"Wait, you mean you're going for it?" The girl in the sleek ponytail raised one eyebrow at her friend. The friend being addressed looked down, avoiding all eye contact, feeling almost guilty. "I mean... yeah." She sighed.
"Swara! Dude, seriously? You're in 11th honey, you don't need to suck up to teachers anymore. Least of all to Archu! She already loves you, man."
Swara looked out the window and rubbed her nape. All her friends were frowning at her. "I'm sorry guys... I-I've already committed, and I'd hate to make Archana ma- Archu work even more..."
Another friend sighed in exasperation. "Such a teacher's pet you are. Okay, go on then, we'll head for the buses."
Swara watched the girls as they exited the class, immersed in discussion already. She truly wasn't needed to entertain them. She wondered if they were talking about her. Shit. They probably were. But when it came to choosing between her friends and her teachers, it would always be the latter. She lifted her bag off the ground and slung one strap over her shoulder. Brushing away the curtain bangs that adorned the sides of her sharp face, she headed for the seminar room. Now that she was alone, she felt some peace. She started making a mental checklist of all the things she needed to do that day. She hadn't been able to finish her Economics notes. The girls had insisted on chatting and playing random games during that period, and she had no choice but to follow. She hated sitting on the last bench. She couldn't hear anything, nor could her bespectacled eyes make proper sense of what was being written on the blackboard. She pushed her thoughts away. 'At least you have good friends, honey. Be grateful. You'll have to compromise shit for your friends sometimes, it's inevitable.'
Two people were engaged in a vivid discussion in the classroom beside hers. Both were flailing their hands around, while also trying to pack their bags quickly.
"Siddharth!! This is too exciting yaar!! I mean, this might be the last time we get to do something fun through both these years."
"I know right!! Dude, I wish I got into some school that had proper fests. This school can't bother to do anything, just force us to mug up history dates."
Tall and well built, the other guy put his hand on his hip and pointed an accusatory finger at Siddharth. "Don't you dare disrespect History, don't you dare!" His voice went up five pitches with the last line.
"Mirzab, all other subjects are better, okay? Like, Socio's a hundred times better than history!"
"Nooooo!" The two guffawed, hands over their stomachs.
"Okay, okay, let's go before Archu scolds us for coming late." Siddharth wheezed through his laugh.
The two walked out of the classroom and saw Swara walking right by them. Mirzab straightened himself and waved toward her,
"HEY!!"
Surprised, Swara's hand went right to her chest and her eyes bulged. On seeing the two of them, she visibly relaxed, before turning a deep shade of red.
"I'm so sorry! I didn't see you two" she said apologetically, her hands locked, fingers twiddling.
"Oh no, no, no! I'm sorry, I shouldn't have startled you like that!" apologised Mirzab.
Siddharth quipped, "You are also in the skit competition right?"
"Oh yeah! We should get going, we're already late." She grinned awkwardly.
Mirzab and Siddharth continued their conversation, including the commerce student's views on everything now. Swara was able to be shy for only 30 seconds before she was easily talking to them. They reached the seminar room now. When they peeped inside, they saw that all the chairs had been put to the side, and three people were already waiting for them, Archana ma'am and two other girls they vaguely knew by sight. Despite both their relatively neutral expressions, it was clear to Swara that they were not happy to be there. Not exactly the best start to the preparations, but alright... They would still manage, I suppose. Mirzab and Siddharth wished Archana ma'am a good afternoon, then stood beside the girls.
"Swara?" Archana ma'am asked the girl who looked like she had gone into a trance. Swara was slightly startled and stood beside Mirzab.
"Okay! Do you all know each other? Or are introductions due?" enquired Archana ma'am.
"Ma'am I sort of know these two, but not both of them," Siddhu said with a bright smile, pointing first to his left, where Swara and Mirzab stood and then to Sameera and Indu.
"Alright then! Introduce yourselves, all of you. Let me start. I'm Archana, and I'll be supervising your efforts and be a behind the scenes helper!" Archana ma'am flourished her hands as if she was giving a huge show.
"I'm Sameera, you can call me Sam, and I'm playing Shanti, who's Juliet, I believe..." Sameera flashed a smile, waiting for the others to hopefully waste more time than she did.
"I'm Siddharth, but I don't like the name, I'd prefer Siddhu. Oh, I'm playing the... Sam's dad!... I think? Or was it Ram's Dad?..."
"Ram's Dad, Siddhu - I'm Ram's brother, and Sam's Dad" Mirzab intervened. "Oh, and I'm your humble servant, the one you will never forget, Mirzab!" He did a theatrical bow, pretending to lift the sides of a non-existent skirt as he bowed down. Most of them had no option but to laugh at his antics, with even Indu holding a hand over her mouth to stop her laugh from being too loud.
Swara and Indu looked at each other, wondering who'd go next.
"You can go"
"No, no, it's fine, you tell first".
"Swara, you first, then Indu, is that okay?" Archana ma'am said to solve the problem.
"Okay, ma'am. So yeah, I'm Swara, I play the role of Juliet's mom... Nothing else to say." Swara looked down, and twiddled with her thumbs, internally cursing herself for saying that so awkwardly.
"I'm Indu, I play Ram." Indu finished the round of introductions
Archana ma'am motioned to them to sit down on the floor. "Short and sweet, nice." She pulled out five sets of scripts and handed them out to all of them.
