Intense Desires...

Don't Disclose This To Anyone...

June 2002,

I went straight to my room after getting home and grabbed a Coke and some chips. I didn't believe I'd be able to handle my parents, Anoop, or Sheetal. I just needed some alone time. That wouldn't surprise anyone because I used to read in my room all the time. In addition, I now have the television that my mother gave me for my birthday. I changed the channel to National Geographic and read while watching episodes of 'The Beast in the Woods'. I needed to clear my head in preparation for my final examinations, which began on Monday.

We visited Shri Sai Temple on Thursday. "Hello, Mrs. Sood," I said to Alisha as we passed the temple.

"Hello, Ashvini!" she said with a smile. After that, she headed to her seat.

"Mrs. Sood phoned yesterday to say you did a terrific job and she was appreciative of all you did," my mother remarked. "I offered your help to her throughout the summer, but she (Mrs. Sood) didn't believe she would need it."

I replied, "All right, Mom," but I was surprised.

I felt dead set on not letting anything show. I sat down and glanced two rows ahead. Alisha was seated next to a young man of her age. Throughout the prayer, I was thinking about that. Because my mind was creating all kinds of wicked notions, I don't remember what the topic of prayer was. The words merely flowed around me, barely registering in my mind.

I noticed Alisha flirting with the guy she had been sitting next to after prayer. I just went to the vehicle for the journey home, clenching my teeth, and knew it had to happen. It was going to be another day of attempting to cleanse my mind and organize my ideas.

I walked to my room, turned on the radio, and took out my history book to study for my test on Monday. History was my favorite topic, yet it was difficult at first. That's why I started with it. I got lost in the post-Civil War era of America, going over presidential elections, Indian policy, and the build-up to the Spanish-American War.

I'd calmed down and gotten my emotions under control enough by Monday that I thought the exams would go smoothly. Yamini and Ritvik, as well as Priyanka (my 9th-grade lover) and Shivam Narayan, her new boyfriend, joined me for lunch. We were all quite decent students, so we didn't have anything to worry about with examinations, so we spoke freely.

Priyanka had the most difficult time, as she was in the concert band and had to perform a solo piece as part of her final test. We discussed the upcoming class party at Lalit Jha's residence on Friday night. Lalit's family resided in a renovated farmhouse with a barn large enough to accommodate the full eighth-grade class, even if everyone came up. (as well as students from other institutions).

We broke off after our lunch break to go to our tests. I'd finished my English exam earlier in the day (nothing to study there - I was an ace thanks to Mrs. Suman Jamwal). The test papers were given out by Mr. Ajay Yadav. As I expected, there would be ten multiple-choice questions, ten true/false questions, ten fill-in-the-blank questions, and two essay questions.

I completed about half the time allocated for the test and still had a lot of time to review. On re-reading one T/F question, I recognized it was a subtle trick, so I revised my response. Mr. Ajay Yadav is Mr. Ajay Yadav. I double-checked all of the questions to be sure I hadn't made the same error. Nope. I figured I'd get an A if he liked my essay responses, and that I could even have aced it.

I didn’t think the essays were a problem, my term paper in November had been on- Shri Sardar Patel. I titled it The Ironman of India and wrote that it was "A Deserving Person Who Missed the Opportunity to be Indian Prime Minister, as Per Indian Politics, still United The Nation’. I had an A+ on that paper and the highest praise from Mr. Ajay Yadav in his comments. (I still have a copy of that paper to this day, too bad the country didn’t figure out what I had). I was in a good mood. But I knew it wouldn’t last long. Tomorrow was Sanskrit with my arch-nemesis in this world, Mrs. Poonam Singh.

Mrs. Poonam Singh, dubbed "Miss Bubbly" by the pupils due to her similarity to the popular TV character, seemed to despise everyone, but she seemed to have a grudge against the boys in the class. 'Rule #1: The Instructor is Always Right; Rule #2: If you think the teacher is in error, go to rule #1,' That was her philosophy. And she meant it.

