I was told to take a seat in the front row, next to Atreyi Thakur. I didn’t know her personally, but I knew that she was best friends with Imon Majumdar, who travelled abroad frequently and was a repository of cool stationery and Toblerone bars (that only a lucky few got to partake of). They were the leaders of an unbroachable group and occupied the benches next to the sweet shop at recess.

While Mrs Lewis was writing down important dates from the Battle of Waterloo on the blackboard, I studied the portrait of a stocky little man in the World History textbook. ‘Napoleon had a really big bum.’

Next to me, Button laughed out loud.

Mrs Lewis turned around. ‘And what do we find so amusing, Atreyi?’

I wanted to be best friends with Button very badly. She was as fascinating to me as the unicorns, and that was an interesting turn of events.

Shamiana

June 2008

I was on my knees in the hallway, crawling from the XII Commerce classroom to the Humanities room opposite.

‘Nayantara, exactly what is it you’re doing?’

Shit. It was The Raccoon. Nicknamed after the giant dark circles that seemed to encompass the entire middle section of her face, The Raccoon was a history and civil studies teacher and, thankfully for me, rather wispy, both of body and mind. She would float into class in an unravelling sari and giant red beads on her ears and neck, deliver a forty-five-minute lecture on the demerits of socialism and float back out. We would then collectively snap shut our Indian history textbooks and, depending on the level of individual investment in excelling the upcoming ISC exams, bitterly complain or hysterically laugh. Of course, we could have interrupted her and told her she was teaching the wrong class, but the faultlessly polite young ladies of The House never corrected their teachers.

Looking back, it is distinctly possible that The Raccoon was blazed out of her mind through most of her classes.

Still, she couldn’t fail to notice the rotund, mop-topped blue-and-white figure trawling about on the ground in an otherwise deserted corridor.

‘I fell?’

Even as I said it, I felt the plausibility of my statement being called into question. This was in part because I had been caught mid-crawl, yes, but the sizeable chunk of spicy chicken chop in my mouth was largely to blame.

I had been sitting on the floor in the back of the huge Commerce classroom—where old, half-blind Mrs Chopra was writing copious notes on Microeconomic theory on the chalkboard—and stealing bits of the delicious lunch Aunty had packed for Cookie. She ignored me almost completely as I ransacked her lunch box, laboriously taking notes and only occasionally smacking my head when I made too much noise.

Now, to buy time, I clutched at the voluminous folds of my Catholic skirt and said, ‘Ow. My leg.’

The Raccoon stared at me with large, raccoony eyes.