Nangla's Delhi

One could only try and imagine what the environment in the class room would have been like before. Maybe all the desks from all the class rooms were collected here, in this room, when they were first purchased. Because today, apart from the neat rows of desks here, several had been piled up for storage. Crumpled sheets lay in drawers without doors. It was a soundless room and so it was difficult to imagine what conversations would have sounded like during free periods.

Is this a school about to break for vacations? A man is sitting on a bent chair in front of an empty class room, his eyes running from spot to spot over the corridors and the locked doors. Behind him, in the empty room, a thin carpet (the kind spread to seat many people) lies in one corner. In another corner are a pile of new school books, tied together with a plastic rope. Maybe this class room is not used for children to study. Maybe that is why there are a few big desks in it, and no chairs to sit.

I could hear the man's voice, "Desks : 200, broken : 50, in proper condition : 150; fans : 25, broken : 3, in proper condition : 22; cupboards : 2; locks : 17, broken : 5, in proper condition : 12..." And so he continued, jotting things in his file. He would write something, and then look around, wondering about what it was that he hadn't counted. I wondered what all that could be, He had already counted the windows, window frames, stationery, etc.

It was breezy where he was sitting. He was sitting right at the edge of the corridor, in the shade. I looked again at the desks in the class room I was next to. Each desk had an imprint of his hand, made on the dust, as he would have touched each desk, walking along as he counted them. He would have counted a row of desks, and brushed the dust off his hands by rubbing them on his trousers. His trousers would be marked by thousand fingers of dust.

I walked towards him. I wanted to know what gaze he cast on the school when looking at it through its objects alone. He sensed me approaching, looked up at me and smiled. This was his permission for me to begin talking to him.

I asked, "Sir, do you know where you will be shifting to? Where the school will shift to?"
He stretched his body as if to relax his muscles and said, "Yes, we do know that now. But we can't shift till the basti is broken, and till all the students have been issued their transfer certificates. They will be issued till the 29th of this month. And in any case, all things will be shifted before we shift."
"Where is the school shifting?"
"Nearby, to another school."
"Do you have to make an inventory of all the things?"
"What can I say! The government doesn't spare anything. If it were upto the government, I would also have to count all the bricks. How does it matter to the government whose difficulty this becomes!" (He said all this in one breath, without thinking twice about saying anything He just
kept looking at his papers and speaking.)
Just then a teacher called out to him from inside a class room, "Listen! The Transfer Certificates Register has run out here. Bring another one, and bring the stamp as well."
He replied, "Of course" and started muttering under his breath. "Now I will have to count the registers again, and make a new list. If there are any scratch marks on any list that has to be submitted, the teacher in charge won't sign it." He walked away, muttering.

He was gone three minutes, and the silence around me seemed to deepen. I saw there were other people in the school. They appeared from, and disappeared into doors. The man returned. Perhaps the conversation amused him.

"Yes, so what were you saying?" he sat down as he said this.
"How many students are there in the school?"
"I'm not so sure. There are 60 students to a class. The school is till the fifth standard. There are three sections to each class. So there must be roughly 1000 students in all."
His arms were crossed in front of him, and he nodded his head as if to affirm to himself the correctness of his calculation.
I said, "It would have been a bigger problem if you had been required to count all the children in this school like you have had to count things."
Hitting his foot on the floor he replied, directing his eyes at the teacher issuing transfer certificates, he said, "Arre, we have records of that. But if we were asked to count, we would have been in trouble. When we go out for a picnic or something, it becomes difficult to keep count of forty students. And to count them all!"
"Is everyone being sent to the same school?"
"That's what we've heard, as of now."
"And all these things also have to be shifted to that same school?"
"No, by the grace of god that school has everything it needs. All these things will be sent to the office, to be issued out to that school if they need something, or to be passed on to a new school."
There was a brief pause, and then he said, "Isn't it weird! If they had to break this place down, why did they have to give all the facilities of school, dispensary, water, electricity? It is so unsettling to have students come to get their transfer certificates issued and not be able to answer their question about where to gain admission now."
His eyes shied away from mine as he said this, as if he was answerable to me in some way.
"Did you have a favourite student?" I asked him.
He laughed and said, "They are all dear to me."
"But there must have been someone who you liked so much that you wanted her or him to sit on the first desk of the classroom?"
"Yes. Basheer. He had come two days ago. He has just finished his third standard, and moved into the fourth. He stood first in class. When he came to collect his Transfer Certificate, he was wearing his school uniform. He had a notebook in his hand and his hair were oiled and neatly combed. He came and stood at the door. Looking at him, one would think the school is only going on a break, and will resume after a while. Everyone kept looking at him, all the teachers I mean. To ask him if he had come to get his transfer certificate would have been like a blow to the image he presented before us. And the school did not have the courage to look into his eyes to ask him, "Have you come to study today?" There was silence. And then he spoke after a few minutes, asking for his certificate. I gave him his certificate, and patting him on his back, said, 'Study hard'. He left, and all of us kept talking about him for a long while after that. Time seemed heavy then."

Our conversation came to an end here. I left, thinking, "How does someone console himself, in the breaking, dissolving moulds of life? Who is to know in what form something will make an appearance before us, and where we will fit into it? So that he doesn't break, each person has made himself up in tiny fragments, so he can push himself from one place to the other, piece by piece, and not shatter because of a jolt."