entered, a pavement led me to a huge oak tree around which a cemented platform was built. Kids used to sit under the oak tree on that cylindrical pavement for lunch. Ahead, as I went deeper, there was a basketball court, on the right of which, there was a huge building that went back farther than the oak tree, and went forward farther than the huge ground in front of the basketball court. That enormous building was my new school. And inside one of the quintillion rooms, was my class. I just had to find it.

The whole building was made of bricks painted red, so that it felt like it was solely a big building of bricks. Connected to it, just at the entrance silver gate, was a big glass subsection that was the reception. As I was walking through the fields dumbfounded, I saw the stranger on the bike, just walking alone through the basketball field, fearless of the strongly built mammoths walking around him. So, if you see a group of strong and beefy men bobbing up and down like big pistons in an industrial ship’s engine room, all sweaty, and amongst them, a relatively weaker kid just walking through the herd not giving a single flying fuck, who’d you find more fascinating?

“He looked more scared yesterday, in the crash.” I thought happily.

KRRISH:

Although it was a fancy school, no one was nice, or good. The friends I made, made new friends because I was quote Too Depressing end quote. I mean, hey I can be optimistic too!

Anyways, I had no friends, and new people were warned by others so they rarely continued to talk after that.

Shreya was the only person that was there in spite of the damaging past, and the thing is, she wasn’t my friend before last year when Dad was still alive. They were really close, my dad and her. Dad used to teach mathematics and Shreya only ever understood his infinities. So, I have a feeling it was because of the damaging past, that she was there to listen and stroke my back gently.

KATE:

He was walking towards the building.

“Please, please, please be in my class!” I looked at the paper the receptionist gave me that was apparently the address and the instructions of how to get to my class:

XII C4

I followed him through the halls, entering the building I saw paintings on either side of the walls, mothers smothering their babies in the great depression, something about educating girl child and preserving earth. He took a sharp left and I had to wait before turning left so he doesn’t find out that that girl who he crashed into yesterday went through the immense trouble of finding exactly where he went to school and is now out to exact vengeance. So, as I followed up he disappeared at a roundabout that divided into four lanes. This fucking labyrinth (that confused me to oblivion) was more complex than the one Daedalus designed to keep The Minotaur caged. Well I thought: fair enough.

So, now instead of finding my cycle crasher, and exacting vengeance, I started looking for my class. I hoped to find both, but like I once said: in death there is peace, and in life, you have to look for rooms inside of rooms and you’re still left empty.

“XII C4!” I looked at the little rectangular wooden sign that was stuck to the door of a room which said in black paint: X11 C4, I entered the class, looked for a familiar face and failed to find any. I sat down on the third bench of the farthest row from the door.

The teacher came, and as she looked at everyone she showed her palm as to say don’t bother and said “S(h)it down everyone, no need to bother!” I did not know what was funnier, her tendency to join Hs with letters that do(n’t) need them or the fact that no one was standing to begin with. She read a lesson about a beggar who sold rat traps and committed acts of thievery here and there, now and again and his journey to becoming a transformed man purged of any mal-intent from the love of a kind, young daughter of a steel factory owner.

Her glasses, defying gravity, real daredevils standing just on the cusp of her nose and her hypermetropic eyes, like pools of swirling cyclones circling and circling. She dressed like a fortuneteller, wearing a colorful yet darkly dominated skirt that came down to mid-calf and her fingers, filled with rings for every color of every horoscope of every month. Her voice had this numbing needle-like feel to it that made you zone out as soon as a vowel was spoken. I feel as if some teachers have this voice that makes it impossible to understand or grasp what they’re actually talking about and she was the person that defined this stigma. But she was utterly, profoundly and most importantly, quite beautiful. Her presence, was almost like a blue-colored butterfly sat in a room and you couldn’t look at anything else, but then this precious and perishable little thing started talking in her squeaky voice. So, we couldn’t understand what she was saying, and we couldn’t look away either. And now Sybill Trelawny here is reading out loud, “The Rattrap” and as she does, she stops and glances at me with a happily surprised look;

“Oh, a new face! And a beautiful one to see in this usual ugliness” she spoke as the other students sat in discontent.

I was spaced out for some time to have realized that the person I was eye-fucking for half an hour was looking right at me, “Uh… Yeah, my name is Kate and this is my first day at Satyabir Siyaram Public School”. You could never say “this school” or “my school”, you were to always say the name, and the full name if ever to mention it, like ‘Bob Vance, Vance Refrigeration’.

“Kate, what do you feel about the ending of this story, does the beggar manage to get out of his rattrap?” she said with the voice of a clinical receptionist.

“I think if you think of him being in a rattrap, he must be a rat, and as described by the beggar, the world itself is a rattrap, so if a rat gets out of his trap, he is just walking into another rattrap. The whole concept is either ridiculously profound, or profoundly ridiculous.”

The whole class was staring at me as if I had fucked all their mothers, and while I was at it, made them come nine times, like I was guilty of at least 4 counts of murder. It took her some time but she finally broke the silence “Tell me, Kate, do you re...” and she was interrupted by a student who knocked on the door and informed:

“The Vice Principle has asked for Kate Balakrishnan immediately”

I stood up, all eyes fixated on me, every kid, from the hot ones to the perverts, looking at me with a banal curiosity, and a hint of judgment, I could hear the bells ringing in my head, and this word repeating over and over again: Shame! Shame! Shame! Shame!

