One Crazy Day in the Life of a Teenager
But I’m getting ahead of the story – let me start at the beginning…
The day dawned cold and grey. It had been raining all night, really pouring buckets. The roads were dirty pools of water and God knows what else – through which I would have to wade to get to college. And I couldn’t take a single blessed day of leave anymore this year. The Principal, ol’ Horseface, had already summoned my parents to complain about “Your daughter Paro’s erratic attendance, lack of seriousness about academics and insolent attitude to authority”. As if I was enrolled in Harvard or something, instead of the rather down-in-the-mouth college which had finally taken me with my abysmal scores, after some hefty greasing of management palms…
Well, to cut a long story short, I pushed myself off the bed, brushed my teeth, splashed water on my face, changed, stuffed some books into my bag and charged out of the house. But the powers that be were out to get me. I sloshed through one particularly vicious dirt pool of water, only to have one slipper give way in the morass. Now I’d have to go home again and change footwear – as if I wasn’t late already.
Great – now who was devouring me with his nasty pig-like eyes as I trudged back? Who else but the lech in the opposite flat? Gangamma, our ancient servant, had told us some hair-raising stories about him. His wife had run away because of his womanizing and drinking. One day, he had grabbed the hand of the watchman’s wife. She had set up an almighty shriek that had woken up the entire neighbourhood!
Now, he leered at me and asked me in his slimy voice: “What Baby, shall I drop you in college today? “ Creep! As if I would go anywhere near him – he had probably chopped up his wife and stashed her away in his loft and told people that she had run away. Or maybe he’d burnt her in a tandoor oven like the guy in the gory news story that had burnt up the TV channels for awhile. Well, perhaps not an oven – not likely he would have one that size in his poky flat. Maybe he had buried her in the garden where I took my dog for a walk and one day she would rise in a vapour, fly in through his window, grab him by the throat and strangle him to death…
Wait, was that my bus at the corner, waiting for the signal to turn green? If I rushed, I could catch it still. I ran helter skelter, slipping and sliding on the wet road. Crash! I had run full tilt into a toothless old crone, knocking her and her vegetable basket into the slush. I bent down, picked up a squished tomato, tossed it into her basket and shouted at her: “Can’t you watch where you’re going, you old fool?”
The crone’s eyes flashed murder, her huge red bindi seemed to send out a red flame in my direction and a strangely strident voice emerged from her mouth. “Watch your mouth young lady, or others will watch it!” Now, what the hell did she mean by that – stupid fool? Did she think she was an oracle or something with her cryptic utterances?
Not that I cared. The bus had turned the corner, splashing dirty water on me. *&%%$ – I would have to shell out a fortune to get an auto in this weather.
I scraped through the college gates just before they were closed. Yes, Horseface had instituted this new system to exploit latecomers. You had to pay a fifty buck fine if you were late – she probably stashed the money away in her private account and bought herself a ticket to Europe with the ill-gotten gains. To add insult to injury, latecomers had to listen to her lecture as well – “You know girls, you will soon be getting married. How will you take care of your children and serve your husband and in-laws if you are so disorganized? “
Did I tell you that Horseface is probably 700 years old, perhaps a vampire or something? She still seems to live in the Stone Ages when men dragged women into their caves by their hair and made them cook and clean for them.
“Ooh, look at that scowl on Paro’s face. What happened? Did Ravi ditch you or something?” Wouldn’t you know it – the first person to accost me when I walked into class was the one person I would be happy never to see again in my life. It was Sushmita, a nasty piece of work who had been trying to get her talons into my boyfriend Ravi for almost a year now. God – I hated her cutesy little-girl voice and her curvy figure in skin-tight jeans.
Our Commerce teacher, I called her Commerce Creature – thought the sun rose every day out of Sushmita’s backside. “You should all be focused like Sushu, girls”, she intoned at regular intervals. “See how enterprising and hard working she is. She will go places in life. You should all try to emulate her”. Wasn’t there something in the college rules about teachers calling students by pet names like Sushu ?
‘ Sushu dear’ in the meanwhile, would sit there with a smirk on her face that I so badly wanted to wipe off with the duster. Well, we all knew that our dearly beloved Commerce Creature was angling for a bit role in one of the serials that Sushu’s father produced. You know that slimy serial where there are six daughters, each one suffering from a disease, a mother-in-law or a drunken husband, not necessarily in that order?
I let my mind wander as the Creature rambled on about some obscure commerce theory that we all needed to master if we wanted to pass the exams. What had really set off my current outburst of ill temper? No marks for guessing the answer to that question. I had caught that rat Ravi whispering sweet nothings on his cell phone to someone when I came up behind him in the college canteen yesterday. He had nearly jumped out of his skin when he saw me and said a quick ‘bye on the phone.
Just wait till I get my claws on his phone, I’ll check all his calls and messages and figure out who he was talking to – that lying cheat! I had stormed off after throwing a huge fit and calling him a dozen unprintable names. Half the college had been watching, with bated breath, and the rest had no doubt been regaled with an account of the happenings. Let them all gossip, who cares?
Who was his new girlfriend? Maybe it was slimy Sushu, or maybe that snake Annie, who had been preening ever since she appeared in a five second TV commercial.
Finally – the lunch bell. I pushed through the crowd in the corridor and locked myself in a cubicle in the washroom. I needed some me-time or I would burst a blood vessel.
Some loud whispers and giggles broke through my seething thoughts. “Did you see Paro cursing Ravi in the canteen yesterday? My God, that girl’s vocabulary is unbeatable!” Some more giggles.
“No wonder Ravi found someone else – who can listen to her mouth, day in and day out?”
“Did you notice something different about Paro’s mouth today? Something strange, as if…”
I couldn’t make out the rest of the words as the washroom door slammed behind them and their voices faded.
Something strange? I rushed out of the cubicle and looked at my face in the mirror above the wash basin. Nothing strange that I could see – wait, let me open my mouth and check. My God, was that, could it be…?
Were my two canine teeth a little longer than usual? Like… like fangs, perhaps? God, I had never noticed these before. Were they growing? Was I becoming a vampire or a werewolf? I opened my mouth even wider and stared into the mirror, shell shocked.
Stop it Paro, I told myself. You have been watching too many vampire movies – that’s it!
No, wait. What did that old woman whom I knocked over tell me? Something about watching my mouth… God, was she a witch, were witches still around these days?
I shut my eyes tight, willing the nightmare to go away. It was a nightmare wasn’t it? I am not transforming into a swamp creature or something, am I?
Help, HELP… Anyone?
First published by Maitreya Publishing in their anthology of short stories titled ‘Amused’.
