The Recess Part-Two (Shhhhhh.....)

We were in eleventh standard and my physics teacher Mrs. Guna had asked us to submit our physics lab record notes. We, as in my group of friends, (well let me make use of this moment to name all those lovely souls with whom growing up was extreme fun: Annie, Sharmila, Jayasri, Poornima, Uma, Neelu, Mayura, Jayapradha) were never the careful lot we always enjoyed doing things at the last moment, not that we did it out of choice, but out of sheer laxity or indifference ( the desi attitude). On the day of submission, none of the above mentioned had a proper cover to their record books, either the records were bare naked or shabbily clad. Not knowing what to do one of us spoke with our gate watchman “Teel Bahadur” and requested him to permit us to let us go out to the stationary shop around the corner which was aptly called “Sheena fancy corner”. He suggested us to bring a permission letter from the headmistress (to the Headmistress no ways, he should be kidding), this definitely was not an option for us, we "begged" but he shoo us away with his “lathi” like he was chasing a group of tumbling monkeys tumbling down the gates; it was his responsibility not to let any students out during the school time without permission duly signed by the headmistress and he was just doing his job.

Then we sat together to discuss our various other options to get hold of some brown sheets before the lab period in the afternoon. One, we could ask our stationary in who was Mrs. Shanthi but she, to our bad luck, was absent that day; now we didn’t expect this disaster to fall on the same day of our requirement. Next option was that we had was that we could "borrow" them from our chemistry teacher “Mrs. Mary Manjula”, because we had seen loads of brown sheets stored away in the chemistry lab’s store room during our lab sessions, which but she too denied saying “beg, borrow, steal but I am not going to give you the sheetss” and “it is your fault that you were irresponsible enough to not have covered our records on time”. We were disappointed, but the teacher was indeed right, she had a point, it was our fault. Thus we had run out of all fair choices, and had no other easy way but to use our higher secondary brains and together we evolved a plan.

Since the record submission was only after the lunch and we had planned to make use of the lunch period to execute our master plan. In our school we were forbidden to eat food inside our classes we had to go down to the tiffin-sheds or to the tree shades in the ground to have our food, this was followed to save the class rooms from getting too dirty. So this left the class rooms deserted during the lunch hours and we decided to make use of this time to slip into the locked chemistry library and get our hands on the brown covers (now this is called obiedience as our chemie teacher had it, we begged, we tried to borrow and now we were “stealing”).

Our school is about to become 125 years old, an antique building built during the Raj, with long doors, lovely arched French windows and high ceilings with those long stemmed fans hanging like chandeliers from the roofs of the classes. The lab door was locked normally (and today too it was) but the French window that it had, which happened to open into the corridor which we walked, was not locked. It could only be latched from inside and these old window latches would easily give away upon rocking them gently,through the  years most latches had become loose.

And we did just that, the lab was the second room from where flights of steps starts; there are actually two of them, one which took us to the third floor and another which led us down to the first floor, the lab was in the second floor of the building. So we rocked those giant windows open and jumped in and in the meanwhile we had arranged for someone to man the stairs so that in case of anyone coming up we could be signalled on time to get out of the lab.

The window was shaken open, and the action had begun. We quickly jumped inside through the windows and ran to the store room and grabbed as many as brown sheets as possible and jumped out as soon as possible too. It was indeed a clean sweep, like nothing happened at all. We even successfully wore the same nothing-had-happened-at-all-look upon our faces, beneath the giggle and the mischief.

The mission cover-your-records was thus successfully completed. We even generously lent the remaining sheets to those who needed them. Beg, borrow, steal, help yourself and then charity ofcourse, now this is the Robin Hood attitude, steal from those who have it in surplus and give to the needy. And almost a couple of weeks later one of our teacher was making a lot of noise about some missing brown sheets from her lab, now you know which teacher it could be. And we like good citizens (or like good politicians)  claimed that we were deeply shocked, expressed sympathy, condemned the act and called it cowardly (hahahahah). Folks, it was time to wear the who-could-it-be-look-?.