Troubled relations

When a girl reaches upper primary, she starts understanding a lot of things. Like when after one PT class Sruthi told us about 'periods'. All the girls agreed knowledgably, I acted stupid, said I didn't know what they were talking about. In the end when even, tho official 'sisu' of the class,Greeshma, acknowledged that she had understood, I couldn't take it anymore, I said, 'You're talking about sanitary napkins, right?'

You see, we were growing up. Such was our 6th standard.

It was in 6th that Salini came to our class(other division, I think). She tried to be my friend, I was quite rude to her, because I had two great friends, officially, my best friend Greeshma and my good friend Aparna and I had enough trouble managing them; I wasn't interested in anybody else. Then suddenly one day Salini came to me and asked me if I knew Sreemol. Sreemol was my childhood friend, my neighbour. We used to play 'ammayum kunjum' and such stuff with my chechi. Once we three had gone to Sreemol's school(I forget which school) to 'thaalampidikkal' for some function. There we had met Salini, Sreemol's best friend from school. Since the chief guest was late, we had spent a lot of time together that day, and played about. Sreemol left in 4th, I think, she went to Thiruvanantapuram, and I had forgotten her. Suddenly it all came back to me. It was a revelation, like knowing that Greeshma was my relative. Salini became suddently important to me, with that link in our past, known to only ourselves. We became friends.

Me, Soumya N, Salini used to go by the same school bus, Route no.4. We used to play balancing in the bus, by trying to keep standing without any support. I remember the picture of Samyukta Varma that Soumya drew once; I had laughed at it then,( there had been some problem with Samyukta's smile), but it was a really good painting, what I'd felt mainly was jealousy.

It was in 6th that I got record marks in maths for unit test, 13 1/2 out of 25. It was a shock. Girijamani miss was our maths teacher and she scolded me a lot. I decided to study better for the next exam and got 49 out of 50. I even remember where I lost that one mark, I had forgotten to put a negative sign somewhere.

It was also in 6th that I became classfirst for the first time. My mother bought me a necklace as a present. I remember Girijamani miss saying, I've become better than even Jayakrishnan.

6th saw the introduction of two great teachers to our class, Sobha miss and Prasannakumari miss. I was already afraid of these two, thanks to my sister, and it was with great fright that I sat in Sobha miss' class for the first time. The way she said 'a' was a class joke. I was terrified by her'annotations' and hadn't understood, for a long time, what she meant by 'who is being addressed?' when there were no letters mentioned.

It was also in 6th that Rajasthani sirs came to teach us, for the first and last time, English. He asked Anoop Roy to spell 'Elephant' and he didn't get it! Imagine!!! I think it was in 6th that we had 'Laxamma' too(It could have been 5th).


In 6th we had to enact 'The Bishop's Candlesticks' infront of the class. There had been a big fight between me and Niranjana as to who'll be the convict. We had both ended up crying and complained to Girijamani miss or Chitra miss, I forget who, but luckily the matter never reached our English miss. Of our English periods, what I do remember is the poem'Pigtail' and Sobha miss laughing uncontrollably and me wondering at seeing her so happy in contrast to her usual strictness.


With the coming of Sobha miss, the rule that'Thou shall not speak in Malayalam' was enforced strictly. If we said a single word in Malyalam, we'll lose our PT period. Once Aparna was punished for saying 'Sruthipetty' and another time I was punished for telling 'paatta' during the rhyme 'I one paatta, I two paatta'. But the incidence that remains sharply in focus is connected with the hero of my life, Aswin.

It was the time when Doordarsan was campaigning for milk purity with Vinaya Prasad saying 'Suddhamaaya paalinte thelivu' and that raindrop-like sign. Once in class I started telling it to Aswin, in Hindi. But what I said was 'Paal shuddh hone ka proof hei...', I stopped suddently and he realized that I had said the malayalam word, 'paal'. I tried to argue with him that I had meant the English 'pal' meaning friend, but he was not stupid, and I lost my PE class next week. I had decided then that I'll take revenge, how I avenged, I'll tell you later.

Ragi and Neethu used to be great friends since... I dunno, very small. But 6th saw a break up in their relationship. Neethu was the official complaint box of the class, the big 'para' and we didn't like her much, then, she was a notorious 'kusumbi'. After their breakup, Neethu's target was me. The reason Neethu said she'd left Ragi for was unbeleivably stupid, so I wouldn't repeat it here. But my own friendship with Aparna and Greeshma was undergoing a difficult test. Sticking to my old notion that one best friend for two years and one best friend at a time, I wanted Greeshma to be my best friend. She refused. I used to plead with her and complain about it to Aparna! Would you believe it?? Here I was cruelly leaving Aparna, her friendship, and telling her my sadness about Greeshma ignoring me! I dunno how Aparna took it. We gaveher a lot of sufferings. Once during a PE period when Greeshma finally agreed to be my best friend, it was to Aparna that I said it first, quite happily. Aparna, really I'm sorry, I was too stupid to know your feelings.

Well after that I was definitely not interested in Neethu. Though never my best friend, I accepted her as my friend in 6th(to keep her mouth shut, to be honest) and tried to patch up her relationship with Ragi, and in the end, they made it up, and you must remember the Ragi who cried, later in 10th, when reshuffling separated her and Neethu.

In those days we, ie, me, Aparna, Greeshma and Salini, used to read 'Secret Seven' and 'Nancy Drew'. We had great anticipations that in 7th we'll read 'Hardy Boys', in 9th 'agatha Cristie' and so on... But life had in store something very different for us. After 6th I left to Poochatty. The girls said they'll give me a grand sent-off and all but nothing happeed. I resented it, but Neethu gave me beautiful bracelet-cum-bangle(I lost it) and Aparna a 'Kumkumacheppu'(I dunno why, but again, I lost it) as momentos. I also took everybody's autographs. It was during then that '2' was added to phone no.s and everyone had reminded me about it, when giving me their phone no.s, but I lost that book too. I also gave Greeshma my one photo, she also gave me her photo. These, I'm proud to say, we've not lost. And then with a lot of hopes I set off to my new school...