In 9th grade, I had the most awesome language teacher for Sanskrit. In 10th grade, I had the worst. I dreaded having her for another year, but I wasn’t ready to bail on Sanskrit just yet. After all, I had started before-school Sanskrit classes in 6th grade when we lived in Nagpur. That was in the late 90s, just around the Kargil War and India’s Nuclear Test at Pokhran, Rajasthan, under the awesome leadership of our Prime Minister, Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee, and we succeeded in both. We won the Kargil war and there were some great rumors regarding our Prime Minister at that time. One of them was that America’s political representative called the Indian Prime Minister to warn and bear the consequences if the war continued against Pakistan. The American representative said, “Half of the Indian Republic will be doomed by the morning if India doesn’t step back from the war.”

The Indian Prime Minister replied, “I agree. But I also assure you, the whole of Pakistan will vanish from the world’s map by the same morning. We didn’t start the war, but yes, we shall be the ones to conclude it for forever. "

The confidence and determination in our Prime Minister’s voice changed the perspective of the American representative and the rest is history. This was the beginning of a New India in the making, and it all started with Mr. Vajpayee’s era. And people like our honourable Prime Minister, who have contributed a lot and played a significant role in the making of a nation, make me love the subject of history more. Such instances give me chills, and the craving to know more always excites me.

I'd planned to go home tonight and catch up on my reading. I'd be learning verb conjugations, reviewing vocabulary, taking practice exams from a Sanskrit book I bought myself, and going through all of the homework activities. I wasn't sure it would be enough. I only wanted to get a B in Sanskrit by scoring well enough. I had done so for the previous three quarters, but only just managed to get the passing points in each one. It was also a close call on this one. This time around, I'm a lot more focused.

It wasn't that I didn't understand the topic, didn't complete my assignments, or performed poorly on tests. No, Mrs. Poonam Singh graded us on classroom involvement and oral language abilities for 25% of our grades. And I had no reservations in stating that she preferred females and gave boys terrible grades. My 'participation' scores were low enough that if I didn't obtain a 75 in the final, I'd receive a 'C.' I thought, I could accomplish it, but it would be difficult. She made the examinations challenging and was always able to discover anything I hadn't gone through, thoroughly enough. I'd promised myself that this time would not be one of them.

At 12:30 a.m., I finally closed the books. I didn't have to get up until 6:30 a.m., so I had plenty of time to sleep. Fortunately, that day's Sanskrit test was the only one I'd have. I did have the "Physical Test," but I was able to pass it while sleeping and even with a fever. The sit-ups, push-ups, and running standards were simple to meet, and because the test was pass/fail, I just needed to meet the bare minimum to pass. It's simple enough. On the bright side, I was able to see my adorable classmates dressed in shorts and t-shirts. Bonus!

Tuesday dawned rainy and cool, and I trudged to the bus stop with my umbrella up. Not an auspicious way to start the day. I sat next to Preeti Baghel on the bus. She lived next door and was a tomboy of tomboys. We talked about sports; she was hell crazy about sports. Cricket, badminton, football, tennis, wrestling, any sport, you just name it and she will update you about each aspect of the game. The players, the history of the game, the rules, anything. She was a living encyclopaedia of the sports world. And she excelled on the field as well. Once, she was challenged by our class champion, Shivam (Priyanka’s boyfriend) in a 100m sprint, and she beat him by a great margin. Fortunately, I was on the tracks that day, and what every one of us witnessed was just out of this world. As the race started, she just didn’t run, it was like she flew from there. Hats off to the girl, and I developed a crush on her on that day (Don’t disclose this to Anyone).

When we arrived at school, the rain had subsided to the point that I didn't need to use my umbrella to go from the bus to the building. I headed to the classroom after dumping my belongings in my locker. The bell sounded, and I went halfway across the building to Mrs. Poonam Singh's class after regular practice. Pawan wasn't in this class; thus, the first seat was near the window (it was an alphabetical seat order kind). I sat down, placed my two pencils and eraser on my desk as she had requested, double-checked that no one had left any additional papers or anything on or beneath the desk, and waited.

She walked in with a smug expression on her face and gave out the exam papers without saying anything. I selected one and returned the stack to Shivam Narayan, who sat behind me. Of course, the papers should be placed face down. She yelled "Begin" after everyone had their papers and then sat down at her desk to keep an eye on us like a hawk on mice. I flipped over my page, dropped my head, and began reading.

