Tale Spin - II

"I was so stupid as a kid you wouldn't believe it." 

Now you must understand the strange effect this statement had on me. After all I  was a kid and she was my mother. I wanted to believe that she was smarter prettier and brighter than me at my age but she wouldn't let me have that. That's why her stories always left me ruffled, disoriented, shocked 

"...always wanted to be a good girl never thought of anything beyond. After all my father, your Nana Papa, was a doctor and Nani was a graduate. In those days it was a big thing. Imagine, she had four kids when she did her B.Ed. 

She always asked me to note down answers on the question papers but I never did that. I dreaded the exams but what I dreaded even more was what happened at home after it. She kept everything aside, brought out her slate board and chalk took the question paper from me, solved the sums and calculated how many I had got right. She was really smart.

Once I lied to her. That day we had a test and I must have been talking to one of my friends. So the teacher took away my answersheet and when she reached her table she looked at me angrily and tore it to pieces. 

I came home and told Mama the story with one minor adjustment: I replaced myself with 'one girl'. So, in that version one girl had kept talking throughout the test and finally the teacher had gotten so angry that she had torn her paper to pieces. The poor girl was crying in the recess and we had consoled her that nothing would happen. Now what will happen Mama? I asked her innocently. That day my lie played out but the next morning a blabbermouth of a classmate let the secret out. So that day, later in the evening, when Mama was giving me my usual bath she picked up the laundry bat and applied it on my back: 'A cheat and a liar... hun? Cheat and liar?'

How I spent the evening after that I don't remember but the next day when the teacher gave back the corrected answersheets I also got mine. It turned out that she had not torn my copy but some other papers lying on her table just to scare us off."

It was as good as I had seen it, my naani, the teacher, the exam papers... and me in place of that one girl  whose answer sheet had been torn off.