I walked through the blue-colored hallways and the stairs down the office, the girl guiding me: Payal was a junior in 11th grade studying Commerce. Her dress was the same as everyone else, a white shirt, navy blue skirt with a blue striped grey color tie. She had this crazy habit of thinking in her brain and then acting out in the real world. It was hilarious.

I saw him sitting on the chair where people sat when waiting to be called in by the Vice-Principal. His head was looking up at the ceiling, his hands covering his nose from bleeding out with a soft cotton tissue. I crouched and then sat right next to him stealthier than the deep space, or a cat. Sat beside him, a chubby kid with freckles on his face, sharp hair and red knuckles.

“The Vice Principal will see you two now” a woman in her mid-30s came out and said looking at both of them.

They stood up and entered the room, the woman left pushing the door as to close it. I ran with the same stealth and placed my hand delicately in between the door to keep it open just enough to hear what’s going on.

“Now how many times have we been over this exact same thing?” asked the man in charge with a relaxed frustration.

“He said my parents would get divorced!”

“Well, your mother is clearly cheating on your father.”

“How do YOU know?”

“That’s what everyone talks about nowadays, just believe it already!”

“Krrish…” said the VP in a deep voice, “You have to understand that you can’t just…”

“But it is true!”

“Whatever the case here, you cannot, in any case, comment anything of that insensitivity, now you’re a good kid and I understand it must be hard coping, with your father gone but you must become better than to interfere”

“Sure, just say nothing you mean.”

“And as for you, Lalit Rana, you are hereby expelled from the Satyabir Siyaram School on account of your 7th unwarranted strike on any pupil or personnel. Your termination certificate has already been processed, feel free to collect it on your way out...”

“Of the school that is.” He finished his sentence.

Pleads turned into louder pleads, turned into waterworks, turned into shouting curses, and then at one point I heard loud footsteps followed by someone getting slapped and then an astute silence took over. Security was called in.

The chubby kid walked out with his sobbing red face, redder on one side escorted by two men in pale yellow clothing.

A girl just about then came near the chaos, I assumed attracted from all the ruckus she sat one seat away from me where the chubby kid sat.

The chubby one was gone, things became peaceful once more but the girl stuck to her chair, there was a frown on her face as I looked over,

“So, what are you in for, am I right?” she asked laughing awkwardly.

“I have no idea.” I said, laying back into the chair and running my fingers through my hair.

The door opened and the girl ran through the gate,

“Keep it up otherwise all your blood will flow out.” she said pulling his head up as they walked out of the office. The VP stood alongside the door with his arms crossed, he lifted a finger and gave me a sign to come in.

“Hello dear, welcome to Satyabir Siyaram Public School. I hope our staff and students here are treating you nicely” the VP said in his ever so sexy voice.

“Yes, everyone here has been quite good so far”

With his hands on the table, and fingers interlocked he asked

“Do you know why you’re here?”

“Because… you asked for me?”

“Well, chronologically, it’s because you’re in absolute violation of your dress code.”

“Well, chronologically… I am here because all matter in the universe once united in a singularity and exploded.” I could see in through the veins in his temple that I was getting on his nerves.

“I see you’re a bright kid referencing the big bang...”

If this was a movie, I’d break the fourth wall, and look at the camera to say: Elementary, dear Watson.

“Jokes aside, you’re here because this school, you see, is a very disciplined environment. And for it to stay that way, all students must abide by the code of conduct set forth by the school administration”

“Is this because I am wearing pants?”

“Uh… yes, the prescribed item of clothing, is a skirt. Now if you stand in a group of hundred girls, and you’re the only one with pants on, it will become chaotic and we can’t have something like that happening in ou..”

I lowered my head, as to express caution, and then whispered: “But you see sir, I am a transgender man, I have the body of a woman but the sexual parts of a… male”

“Really?” He whispered back.

“Fuck no, now shut up and listen, Third Reich: The way I see it, this is a free country, with the freedom of expression even if its owned by the rich and powerful upper-class, I don’t have to worry because I am both of them. If you knew who my father was, you’d know he indirectly owns this place, he probably owns you too, meaning I own YOU! I even own the little bits of food your infant children swallow. So, if I want to wear pants, I will wear the fuck out of them and you will go back to expelling chubby little bullies.”

There was silence throughout the room.

“Now that is out of the way, is there anything I can do for you?” I asked.

“You… you were in the wrong class miss”

“Oh really?” I took the paper out of the front pocket of my shirt, “But this says...”

“You got it from the receptionist, I assume?” he assumed.

“Yeah, exactly!”

“Well. It’s in her handwriting, she writes Ds that look like Cs”

“It is quite fancy” I said.

“Yes, you’re in Krrish’s class.”

'Oh, how much I’ve longed to hear those words' I closed my eyes with that thought in my head and then opened them.

“Krrish who?”

“Oh, you remember that student just now, with the bleeding nose?”

“Uh-huh”

“That’s Krrish! Now, to survive in this school, you ought to make frien...”

The bell rang for lunch.

“Sorry, as I was saying. To survive…”

I left.

Some walking distance far from the pavement on the left of the oak tree existed a Canteen. People would sometimes stay and eat, or take their lunch near the oak tree. But I decided to sit in the crowd, alone and hyperaware of my existence. I ordered a white bread sandwich and a glass of coke. He was there, just like me, sitting alone waiting. His nose had stopped bleeding and I was looking at him for such a long time that it made him look at me, like I was Eleven.

KRRISH:

I think the girl I hit with my bike last evening went through everything she had to, to find where I went to school and I think she wants revenge.