Crossing The i's And Dotting The t's

(IX) End Of The Worst Year

The lines in front of banks and ATMs didn't decrease over the next two months. Cashless transactions stopped being a trend and became a necessity. Hundred rupee notes became as precious as gold and the new, crisp, two thousand rupee notes became a thing to fawn over.

When papa had arrived after exchanging our money, we had all bent over the three, two thousand rupee notes eagerly.

"The angle of Gandhiji's face has changed," ma had remarked.

"This is the most scientific note in the world," I gave my two cents.

"Yes," papa agreed, "but it is pink," he finished, trying very hard to hide his disgust.

We all passed the notes around and examined them from every corner before ma carefully kept them in her strange looking gigantic purse, and securely locked the cupboard.

I went to my room and took out the old currency notes of five hundred and one thousand, which were handed to me by Kian.

He said that his parents were planning to throw those away, since they couldn't get them exchanged. He had sneaked three thousand rupees out of the bundle and given me half of it. When asked why, he'd simply shrugged and said,

"They're for you to look at twenty years down the line. You'll be reminded of this historical event."

After my thorough examination was complete, I put them back in my wallet and closed the drawer.

I changed and went back to sleep. Smiling slightly upon recalling the way Kian's cheeks had flushed pink.

{[]}

January arrived with a considerable decrease in temperature and increase in anxiety among me and my fellow peers. The annual exams were exactly two months away and the eleventhees had the added responsibility of organising, and I quote Aryan,

"The best freakity frackity farewell ever."

The class twelfth farewell was an annual event which could be compared to senior prom in an American highschool, minus the dates, dance and drama of course.

Aryan, being the biggest drama queen, was taking his role as head of the student functions  club very seriously. My class teacher had forced me to volunteer for organising the farewell. Yes, that's right, forced me to volunteer.

Hence I was stuck in a free classroom with fifty other miserable volunteers during break time, which included Vivaan, Radhika and Kian as well.

"We have to do something different this year guys," Aryan addressed us exitedly, deliberately ignoring our disinterested faces. "Suggest a theme, we need an awesome theme."

"How about retro bollywood, the 1970s?" Naira, a fellow biology student said.

"That's good, but it's not exactly unique is it? Think of something else," Aryan remarked.

A few other hands that were raised went down, as expected, everyone had similar ideas. It was not their fault though, the hindi film industry was always the theme of farewell.

Last year the theme was 'nineties nostalgia'.

The year before that it was 'songs special', in which everything was expressed through bollywood songs.

And the year before that, it was 'Dharma dhamaka' where their were enactments only from Dharma films.

I was pretty sure Aryan was going to fail in his quest to be different. Everyone expected a bollywood theme, it was standard.