Half a Gum

This is a story about something that happened when I started kindergarten. On account of my joining this school mid-session, I was severely lacking in friends. So I was very grateful when this girl, Anisha, took me under her wings.

Anisha had this stiff posture of an adult. She always kept her back straight. When she was talking to you she would put both her hands behind her back and look you straight in the eye. She had stark black eyes, which had this sort of mischievous twinkle to them. Her hairstyle was similar to the wolf cut that’s in vogue right now. And her school uniform was a bit too big for her, causing it to roll around to her sides as she moved. So she would have to move it back to its proper place once every few minutes.

Anisha knew a lot more than me. That was a fact. She knew things I had not even thought to consider. What was up in our teacher’s personal life. The name of the birds we could see in the trees across our prison-style school. What to do with a strand of peacock feathers to make them multiply. That girl had all the knowledge and all the ideas. I was in awe of her.

Let me just take you through what the school was like first. It was three cinder block buildings that were close enough to form a U shape together. There was no paint outside, it was cinder coloured. It had a rusted tin roof that looked like it would fly away every time it rained. And in our city, it rained very often. In the middle of these three buildings was a field where we would play and there was no grass there, just dust. Dust that flew around with the wind and coated everything, leaving a grimy feeling.

Even as a kid, I had enough sense of aestheticism to know that this was not where I wanted to be. I lived far away from the school so I had to take the school bus to and back from home. But Anisha lived nearby and she would tell me things about other kids who also lived close by.

So, there I was listening to my only friend in a dusty old school tell me about some lizard eggs she found. She stopped mid-sentence to stare at a girl who had passed us by.

There was this shine in her eyes. It told me that something more important than lizard eggs were going to be talked about. “How would you like to eat all the sweets from the shops for free?” she asked me. That was unrealistic. I knew about money and I knew this couldn’t be done. But Anisha told me she had it on good authority that one shop nearby our school did not charge tiny girls for sweets. So we can have as much as we want without paying any money. Wasn’t that grand news?

Yes, it was. It was the best thing I had ever heard in my life till then. My mother was one of those health-conscious people who thought sugar was not good for kids. She would buy me fruits instead like it was the same thing. I had access to candy a lot less than other kids around me, and it made me crave it even more.

So I was beyond excited. We couldn’t wait for school to be over and to go to the shop and demand our fill of sweets. But there was a problem, bus students could not leave the school premises at the end of the school. So, all my dreams were shattered. I was so close to free candy, but it would seem like only Anisha would get it.

Being the friend that she was, she did not want to go without me, so she came up with a plan. See, the plan was… to say carpe diem and go get candy. And then go crying to the school guard that my parents said they were coming to pick me up, but they hadn’t arrived. The guard would call them and someone would come to pick me up and my share of candy.

If no one comes, you can stay at my place, Anisha comforted me. So, everything was all set in place, and we contained our excitement until school was over and off we went. The shop wasn’t too far from the school and we went there and demanded candy. For free, Anisha added. We want candy for free.

But you need money to buy these, said the woman, destroying all our hopes and dreams. But Anisha would not give up. She rolled her skirt back in place and did something my mother had told me I was too old to do now-she threw a tantrum. She went full out on them, accusing them of giving out free candy to other kids but not to us. She straight up told the lady that we are not leaving without candy. The lady at the shop had enough of this. She took out a piece of chewing gum from a packet, tore it in half and gave us each half. She said this was for free and not to come back to the shop again.

My disappointment was immense. As we turned away from the shop and walked towards the school when we met the Principal on the way. He frowned his huge salt and pepper eyebrows at me and asked me why I was not on the bus that left a while ago.

I don’t remember how I got home. My focus was on my loot of the candy that I would not get. I was a sad sad baby with half a chewing gum to show for. My parents were livid and would not even give me a chance to explain about the sweets at stake here.

But I was back home and things were different from that day on. It turned out that Anisha did not know as much as I thought she did. Did lizards even lay eggs? I began to doubt everything that she was saying. Our friendship frayed as I started hanging out with other kids who were just as clueless as me.

Eventually, I found out why Anisha had assumed they gave out free candy. The girl she saw was their granddaughter, and they always gave her candy when they saw her. Anisha, despite her wisdom, was still a kindergartener. So she assumed they would give out candy to any kid regardless of their relationship with them.

I was glad that I at least found out how she came to this too-good-to-be-true endeavour. I was soon shipped off to another school after the Dashain holidays. This was on account of me learning nothing in that unaesthetic environment. I went on with my life barely thinking about Anisha until the day that I found out that lizards do lay eggs.

But this little adventure taught me an important lesson very early in my life. If it sounds too good to be true-it probably is too good to be true. Someone tells me about this way to make bank selling makeup-I don’t buy it. A cult leader on social media ad claims to know the answers to all life’s questions and wants to tell it to me-Not biting. Guys that seem too good to be true, investment opportunities that will help me retire in my mid-twenties. I know what I will get with all these things-half a chewing gum.

Published

Originally published at http://behindbhairavsmask.wordpress.com on January 27, 2022.