My boss brought her son to office the other day. Ordinarily we would be interested. Any kid is relief from the mundane at work. This time our visitor was better than ordinary.
He had a squint, giant loping cheeks, a fierce Roman nose and a suspicious bent of mind. He assembled himself and all his multifarious appendages in one of the revolving chairs and directed his whole attention to the gameboy his mother had thoughfully brought along.
Hoping to insinuate myself, I sidled up to him and put on a gummy smile. “So you like gameboys huh?”
“Much more than your face,” was his polite rejoinder. Very much miffed i sulked in my corner and spend my time glaring at him from time to time.
X was working on a story that required the inputs of a young adult and, nothing if not opportunistic, swooped upon the horrible little T-shirt and plus fours in the chair.
My frown lifted. I waited expectantly for things to unfold.
x breezed up to the chair with a “Hiee! You must be Abhay.” The said Abhay looked up, centred a squint of scorn upon X and continued with his game.
“So Abhay darling, tell me about your teachers in school.”
“Why?”
“Because tomorrow is teachers day and I have to pay the rent honey. Eeeehahaha!”
Abhay looked up at her for a second. He put aside his gameboy and suddenly looked very docile.”
Poor, silly X.
“My teacher’s name is Angela mam,” he began slowly. “She teaches us English and Maths. She is a nice lady. She carries a big yellow bag to work.”
X was happily writing all this in her notebook and grinning to herself (thinking about pizza, no doubt).
“During break she takes out a round tiffin box.”
X was pretending to look interested and smile ingratiatingly at the same time.
“She has white powder in her tiffen box which she puts in a thin line on her desk. She then sniffs this white powder through a paper roll.
x broke her pencil and nearly fell off her chair.
“I like my teacher very much,” finished Abhay contritely.
x was a picture of conflicting emotions. Interest and shock registered on her face equally.
“Abhay went back to his gameboy and took no further notice of x.