I'd developed a habit that followed me well throughout my academic career (at least when I followed it). Before I even signed my name on the paper, I read the full exam (all three pages). I grew increasingly happy as I read each question. There was nothing I didn't know. I reached the bottom half of the last page, where her customary surprise awaited me. I c****d my head and smirked. I'd guessed correctly.

I had double-checked that I had learned all of the verbs, paying extra attention to several irregular ones we had just briefly discussed in class or used in assignments. I went back to the first page of the test and began working my way through it. I completed doing a fast review and discovered a few spelling problems as well as an accent that was missing. When she gathered the papers, I knew I'd gotten an A on the exam and a B for the quarter. Because she had handed out our participation grades last Friday, nothing she could do today could change that.

Pawan and I discussed the Sanskrit test when the party got together for lunch. He was disappointed since he knew he had missed numerous questions, but he was already through with Sanskrit. He decided that instead of taking Sanskrit in high school, he would take French. I told him it was probably a good idea, but I was resigned to another year with Mrs. Poonam Singh since I wanted to take the Sanskrit literature course provided for juniors and seniors who had taken at least three years of Sanskrit (and it also had a great future as history is my favorite subject, so they both align perfectly with each other). Everyone else appeared to think their test went well, and Priyanka was glad to have completed her band exam and performed her solo well enough that she believed she got an A. I was certain she did, since I had heard her play before and she was excellent.

My 'Last Physical Exam' went as planned. I was pumped from outwitting Mrs. Poonam Singh, and despite not getting enough sleep the night before, I gave it my all in the test. In twelve minutes, I completed seven rounds of the track. The first 3/4 mile is the most difficult. I beat everyone and saved two long-distance track athletes who completed eight rounds in under twelve minutes. I've always been able to run long distances. If you asked me to run a sprint, I'd still be struggling to get out of the blocks when the first man crossed the finish line, but long distances were no problem for me. And, as I expected, the added advantage of bouncing growing breasts around the track, as well as nice bums in Physical shorts, didn't hurt and does give motivation.

For me, the last day of school was Wednesday. I only had 6 examinations from Monday to Wednesday since I only had one study hall. I liked how the school didn't require anyone who didn't have an exam to attend. On Wednesday, I had my first exam, which was Algebra. I breezed through the test, double-checked my work, then snatched up a book to pass the time. That was Mr. Ranjan Singh's style. Lunch was more of the same, but Pawan wasn't depressed since he'd decided to forget Mrs. Poonam Singh for good. I should have followed suit.

Ritvik appeared to be withdrawn, so I inquired as to what was bothering him.

“Nothing. I'm just trying to figure out certain things."

We hadn't seen each other in a month - Saturday was our typical hangout day, but I'd been busy for three days in a row (two of which he couldn't know about). I was at a loss for words. As a result, I changed the subject.

"Hey, cheer up!" I remarked. “The school chess competition is coming up next week."

"Yeah, that'll be great," he said with a smile.

I assumed he'd win the 10th-grade tournament and be in contention for the Jr. High championship. I'd be satisfied if I placed in the top five. He was better than me, but if he played poorly, I could beat him.

Yamini, on the other hand, was depressed, nearly to tears. She was aware that her visit to Delhi (India) was coming to an end and that she would be returning home.

"Don't be depressed!" I consoled her. "You have a lot of friends, we can write to each other, and who knows what the future holds. You'll be visiting all of your old pals and attending your old school. You'll also be able to see your dog. " I informed her.

Surprisingly, it was that dog that she missed the most. I preferred cats to dogs, but she had a Husky who she adored.

That made her grin. "I'm going to miss every single one of you. It's really difficult to go."

The bell rang exactly when she said it. "Thanks for remembering me," Yamini remarked as she glanced at me, stroked my hand, and smiled.

Her grin was one of my favorites. Her touch was wonderful. I wished for what may have been, but then I remembered Alisha's advice: simply be her friend. I didn't say anything but grin back as I walked away from the table.