Another year went by, unmemorably.
Final exams were over and within a month, even the results were out. We were duly promoted to the fifth standard. However there was a significant change in it this time around.
Our school compound was divided into two parts. The Junior Section, comprising of classes right from the Nursery to the Fifth standard and the Senior Section, consisting the rest, that is, from the Sixth to the Tenth standard. Both were separate buildings on two separate ends of the compound.
Now here was the fun part. Being in the fifth standard gave us the liberty of impersonating seniors. The seniors of the Junior Section ofcourse. But coming to the facts, no one except me took this logic seriously. To them it was nothing more than a mere class promotion.
The year started off brilliantly and with an interesting syllabus. The tedious and boring syllabus was pardoned. With new teachers to teach new subjects, it felt like that was going to be one of the most memorable years in my entire school life and to tell the truth, I was looking forward to it.
Although it would be completely wrong to admit that I wasn't missing my previous school. There were times when waves of nostalgia would hit me bad, but then the overall fun and excitement would douse my entire depression episode.
Things went as smoothly as they could have possibly gone and almost within a blink of an eye, half the academic year was over. Exams were over and surprisingly I did quite well than I had even imagined myself capable of. I might come out as one who constantly lets oneself down, but when a mediocre student scores way above his average grades, it had to turn some eyes. I in fact did better than Dhruv, which was more shocking than surprising.
But the scenario was completely overshadowed by the onset of the festive holidays. As usual, everything else was forgotten.
It didn't take me more than a mere conversation to convince my rather strict mother to get myself some private leave during the holidays to roam around the pandals in our locality. Not on my own obviously, but with Dhruv and Kavya. She was a bit reluctant at first, but then gave in eventually. I had however, earned my freedom rights. Even Dhruv's mother had agreed to our little liberalized concord. To be completely honest with myself, I never thought that our little protesting demand would actually gain some ground, but as it turned out, we had emerged successful. There was just one more hurdle in the attainment of our vision and that was convincing Kavya's mother to let her accompany us.
The task was not easy. But it wasn't impossible either. She agreed, after a lot of persuasion from us and consultation with both of our parents, keeping one condition in the process. Kavya's elder sister, Riddhi di, would accompany us. She justified herself saying that she could, in no way, allow us children to loiter around, alone, in the midst of all the crowd. How can three of us be together and still be alone? These condition being termed and agreed upon by all our parents doomed the entire vision of the quality time that we had planned.
Both me and Dhruv were utterly disappointed, unlike Kavya. She, on the contrary, was all bursting with excitement. She kept saying that it would be fun and tried to convince us that having a grown up in our group wouldn't be such a letdown and we tried to convince her otherwise. Then she finally said something worth justifiable. She said that her didi could probably buy us food. And that would at least be better than what our handful of pennies could afford. Now there was something that we hadn't thought of before. Finally we could sense some bright aspect in our otherwise doomed plan. Food was always welcome, and it was overwhelming when you didn't have to pay for it. Girls could be really reasonable sometimes.
We were going to have some real fun time during the puja and I was delighted to even think about it.
