Radha or Radha-bai (as I used to call her) was three years older than me. She was taller than the average girls and wore reading glasses in school (which was a rarity in St Paul’s School, Sunolota Island). She had tiny eyes, and her eyebrows were plucked into a thin arch. Her nose was short and pudgy but it made me think of vapour swirling out of tea in a winter morning. A soft rectangular philtrum ran down from the tip of her delicate pudgy nose towards her lips, which were always a fresh pink (she must have stayed hydrated all day by drinking plenty of water). The upper lip was thinner, looked like a rubber band; the lower lip was a little fuller, jutting out flamboyantly. And the teeth were perfectly formed except that there was a tiny window of grayish space between the two front teeth, which instead of diminishing added to her beauty and allurement. Radha-bai was not renowned in the school for her beauty like her sibling sisters were, but her bright, mysterious smile, her intelligent manners, and the way she talked, that round face of hers lighting up before she spoke something, and her fair skin, and her long legs under her perfect knee-length skirt made me think of no one else or imagine a more beautiful girl than her.
At school, every Thursday during the last period that started at 1.15 in the afternoon and went on till 2 pm (when the tired students could finally go home), I would try to stay calm and not act too excited. After the teacher left at 1.10 with the CLANG of the bell, I would sit and wait for Radha-bai to appear. One glance through the window, one quick sight of her and I would draw in the details: just beneath the bulge of her hips, a white fabric in the inside of her skirt-pocket; the slightly flushed look on her face due to the tedium of following the daily routine of school to its last leg, (and also from the running about and chasing her friends during the long recess); the white shirt she wore, no matter if it was the fashionably tight short-sleeved one or the loose-fitting long-sleeved one with sleeves rolled up her wrist, and my heart would fill up to the brim with emotions of love and ambition.
‘Hell why is he not leaving yet?’
I was getting impatient with the teacher. What normally happened was, if the teacher left early and the next teacher took time arriving then Radha-bai would walk into the class with her best friend Kakoli (or anyone of her girlfriends) and tease us, boys. She would then borrow our broomstick and leave. (Thursday last-period was their work-experience class, which consisted of cleaning the corridors, sweeping dead leaves off the grass, throwing buckets of water at the smelly urination shed, etc. in short it was an outdoor class, meaning it was fun.) The teacher left at last, but then the next teacher arrived immediately.
‘What a blow! Shit! No Radha-bai today! I will have to wait another whole week.’
The teacher settled down in his chair and another boring forty-five minutes was commencing on time. Then turn to page so and so and—she was there on the door!
'May I come in Sir?' Radha-bai said, she had a twinkle in her eye.
'Yes,' said the male teacher, taken by surprise.
'Excuse me,' she said half-heartedly and looked around, almost ignoring the teacher, and then having seen me she came towards me. She stood in front of me.
'Hi,' she said and smiled. 'I came to return your pencil,' she said.
I stood up, 'Thanks.' Then she turned and without even turning or explaining anything to the teacher floated away from everyone’s vision.
Radha-bai was sixteen then, madly in love with the shy and handsome Minom from her own class (Minom was my cousin). She was the kind of girl who went all out, so falling in love with boys meant she packed a wallop. Once she even wrote down a boy’s name in blood in her rough-notebook and circled it with a heart symbol. There was also this one time when she acted for a video-song: she wore a pink sari, which instantly turned her into a beautiful adult woman, and danced just as the choreographer instructed her to, heaving her chest up and down dramatically, and running up and down the green grass of the school-field, her hand outstretched and holding the tip of her sari.
The headmistress of the school, Sister Black Cobra (that was the name she was known by) came to know about it and gave her a sound lesson on ‘how a girl her age should behave’. Sister Black Cobra was a truly villainous woman back then and everyone feared her deadliness. I imagined how she must have felt denigrating Radha-bai: the passion of a jealous lover and the satisfaction of seeing the tears running down the youthful Radha’s eyes. I am sure her heart purred with deep satisfaction.
As for me, I was thirteen years old and all I wanted to do was send a fat stone flying towards Black Cobra’s head. I used to daydream about doing that. Of course, I did not do it because I was afraid I would be expelled from school. Although, I must confess, once I almost did it.
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