"Don't read through them right now, we can do that later. Don't lose them. I'm not printing any more of them, okay?" The kids nodded.
"Let's get the story's premise now. We have Shanti and Ram as our leads," She gestured at Sameera and Indu. "Shanti is from a lower caste. Though her family is an exemplar and is respected among their peers, that is not how they are perceived by the higher caste folk in their village. Ram is one of them and is the younger son of an esteemed landlord. Both meet during the village's Jatre* and fall in love.
Shanti's parents only wish for her to marry within the caste, even making active preparations for an arranged marriage, and Ram's parents have made it clear to him that he is to marry someone who will be able to give them a huge dowry with even more land. Though Ram is ready to drop everything and fly with Shanti, Shanti has seen how cruel the world is. She knows the dangers that it entails. As they meet every day, they conspire and make plans to leave their village and go to a large city, where hopefully people are more open to their love.
When Shanti is seen in the middle of the larger houses of the village, she is mocked and ridiculed. The servant of one of the houses comes to her rescue, but a fight breaks out. This leads Ram to join the fray, and he injures another This breaks both families and they understand the depth of the love that Ram and Shanti felt for each other. How it couldn't possibly be something wrong, gross. However, the realisation comes too late..."
(A/n - *Jatre = a village's annual fair revolving around the village's deity)
Indu looked down and rubbed the bridge of her nose. Some things hit you when you least expect it, I suppose. She stopped herself from making any audible indications of the weight she felt at that moment.
"Ma'am, what are we supposed to do today then?" Swara asked. Indu thanked her stars and focused on Swara now.
"Just go through your scripts, maybe. I'll be in the staff room next door, so come and ask me if you have any doubts. I've taken 11C's literature books and I'll be correcting them. Don't make any noise and discuss only this. I don't want to hear all of you talking about irrelevant stuff when I check on you, okay?" All of them nodded their heads, and Archana ma'am left the room.
Swara and Indu sat a little ways away from each other at one corner of the room, while Siddhu and Mirzab stood at the centre of the room. Sameera joined them. "Hey!! Am I interrupting you guys?"
"No, no, you're free to join!" Siddhu said, with the brightest of smiles. "Anyway, I was saying that - "
"Are you two close friends?" Sameera interjected. "You two act like you've been friends forever!"
Mirzab laughed, "Oh no, honey, we properly started talking only today." Sameera's eyes widened. "You two seem so close!"
"Yes, that's cuz we're soulmates, aren't we, Mirzab?" The two clasped their hands, and raised one leg off the ground, all in sync. They gave a single look to each other, and fell to the floor, giggling like a bunch of teenage girls.
Sameera laughed half-heartedly, obviously not enjoying this. She moved away, pulled up a chair that had been pushed up against a wall, and started reading her script.
'Why is this lady so reluctant?! She's got a goddamn boyfriend who wants to marry her, would that not be amazing? So silent too!' Sameera's thoughts were placed firmly against the character she was playing. Half of her lines were body language only. Talking was important to Sameera. She needed to talk, to express her feelings and thoughts through words, not "stare blankly at Ram, as a million things ran through her head" How were you supposed to portray that?! Did Archana ma'am think that all of them were professional actors or something? This hadn't even started, and it already looked like a nightmare.
Just then, Archana ma'am popped in. "Kids, how about you make a plan or schedule for how much you will finish practising by when? The competition is on the 6th, and we'll be having a dress rehearsal of sorts on the 4th, so make sure that you'll have everything memorized and good by then. You could all make it together." She went out as soon as she came in. Sameera sat right where she was, showing no intention of moving and following her teacher's instructions. The others huddled closer, and Swara ripped a page out of her rough notebook.
"Maybe we should get the whole thing memorized in the next three weeks, and we can do some perfections and stuff in the last week?", Mirzab asked. All seconded the plan, except for Sameera, who was still on the chair. Indu rolled her eyes and called out - "Sameera!" Sameera raised her eyebrows and looked at them. Mirzab repeated his plan, and Sameera showed a disinterested thumbs up. The four of them sat and created a detailed schedule for each week of practice. Indu didn't contribute or talk a lot but sat down there with them. She knew it was not the politest behaviour for her to not talk at all, but at this point, at least she was better than the idiot sitting on the chair.
They eventually finished it and took it to Archana ma'am. Sameera finally relented and walked to the staff room with them, and got it approved. Archana ma'am was extremely pleased with the effort put into the meticulous planning. "Ma'am, Swara is the one who made it so detailed. We all were about to leave it very vague" Siddhu quipped, making Swara turn her signature shade of red. They headed back to the seminar room and sat down. Since the after-school hour had almost gotten over, they exchanged numbers to form a WhatsApp group and Indu picked her bags up and left the others. She walked to the washroom, contemplating the day.
The others seemed nice, and both the guys gave off major queer vibes. Even though she didn't wish to get close to them, just knowing that they could be from the community gave her a small amount of peace, and took away a little bit of the constant loneliness. They didn't pester her too much either. Sameera on the other hand... She could go die in hell. She suddenly realised that she had left a notebook in the seminar room and quickly made her way back. But as she neared the door, she heard Sameera's voice, and her words were nowhere near pleasant.
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