On the first morning of his working life as a school teacher, a brown eagle had come and perched on Haroon’s balcony. He would never forget that. And till his last working day he didn’t know whether that was a good sign (that he would be a courageous and aristocratic educator) or a bad one (like a bird of prey placing its bet against him). What worried him even more was whether he should have waited to find out what it meant, or decided for himself what he wanted it to symbolise.
Haroon looked at the clock and yawned. Like a pendulum he swayed back and forth in his chair and tried to make the springs in the chair squeak. With quick and slow bursts he imagined he was sending secret messages in Morse code, though all he really knew was how to send ‘SOS’ and the rest of it was undoubtedly gibberish. Now that he was the principal of the school, everyone naturally expected a very sombre demeanour about him. It was only in absolute privacy that he allowed himself a little youthful abandon like this.
Last days at work weren’t exactly how he had imagined them. Yes, there was a farewell lunch, but that was five days earlier on Friday. It was the same rubbish catered food and boring speeches that he had stumbled through during everyone else’s farewell, and every sports day, and all the national days, repeated annually for the last 37 years. It was no better this year for Haroon, perhaps a little worse, but how could he really tell?
In the morning he just had to sign some papers. Leave approvals, purchase requisitions for laboratory equipment and a form for his fuel reimbursement. There was one he had left for the very end. It sat in a clearing on his desk, unflinching and straight. It was the official document relinquishing his post as principal and wishing his successor all the luck for ‘discharging his/her duties to the fullest extent possible’. His successor wouldn’t care, and neither need he have really, but he still wanted to save the most important paper for last.
The bell rang for recess, and over the next twenty minutes Haroon ate his lunch, alone, in his room. He had decided since his farewell lunch that he would keep to his own room, serving out the rest of his time in solemn solitude, like the dying leaf of a tree that gets plucked off by the wind and floats away unnoticed. When lunch time was over he buzzed for the attendant to come and clear away his table. Another two hours before he had to sign his relieving document and leave for good.
Before Haroon could get comfortable, the attendant knocked and came back in with a note. It said, ‘“Alok Singh. VIII A. Not paying attention and scribbling nonsense messages at the back of his notebook. Repeat incident.” It was the practice here for teachers to send a note with the student when they sent him or her for reprimand from the Principal.
He nodded at the man who in turn nodded at the boy standing outside. He walked in, looking suitably shaken, and with the unquestioning fear that beset all boys his age when sent to the principal’s office.
“Good morning, Sir,” the boy said hesitatingly.
“Yes, good morning -”, Haroon glanced back at the slip of paper, “Alok.”
The boy fidgeted nervously. He had paused in an awkward way with one foot slightly off the ground, as if waiting for permission before taking another step forward. Haroon saw this and put him out of his misery with a quick, “Sit.”
The boy lowered himself into a chair, perhaps more awkward than before, trying not to let on that he had absolutely no ability to determine what the correct sitting position should be under such duress. The high back of the chair suffocated him even more. He chose to look at his shoes as if they were his only friends in the room right now.
Haroon started things off, “So you don’t pay attention in class and scribble in your notebooks?”
Situations like this usually had a very traditional progression. Blunt forehand by the Principal, blustering attempt at a smash by the student, then the Principal taps it back across the court to make the student run and tire himself, a weak backhand returns it right back to the Principal who then sends a practiced drop shot, which the student runs to but trips and goes down in a cloud of ignominy. Game-Set-Match. The Principal remains undefeated.
“No, sir.” Correct so far. “The teacher didn’t bother to read it. It wasn’t a scribble; it was a song.” Deviation.
“A song?” repeated Haroon, genuinely surprised, both by the originality and the bold righteousness. Here this boy still hadn’t taken his eyes off his shoes but had managed to knock the ball into the crowd and struck the referee between the eyes. “What do you mean you were writing a song? Why were you writing a song in class?”
The boy looked up briefly, but quickly turned away, still unable to make eye contact. He had the look of deepest confusion upon his face. In his mind he was making a million calculations to the minute trying to decide what his next words should be. “There is … it’s his … sir …”
“Come now, out with it. Tell me the truth.”
“Sir, my cousin is leaving today, I mean, after staying with us for a month.” Alok was spluttering. “He goes to boarding school and got jaundice and came to stay with us. He’s going back today and I wanted to write him a song.”
