Crossing The i's And Dotting The t's

(VI) Ignorance- A Deceitful Bliss

Sometimes I wish my life would be a bollywood movie. This desire increases tenfold whenever I am in the chemistry lab.

The labs depicted in movies are so damn beautiful. The main character and her classmates wear spotlessly white lab coats along with fancy goggles and effortlessly mix random chemicals. All the while falling in love with their ridiculously good looking lab parteners.

Sadly, that does not happen in real life.

In the places where it was not damaged with acid burns, my supposedly new lab coat was covered in orange and pink stains from methyl orange and phenolphthalein respectively. And my lab partener was not beautiful, not even close.

Although I was thrilled when Naman was paired with me. He was one of those prodigy students who made me feel pathetic about myself, but at the same time was very sweet and helpful.

However, his fear of accidently drinking acids was getting really old now.

"For God's sake Naman pipette it out already! We need three more readings," I nearly shouted.

"Ash I need to be more careful. I can't afford to die at the ripe young age of sixteen." He was infuriatingly calm when he said that.

"It is a bloody one by twenty solution of oxalic acid. Oxalic acid. You won't die even if you drink the whole damn solution in the freaking titration flask. Constipation is a possibility but you won't die. But I promise to kill you if you take more than ten seconds to pipette the bloody thing out."

I think I was getting a little frustrated.

He blinked at me, "Okay Ash calm down_"

"I have started counting Naman."

He quickly bent over to suck ten ml of the standard solution and with shaking hands, added phenolphthalein after transferring it into a conical flask.

I snatched the flask from his hands and placed it under the nozzle of the burette.
Very slowly opening the knob, I started adding sodium hydroxide solution in the flask, dropwise.

We were intently staring at the swirling contents of the conical flask. The moment it started turning pale pink, Naman shouted, "Turn it off! Turn it off!"

But luck did not favour me and I was too late. The solution had already turned deep maganta by the time I managed to turn the knob off.

We both looked gloomily at the result of the failed titration for a few seconds. Sighing together, we got to work to repeat the whole process again.

This was going to be a long day.

Fifty minutes and another seven failed attempts later, we got four concurrent readings. We rushed out of the lab after quickly cleaning our station, trying hard to ignore our teacher's taunts about how we can find employment in a dye factory.

Since, you know, we had produced a lot of deep magenta solution in the past hour.

I entered my class only to find Vivaan in my seat.

"Get out," I snapped at him.

"Please Ash, just for this period. You can sit in my seat."

I looked at Radhika, who was determinantly avoiding my eyes. She was back to taking no sides, like she always did whenever me and her idiot boyfrient argued.

"You sit with Karan,"I deadpanned.

He mimmiked me expression, "So?"

I sighed, giving up. There was no point in trying to convince him and the bell was also about to ring. I settled on my seat and worked on the useless patterns that decorated the margin of my notebook.