short tale - 17

half the class was up and it was time for coming up with creative excuses. “why haven’t you done your homework?” being the question and the time being monday morning 4th period before lunch. one of the disadvantages of sitting in the last row was that most of the excuses you are going to come up with are already taken.. sometimes just before your turn comes up leaving you very little time to come up with something new and hence credible. lamers would twist an excuse already offered like ‘fever miss’ with ‘fever and bad cough miss’ or a ‘had gone to my native place’ with ‘was out of station miss’. the ones with good foresight and foresight-less parents will ofcourse bunk the friday because there is always a lot of homework given on a friday. ‘was absent on friday miss’ will mostly be smirked at but was workable. ‘forgot to bring the homework notebook’ was a staple for the ones whose excuses never matured from the 3rd std to the 4th std. the class was being flushed out in hordes and it was soon to be the turn of the boys in the last row. the ones standing before were all gone and there was no cover to hide. they felt naked and exposed. they were mostly the creative lot when it came to things like this. one of them claimed that he had indeed finished his homework but somebody tore out the pages in envy during the interval break holding up the midsection of a notebook with 5 pages torn in haste. that was an excuse that definitely belonged maybe to the 9th or 10th std. “hey where is gaurav? isnt he joining us today for a drink?” one of the boys from the last row inquired to which another one replied “seems he is down with typhoid”. there was a momentary “oh” and very loud laughter followed. 20 years had passed.