A Hot Winter

Gopal Kulkarni | 12 Dec 2022

The winter of 1996 was a picture of peaceful serenity in Bagdal, a village in north Karnataka. Night temperatures had dropped to single digits. The bonfires lit up using dried toor or sesame plants were a common sight at nights in the front-yards of most of the houses in the village. Families would sit around the fire after dinner, extending their hands, palms facing the fire to warm themselves before tucking into their ragged blankets. When the elders were not around, young boys would play a game of hand through the fire. They would challenge each other to move their hands through the fire to prove they were fire resistant. Sometimes they would get burnt attempting it. The trick to a successful show was to move the hand swiftly through the fire, first at the top then a little lower in the subsequent attempts. They would narrate their fire conquests in lurid details to their friends in the school the next morning.

The school was located in an abandoned old house having collapsed walls. Classrooms were eeked out using metal sheets for the roof and wooden pillars on one side for support. Students from two different classes would sit in such a room, facing opposite sides. Students from class five to seven had the luxury of sitting on wooden benches while those in the lower classes had to be satisfied with the floor. Somedays, teachers would take his class out in the open during late afternoons in the winter or under a nearby peepul tree on hot days. The school in also had a neem tree in the middle where langoors frequently providing abundant entertainment to the kids.

Like the school, the teachers had also developed an unique way of educating their pupils. They always kept a cane handy whenever interacting with a student. They would use it liberally if the student fumbled while answering their questions, be it related to school syllabus or his absence the day before or the nuisance he was creating in the classroom. On odd days a boy would be sent to the local paan shop to fetch the paans for the teachers. On other days fetching tea was considered enough. The students from homes near to the school had the special opportunity to fetch drinking water for the teachers. This was their way of teaching applied mathematics where the boy would learn the art of addition/subtraction. Exams would be conducted twice in an academic year. Most of the students passed these exams by simply copying the question paper in their answer sheets. This obviously proved that they knew how to write and may be a bit of how to read. In the village, these skills were enough to be universally accepted as educated.

A group of six boys in class seven were having a ride of their life in the school. They had nothing to fear at the school, except the cane! They would turn up at the school by 9.30 in the morning, play a game of catch me if you can, one boy chasing five others in an attempt to touch/catch one of them or a game of kabaddi before the assembly for national anthem was due at 10. When the recess arrived at noon, they would all sprint to one of their houses for a glass of water. They kept shuffling the houses to avoid repetition. The farther the house was from the school, more the fun they had sprinting back and forth. They would imitate riding a bike while running with stretched arms, leaning sideways, wringing their wrists to accelerate themselves. Sometimes they raced against each other. Before entering the school again, on somedays they entered into a peeing contest. The boy who could pump his pee the farthest was the winner. The school would break for lunch at 1.30 and the boys raced to their homes for lunch. Most would return for the afternoon session but a few would skip it for a nice nap, or to watch TV or for a outing in the farm. They knew the worst consequence would only be a few strokes of the cane next day. They accepted it to be a fair deal and felt the nap or the farm was worth it. But soon, the winter would make them sweat like they had never before.

*****

It was another usual day at the school for the boys. They had arrived at their regular time, completed their shenanigans and were settling into the rigours of everyday school. The teachers though, were appearing unusually finicky and nervous that day. They were in a huddle and speaking in whispers. It had not gone unnoticed by the boys. After the national anthem was sung and the students dispersed for their respective classes, the boys settled into their seats on the benches and waited for their class teacher to arrive with the attendance book. That day their class teacher did not come to the class. It was the head master of the school who came instead. The students were terrified to see that. The HM was the one everyone in the school feared the most. He could be quite terrifying with this punishments. He would beat a boy till the cane broke sometimes or keep a pen between the knuckles of a boy and press it hard while asking him to look for an aeroplane in the sky. He came to the class only on two occasions - to fill for an absent teacher or to punish some boys. The boys of class seven knew their class teacher was not absent as they had seen him at the assembly a while before. They assumed the HM was there to punish somebody and since he was not carrying a cane, they beleived someone would get an aeroplane ride that day.

The HM though, began speaking with an unusually gentle tone. There was no scowl on his face. He greeted the students with what appeared like nervous cheerfulness. He extolled the virtues of good handwriting, studying well and practising sums, learning grammars of Kannada and other languages, et al. He told them that it was more important than ever because the government had decided to convert class 7th exams into board exams. He paused at this moment to observe the reactions of the class. There was barely a murmur or excitement or panic that he could notice. Realising that the students had not understood the enormity of the challenge they faced he decided to explain once more. ‘Dear students’, he began to say, ‘the board exams will be different from how you’ve been writing exams till now. You’ll have to go another school to write the exams. Your answer sheets will be evaluated by teachers from different schools in the state. That means you will have to write actual answers to the questions asked and not just copy the questions themselves in the answer sheets. If you don’t write them well, you will not get good marks for them. If you don’t get good marks you may fail the exam. If you fail the exam then you won’t be able to go to the high school’. This time his explanation had the desired effect on the students and they began to chitchat with panic stricken faces. The HM then assured the students that there was no need to panic and he and other teachers will help them to prepare well for the exams which were about four months away. He then left the classroom after asking the students to inform their parents about the board exams.