Haroon leaned back in his chair, not sure of how to evaluate this. Could this be true? Why would he make something like this up? And yet it wasn’t unusual for children to fabricate the most imaginative excuses and sail through on them, nonplussed. So he utilised a drop shot to catch the boy off-guard. “Well, why didn’t you write it at home? Why did you wait to come to school to do this?”
Alok finally managed to look at his Principal straight,. “I couldn’t have written it earlier, sir. He didn’t need it till this morning.” Haroon raised his eyes, gesturing at him to explain further. “He is feeling terribly sad about going back to his hostel and doesn’t want to leave us. He’s only in the fourth standard. This morning, when I was getting ready for school, he was crying and telling me not to leave him alone. I couldn’t think of anything else so I said I’d return from school with a song just for him. While he was sick I had been reading him some stories and I liked to sing them out like songs to make him laugh.”
“Now, this is a surprising turn,” thought Haroon. It was nice to have one of the students to actually converse with. There was no hurry to send him away. So he continued the chat, “What is this song about, Alok?”
A look of embarrassment flashed across his young face. “Oh, it’s nothing sir. Just something silly to make him laugh.” But, Haroon persisted, “Well, I happen to like silly stories. Tell me about it.”
Alok shifted in his seat and looked like he was getting ready to receive a painful injection. “Well, he, my cousin, likes superheroes, so I was writing a song where he’s a superhero and he helps all his friends in the hostel defeat his warden, who’s the villain because he scolds the boys for every little thing. The superhero discovers the warden whipping these helpless boys and flies in, fights him, locks him up in the remedial classroom and frees all the kids.”
“Good God, my boy!” exclaimed Haroon, clapping his hands. “That’s a marvellous story for a child like your cousin. It is really like the stories I used to read when I was his age. How splendid that you should remind me of them. What’s the name of your superhero?”
“Well sir, that’s what I was working on when the teacher stopped me. I was writing out all the names I could think of. Super Suresh, for that’s my cousin’s name, or The Dorm Bomb, Hostel Hurricane … I haven’t decided.”
Haroon was now clearly feeling gleeful and his eyes were sparkling. He had probably never had such a conversation despite being around children for most of his life. Thinking up stories is something he had forfeited so long ago, and yet, here he was, enjoying every minute of it, remembering it all in a heartbeat. “When I used to read comics at your age, I often imagined myself like the heroes I would read about. One of the heroes I thought up was a man who could communicate with birds and use them as his army. He was called Silver Eagle, because he would leave a silver eagle feather at the scene after defeating the goons.”
Alok had both his arms on the edge of Haroon’s table by now, “Wow, sir, that’s a clever touch. Can I use something like it?”
“Why just something like it? Feel free to use it. I never did, so why let it go to waste? But, only if you write another one for me. After all, I always wanted to see that in a story and my own hair is silver already.” They laughed.
“Yes, sir”, the boy said with a wide smile, “I’d be happy to, sir.”
“You must. I will be expecting it. You can ask the staff here to pass it on to me when you’re done. Here’s what else I’ll do for you. Go to the library now and finish your story. Your cousin will be waiting, the poor boy. Tell the lady there that I’ve sent you for some work, and tell your teacher later that I made you sit in my office the whole period and lectured you. Understood?”
One could see from Alok’s face that he was trying to stifle a chuckle, just barely managing. Afraid saying anything would result in an outburst of guffaws he just nodded.
“Good boy. Now go and finish your most important work for today. And before you go, remember that if your story brings a smile to that boy’s face, your story has done its job, my son. And one last thing, have you published in the school magazine?”
“No, sir. I submitted a story once but it never got used.”
“Try again, my boy. Why give up after just one attempt. Try again and it will eventually get selected. You like writing, don’t you? So then what’s the harm?”
“I will, sir. Thank you,” said the boy standing up, then as an afterthought he added “… and Happy Retirement.” He walked backward the few steps to the door and then turned around and left.
Haroon took out the note his teacher had sent with him. He made another one copying out the details on a new piece of paper. “Alok Singh. VIII A. Very good writer, must use in the next magazine.”
He prepared to sign the note, which he would then send to the teacher-in-charge of the magazine, but suddenly stopped his hand. He pulled out the relinquishing letter that he had been saving for the end of day. He signed that first and put it aside, and only then he put his signature on the note, his last act as principal, and leaned back in his squeaky chair.