Potato Chips by Anshuman Mohan

Author:Anshuman Mohan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers India
Published: 2012-03-06T16:00:00+00:00

They walked the lane together,

The sky was covered with stars.

They reached the gate in silence,

He lifted up the bars…

He paused for effect. At that point, however, Ankit gave Sameer and me a contemptuous look and walked off, his eyes red.

‘What’s up with him?’ Rohan cried. ‘Hey! He’ll miss the punch line!’ Shrugging, he continued.

She neither smiled nor thanked him,

Because she knew not how.

For he was just a farmer,

And she a Jersey cow!

Leaving Rohan to laugh at his own joke, Sameer and I rushed off after Ankit. We found him just outside the classroom.

‘Ankit, what’s up with you? Why did you walk out like that?’ I asked.

‘Why the bloody hell did you tell him?’

‘What?’ said Sameer.

‘You guys told him about my sister!’ Ankit yelled. ‘We all promised to keep mum and you still told him!’

‘Dude, I swear we haven’t told him a word!’ I protested.

‘What makes you think we told him, anyway?’ Sameer asked.

‘If you guys haven’t told him, then how the bloody hell does he know? Did he read your minds?’

‘How do you know that he knows?’

‘What? Does he sing romantic songs every day, then?’ Ankit said, his voice cracking.

‘It wasn’t a romantic song. It was a stupid joke.’ ‘Yeah! You ran away halfway. You missed the punch line.’

‘What nonsense! I heard the whole damn song.’

We repeated the whole joke in unison, then explained the part he had missed. However, he refused to listen at first and thought that we had invented the last four lines ourselves. When he finally understood, he got even madder.

‘So you’re calling my sister a cow? And her boy-boy-boyfriend a-a-a farmer?’

‘Oh, shut up. You’re impossible!’ I said.

Rohan suddenly appeared. ‘Dude!’ he said, ‘what are you guys talking about? Tell me. I won’t tell anyone.’

But Sameer had also begun to doubt me by now. ‘Maybe you did tell Rohan…’

‘Sameer, you don’t know the half of it,’ Ankit said. ‘At your place, Aman and Rohan were calling your mother an elephant and a mammoth. I heard it from the loo when you’d gone to fetch water for Dadi’s morning pills.’

Rohan and I exchanged worried glances.

‘Yeah! You guys think you can call anyone anything you like!’ Ankit continued.

Sameer did not look angry. He just looked shocked.

‘Oi! We didn’t mean it like that,’ I said. ‘It was just a joke…’

Sameer still didn’t say anything. Ankit glared at me and Rohan. Rohan just stood there, like he was part of the scenery. I needed backup, but Rohan was just staring into space. Finally, he said, ‘I know nothing about all this. It was just a joke.’

‘Cut the crap, people! Just stop this stupid conversation,’ I begged.

‘Don’t drag me into all this,’ said Rohan. ‘Sameer, sorry about… whatever happened.’

‘Ankit, I swear I DID NOT tell him!’ I said. ‘Sameer, uh-uh-uh… sorry.’

The bell rang, interrupting the fight.

That day, after school, no one waved the others goodbye. We had been divided into two groups. Sameer and Ankit— the Insulted, Rohan and me—the Insulters.

In many ways, it was odd—although we still sat in class the way we had been sitting all year, we didn’t speak any more.

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