The board exams news had created a buzz in the village. The parents were worried about their children now. They had assumed that this hurdle was at least three years away in the class 10 and they knew a way to cross that. The village as a whole had designed, tested and proven that method. But board exams at class seven was a big unknown. They weren’t sure if their children were intelligent enough to pass on their own or smart enough to use external help. Even external help was not certain as it was difficult to design it without knowing how and where the exams were to be conducted. So they just went after their children forcing them to study and cut all the fun time. Few parents even met the teachers, for the first time in their parental lives, and discussed how to face this challenge. The teachers assured them that unlike before they’d prepare the students for the exams by conducting regular tests, giving assignments and doling out punishments liberally to the failing ones. The HM himself would be incharge of the punishments.

A month into this new way of life, the boys were a tired bunch. It was as if their life had turned upside down. The evening game time was completely gone. The afternoon naps or the jolly trip to the farms were out of question as both the teachers and parents insisted that they attend the after lunch session in the school. Their parents appeared like strangers to them. The regular tests in the school and the punishment for not doing well were making them to fear schooldays. The Saturdays or Sundays were no different. Fathers generally stayed home on those days and they gave them their own tests and punishments. The boys themselves were also quite worried as there was a lot to study yet and not enough time for it. They believed they could study more in less time if they were away from the the prying eyes of their families or the noisy environment of the village where paan shops and temples played loud music of different kinds in afternoons and evenings. So, one of them came up with a solution.

*****

One of the boys suggested that the gang go to his farm to study on Saturdays. He told them that it would be an ideal location for studies. They could sit under the trees and just concentrate on studies. If bored, they could just take a stroll in the greens, come back and continue. Everyone was convinced that it was a fantastic idea and they would make some real progress in their studies. Convincing their mothers was not that hard. After all who would argue against it, when the boys had become so serious about the exams and were taking responsibility. They let them go.

The boys reached the farm around 3 PM in the afternoon. They parked their bicycles and strolled around for a bit. They found a spot under a big mango tree next to a sugarcane field. The sugarcane had grown its fullest and was almost ready for harvesting. A water pipe was pumping out water nearby, if they got thirsty. The boys decided they’ll eat a sugarcane each before leaving that day. There was a guava tree nearby but to their disappointment it had not borne any fruits. On the other side of the sugarcane field they knew that there was a jamun tree full of ripened jamuns and few plants bearing wild berries. They planned to visit them during the break. Next to the mango tree was a row of nilgiri trees. Some of the trees were about fifty feet tall, while others were only about ten to fifteen feet. They were easy to climb as the stem was not very thick.

Almost an hour had elapsed since the boys had settled under the tree and were buried into their studies. They were pursuing their planned task with utmost sincerity. They had been busy making notes. They discussed the meaning of words, asked each other questions about historical figures and even got into a quick debate about Gandhi Vs Bose. They were having the most productive hour of their student life. Just then they heard a shrieking noise from the Nilgiri trees. As the boys turned their head, they saw one of the smaller trees was bending like a bow. Soon after it got back into its straight position, as the bow’s string snapped. The boys saw a young Langoor near the tree and it was clear what was happening. The black faced monkey was climbing the tree only to pull it down by hanging onto the stem, reach for the ground as the tree bent, leave the tree to pitch it back into position. It was enjoying the game of pulling the tree down and let it known to everyone by shrieking merrily.

The boys were taken in by this fun game and they couldn’t resist the temptation. All six of them ran to the trees, chasing the monkey away and substituting it on the game of trees. They challenged each other on how far they could climb up the tree, how slowly they would make the tree bend. As they took turns to climb up the tree and pull it down, they completely lost track of time and forgot the books and studies entirely. They were interrupted in their game only by the fading sunlight and murmur of the labourers getting ready to return from the farm. It dawned upon them that they had lost good two hours playing the tree game. Their mission to study in peace and quiet was a monumental failure, they realized. Slowly they trudged away from the trees, walked into the sugarcanes and each one of them plucked himself a cane. They bit into the cane after chopping of the leaves from it. While chewing they conversed about how they wasted away their time by doing what they did. Although they were good initially but got easily distracted by the monkeys, they agreed. If they came next time, they’d have to be more careful and stay firm with the studies, they concurred. They finished the sugarcane, some of them only half of it, picked up their books and slowly walked towards their bicycles.

*****

A week had passed by. The boys had planned another study trip to the farm in the afternoon. It was a Saturday again. The school day had begun in the usual manner. They were waiting in their classroom for their teacher for the last period. It was the school HM who arrived instead. The students assumed that it was to dole out the punishment for failing the tests conducted the day before or to give a stern warning about the impending tests next week. The HM though, in a jovial tone announced, ‘My dear students, the government has decided to postpone their order to conduct board exams for class seven by one year. So, you will write your exams like the old ways, same as you did in your class six’. The room was suddenly filled with a collective sigh of relief. It was hard to tell whose was louder - the students’ or the teachers’.