A glimpse

That was my third year in Grade Six.

When this cruiser first looked at me, and I opened my eyes wide. Did she look scared that day? I remember thinking I had no use for a slip of a girl who got scared of big eyes. Speaking of which, she had pretty eyes herself. She just didn't seem to know it.

When Prashanthi came down from the fourth floor to mind us sixth-graders, she was shocked to see us still there. What was interesting, though, was the girl's reaction to our interaction. She widened her eyes and even looked impressed. I just dismissed her as another daydreamer.

In general, I didn't know what anyone was up to. I couldn't care less. The first-benchers were always annoying, and the cruisers were generally quiet and kept to themselves. Smitha was always whining about her parents leaving her at the school hostel. Parimala was always bragging about the countries her father had visited. Between the two of them sitting on the fourth bench and nobody daring to join me on the fifth, it was a pretty boring situation all round.

Until one day, this cruiser went and slapped the DSP's son.

She had a very old-fashioned name, the sort of name that belonged to someone's grandmother, and everyone stressed the wrong syllable when they said it. She never seemed to mind. Of course, I knew she wasn't paying attention. She was a daydreamer, that one.

Anyway, the DSP's son decided to have some fun at her expense. He started saying her name all wrong until he finally got her attention. When that produced no reaction, he moved on to making up songs and teasing her.

They were eleven, mind you. Nothing lewd. Just incredibly stupid, very loud, and spectacularly out of tune.

She finally snapped at him.

He pulled her pigtail.

And in the blink of an eye, she started chasing him.

He was fast. She was clumsy. But, she dogged him up the stairs, around the science lab, down the stairs from the other wing, across the fountain, and finally caught up with him and slapped him across the face.

The recess bell went off, giving us all a fright.

The entire class had been following the chase with our eyes. No snack was eaten that morning. No water was sipped. Nobody even went downstairs to the toilet.

We had important matters to attend to.

They both got punished for returning late to class after recess. I don't know how that didn't turn into a full-scale boy-girl feud. Perhaps the fact that his father was the DSP and the girl wasn't, well, particularly popular had something to do with it.

I can't quite put my finger on when my nonchalance turned into a quiet interest in what this girl was up to. She did funny things, like trying to sneak into the library or making notes in her classwork while the teachers were writing on the blackboard. My interest was properly piqued when the sibling-delegation started taking an interest in her whereabouts and generally trying to disrupt her quiet recess. Of course, Jaya and Rani always hung about with her during recess, which was just as well. Otherwise, the brother who had once been my classmate and the sister who was now my classmate might have beaten her up.

It was one of those days when I got sent to Siberia. She was already out there, glowering at Smitha, who had tattled—quite untruthfully, of course—that she was playing Name-Place-Thing-Animal in class. If I hadn't watched her taking notes, I might have believed it too. Anyway, I was sent out five minutes later because, well,

I hadn't done the homework.

She looked at me when I came out, but said nothing. I went and stood on the same side she was, and for once, neither of us seemed particularly interested in the punishment.

I think that was the first time I realised that being sent to Siberia wasn't always such a bad thing. Sometimes, apparently, it was where the interesting people ended up.

Stir something?

Have you ever overlooked someone, only to realise later that they were far more interesting than you thought?

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