Higgledy Piggledy Growing Up by Poile Sengupta

Author:Poile Sengupta
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: null
Publisher: Harper Children's
Published: 2024-05-15T00:00:00+00:00

FEBRUARY

Nothing much happened in the following few days. At school, the new notice board came up with our contributions. My poem had been taken, there were a few cartoons, some more poems and six or seven jokes, two of which I had heard before. There was one poem which I really liked written by a Class 6 student, called “Dear Yelakki Banana”. There was no name at the bottom. That was strange. I copied it into my rough book to show my mother. As I was heading home after school, the Tree Boy bumped into me. Again. My school bag helped me from falling flat on my back.

“Hey, great poet,” the Tree Boy shouted even as I tried to stop him from calling me that. Then he came close and whispered, “Did you see what I have written?”

“What?” I asked. “I mean where? I mean what? I mean where what? And stop crashing into me,” I added. “I think I’ve got a concussion.”

“No, you haven’t,” he said in a normal voice. “You haven’t even hurt your little finger.”

I was about to point out that little fingers have nothing to do with concussion when he whispered again, “Did you see my poem on the notice board?” he hissed. “The yelakki banana one?”

I told him I had seen it and read it. “But,” I asked. “Why haven’t you put your name there? And anyway, why are you bombing my eardrums with your whispers?”

“Because,” he hissed on, “the poem has a double meaning. It is a code, can’t you see? I told teacher and she said it was alright if I did not put my name.”

“What code?” I was quite irritated by this time. “What double meaning?”

He dropped his voice into the underworld. “Fruits become rotten, isn’t it?” he said. “So do secrets. That person, you-know-who, has been warned. I am…”

Someone came up from behind me, coughing badly. The Tree Boy stopped his snake hiss abruptly. The next second, he was gone.

I turned and saw Rafi, bent double with coughing. There was a gaggle of his classmates, all female, hovering around him, one holding out a bottle of water, another some cough drops, the third a paper tissue. All their faces had the expression that hospital nurses have.

Some men are so lucky, I thought. Then I noticed Twinkle running up and I followed the example of the Tree Boy. I fled.

It was Pachamma who gave us the next bit of news. “Police are asking boys and girls why you not go to school? That is what they are asking.”

We were in the dining hall, just finishing tea, I remember. My father and uncle were not at home, my grandfather was in the drawing room, reading, but the rest of us were around. My sister had brought out the scrabble board and we were vaguely arranging words on it. When Pachamma made her dramatic announcement, my grandmother dismissed it saying, “Must be the Government programme, compulsory education for all children.”

“No, Amma, no,” said Pachamma in her shrillest voice.

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