There was nothing wrong with our little Ramu—he was a class-topper, never late to school, never missed a day of class—except for that tattered uniform and those old shoes of his
As always, I rang the bell for assembly. The students, who were scattered all over the playground, suddenly hustled up for the morning prayers. Before the prayer began, though, the school’s principal approached her wards with her usual authoritarian look, the kind that could scare you off from even inhaling and exhaling in her presence.
The sun was at its zenith, and the students on the ground were sweating, yet standing patiently with their heads down. It was pin drop silence as the teachers moved through the lines, looking for signs of scruffiness. From my position, I could see the shiny, well-oiled heads of those who were neatly dressed in perfectly ironed uniforms and polished black shoes.
In the crowd of students, I noticed Ramu, a grade five topper, who was looking a bit nervous as his class teacher was about to come towards him. The closer the teacher got, the more he was sweating. And that wasn’t the only thing that stuck out about him. He was also slightly unkempt, his hair not as well-brushed as that of the others.
Eventually, the teacher got to him, and by this point, his head was hanging. Seeing his appearance, the teacher pulled him out of line and dragged him, by the ear, to the front of the crowd. Everyone was looking at him. The principal pointed her finger at him and said, “Look at that rough donkey!” To him, she said, “Is that a bird’s nest on your head?” The students burst out laughing at this, and poor Ramu looked like he could die of embarrassment.
It was true that Ramu looked different from the others. His white shirt could barely qualify as ‘white’, and his pants were worn at the knees from overuse. It was clear that his clothes hadn’t seen an iron for a while. And then there were his shoes—faded, unpolished. They looked parched and hungry.
The principal continued to mock him, warning him that he’d be chased out of the school if he dared to appear looking the way he did again. “You must iron your clothes, and your shoes need changing…Get a new pair tomorrow.”
Once assembly was over, all the students marched to their respective classes. The needle on my wristwatch moved on, and I went on clanking the bell at intervals—as was my duty—until it was the tiffin break, at which point the children bustled out of their classes, hands filled with colourful lunchboxes.
A while after the others, I saw Ramu slinking out of his class, his eyes darting here and there, taking in his classmates enjoying delicious snacks. His hands were empty. Feeling sorry for him, I waved him over. I offered him half of the loaf of bread that the school provided me on a daily basis. It was all I had.
When he had wolfed down his piece of bread, I asked him why he hadn’t brought anything to eat.
I asked him what his parents did, and he told me his father was a porter, while his mother washed dishes for the neighbours. They could hardly manage enough to pay his school bills, let alone buy him snacks, he said. His eyes grew moist as he talked about how they didn’t even have an iron at home, and that he knew his parents wouldn’t be able to buy him a new set of clothes. “My teachers just don’t understand me, Dai,” he said, now breaking into jagged sobs. “They always harass me.”
Once he’d said it, he retreated into himself, and although I tried consoling him, it was with a dejected face that he turned to head back to class now that tiffin time was over.
Ramu’s words played in my mind; I was thinking of him even as I rang the bell for prayers the next morning, and students filed in in response. But even when the lines were formed, I couldn’t see him anywhere. I knew that he never missed his classes and had always prided himself on coming first without fail. It was bizarre to think he wasn’t there.
Assembly over, the classes began. Sitting by my chair near the school gate, I wondered where Ramu was, when I heard a knocking. It was him, still in the same ragged uniform, a worried look on his face. “Why are you so late?” I asked him, to which he replied that because he didn’t want to be mocked like he had the day before, he’d decided to skip assembly altogether.
At lunchtime, I was expecting he’d show up to if not share my bread, then at least for a talk. But he didn’t. Then I noticed him standing in the centre of the basketball court, holding his ears. It didn’t take long for me to realise that he was being punished not just for his appearance now, but for his lateness, too. It was awful to think that there was no winning for him, and the way the other students were enjoying watching him get punished made my blood boil. But there was nothing I could do. The day passed. The birds made their way to their nests, as did the students.
Once again, the next day, I was ringing the bell, beckoning the students. To my surprise, there was Ramu among them, looking much more sprightly. Not only did he seem to be in a better mood, but he also looked better, his clothes ironed for the first time. There was a sense of confidence about his posture and expression, and I was glad to see it.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t enough and by the end of the day, Ramu had gotten into trouble again. In spite of his neat clothes, the teachers were still insistent that he change his shoes, and seemed determined to torture him until that happened.
My mind was too restless that night for me to get any sleep, and Ramu figured prominently in my thoughts. I felt very ill the next day and got permission from the principal to go to a doctor once assembly was done with. Ramu wasn’t around, but I was too preoccupied with my health to notice.
As I walked to the doctor’s, vehicles were zipping by me. Up ahead, there was some sort of commotion, and curious, I went to check it out, pushing in through the mob.
A group of men, including the police, were beating up a young boy, and I watched as one of the policemen dragged him by the ear towards the station nearby. In my hazy state, I couldn’t process what was going on, so I asked the man beside me what had happened.
“They’ve caught a little thief stealing shoes from that vendor over there!” he said, excited.
My heart turned cold at the words ‘new shoes’, and I looked around frantically to see who the boy was. As I was straining to see, a man jumped in out of nowhere, rushed towards the boy and delivered a heavy blow to his head, yelling, “This is the same bastard that stole an iron from my shop a couple of days ago!”
That’s when I saw the boy clearly. Lying there, on the street, out cold in his tattered uniform, a school bag on his back, was Ramu. The shiny, new shoes he’d stolen lay on the ground beside him.
- Bhakta Bahadur Basnet
No comments :
Post a Comment