Summer of '13

Chapter 8

The next day as I sat down to complete my stats homework I saw Pratishtha miffed about something.

"What happened boobear?" I asked.

"This article...god!" Pratishtha exclaimed.

I took the article from her and read it. It briefly described our participation in the National History competition. Terrible english.Terrible usage of words.Vocabulary=Nil.As I looked at the undersigned name,I was not surprised. This article was written by Shivam Mehta.

Shivam Mehta was the joker of our class.He only excelled at one thing,making others laugh. Even unintentionally he ended up making others hold their stomachs.What took me by surprise was that he wrote an article for the school magazine and Pratishtha being the Head editor was naturally miffed.

"WHAT THE HELL HAS HE WRITTEN AND WHO TOLD HIM TO WRITE!" Pratishtha almost screamed.

An extract of the article read:-

"Partishta,orja and visnupiya partcipted in internatonal history competition whre they sung,drunk and danced and talked anne frank. they talked happily and very goodly.people enjoyed and scremed.they got prize and were became very happy...."

Seriously..drunk?? After I was done laughing.I offered Pratishtha to correct the paragraph.She happily agreed. As I was doing the correction.A line took me by surprise-"They met the chief executive of National History commission who personally congratulated them for their perfect oratory" I was taken aback.Literally.Such perfect english. Surely Shivam did not write it. How could a boy who could not even spell my name write so well?

"Hey boobear..you added this line?" I showed Pratishtha the line

"No! who the hell is this person now!?" Pratishtha asked.

"Dunno...sounds nice.Should I add it?" I asked her.

"NO! Do not write false experiences of our memorable trip. Omit the line and move on" Pratishtha said resuming her work.

"You know shivam did not write it.Our History teacher mush have suggested it.Let's write it."I said.

"Alright.Let's ask him first".Pratishtha said."Hey shivam!"She called out to him as he stood at the back bench trying to do his stats H.W. Well..our miserable maths teacher had punished him..Our maths teacher never seemed satsfyied with his life and continuously talked on his phone with some mystery person.Maybe his wife. We laughed whenever we saw his phone surging out of his pocket.

"hey Shivam! Why did you add this line?" Pratishtha asked Shivam. 

"uhm....that drunkard told me to do it" he said.

Drunkard? Oh yes,My history teacher.She had this mysterious accent which made her seem as if she was always drunk.

"Vishnupriya..do one thing right now. Go to the drunkard....no! sorry! our history teacher and ask her why did she make Shivam write this line." Pratishtha told me.

I raced down the hall and checked each class before finally seeing her and stopped.

"Ma'am..why did you make us write this line..I .mean..we did...not meet this man.."I said half panting and half speaking ,pointing towards the line.

"Relax.Well...he met me and he did congratulate you..if not personally then through me.Gave me his card and asked me to contact him in case we held something related to history at our school.I thought it was appropriate to write about him..please write his name as well."She said rummaging through her purse and took out a little white card.

"His name is....wait a sec...ah! yes....."

My jaws dropped when I heard the name.

Rishikesh Rae.