Queen Of The Hills

Chapter I

CHILDHOOD DAYS

A piece of chalk which strangely decided to go ballistic in a classroom strikes the nose of Mr. Allen, a newly recruited teacher. It takes him precious seconds to recover by which time the perpetrator composes himself and merges with the sombre appearances of the fellow students.

'Who is this bloody brat!' bellows Mr. Allen, trying to salvage the last vestiges of his dignity in front of the deathly quiet, but inwardly giggling bunch of no do-gooders.

'If no one owns up, I won't take the class,' promises Mr. Allen.

There is a feigned expression of guilt on every face but no one would mind Mr. Allen keeping to his promise. Very few wanted to listen to his boring History lessons and the select few who did, could not afford to cause grief to the Three Musketeers, a dreaded trio, studying in the same Class.

'Three Musketeers' was the title adopted by the trio and aptly summed up the taut alliance between its three members: Simmy, Rusky and Jamie. Simmy, the leader of the rogue gang did not have any nickname. Rusky and Jamie were the nicknames of Ruskin and James. They had been classmates since kindergarten in a fairly reputed school in Dehradun. Keeping the reputation of the school intact was the last thing on their minds, whenever they were unleashing the full range of their dare devilry, which was quite often.

All the three had been marked down for their deviant behavior and they would have been readily chucked out of the school by successive Principals, with none of the teachers cringing in disapproval, but for the accolades brought to the school by all the three in various sports. In fact the school had won the Inter-School Sporting competitions in Dehradun for many years running, mainly because of the brilliance of these three.

All of them were great runners and Simmy was a wizard at badminton. People often wondered as to how these rogues could tame their streaks of indiscipline and perform so well, while participating in athletic events. But then, strange are the ways of life.

Ingenious efforts were made to break the gang. Sentences like...' Simmy, you are a nice girl, they are rascally boys'..... 'Do you want to grow up to be wild animals?'.....'You are so good, they are spoiling your future'.....were thrown at them. Alas all these weakly thrown words of wisdom cut no ice with the gang members, least of all causing fission in the group. There was a strong bond between the three of them which no ordinary mortal could shake.

One fine day when they were in Class Seven ( by a strange coincidence, barring a year or two, they studied in the same sections throughout their school days... perhaps the power at the helm decided that it was better for rotten mangoes to be kept in isolation to prevent their rottenness from spreading and causing more harm) a new Arts teacher, Suman Ghosh, joined the Class. And she was exquisitely pretty!!

The whole class was smitten by Suman, none more than Rusky, much to the chagrin of Simmy who did not know how to repair her badly smitten soldier. Rusky issued open threats that he would end his life if he did not get to meet the lady of his dreams and that too... in private!!!

Simmy was alarmed! Finally she decided to go direct and approached Ms Suman with the life and death problem of her friend. Surprisingly the ever smiling teacher was sympathetic to the cause and agreed to grant a private audience to her most ardent admirer in the Teachers' Room. And the meeting materialized as per plan one day. Simmy heaved a huge sigh of relief and out of sheer curiosity watched the proceedings of this strange rendezvous, from outside the room.

But what was this! A most comic scene was unfolding inside. A befuddled and tongue tied Rusky was unable to even raise his eyes to the level of Suman's face and instead spent his entire dating session watching the floor. Ms Suman tried her level best to make her juvenile lover utter a word or two; but in vain. Rusky always remained the butt of the jokes of his other two group members because of this misadventure.