It was a regular morning of a 9-year-old girl roaming pointlessly before the assembly in the school corridor.
So the 9-year-old girl is me. I was moving towards “4 A” and I saw the board. I increased my speed of footstep and after a while, I was on the big blue gate and after a pause I stepped inside the class with a smile which was important as the tradition to greet that lady sitting on the red comfy chair, having herself half down and pretending herself like a dictator (so yeah, I did. I bowed down with a smile and greeted her).
It was one of the darkest times for a student of the 4th standard when none of the students is talking to you and you have no friend. I took my seat and started thinking about who was to blame for my situation.
There were 15 mins in the prayer assembly so you can join me here.
I was the kind of girl with a great amount of confidence, carelessness, manner, creativity and laziness. These were my characteristics while being a kid from kindergarten to 3rd standard. I wasn’t popular neither was I a part of a specific group nor had a duo like Jai and Veeru.
So to seek some attention, I joined a group of three girls whom I used to admire from 1st standard after section reshuffling. But they didn’t let me in the group, they had certain tasks for me (now that I look back samjh nahi aata bhai group tha ya roadies).
So somehow Astika from 1st standard managed to get entry in that group which consisted of three supercool girls.
They had their own unwritten rules:
- You can not talk to someone who had a fight with any of them.
- You cannot share your lunch with others before them.
- You have to score more than 25 out of 30 in the unit test to stay in the group (although they hardly get 16 or 17 in social or English).
They keep asking me random things like 18×19, 17 ×4 or 19×8 which I think is the worst part of their company. I know why they do it, obviously to keep me aware that I am a universal dumbo in maths. Being so honest be tables made me cry more them 100 times because I believe multiplication tables are the most sophisticated thing that could really exist.
And I still couldn’t believe that I have been so disciplined for almost 3 years straight. I did everything they wanted me to do just for validation.
But between this period of time, I gradually became a girl with a bad attitude toward people and bossy nature. These things are still in my personality a little and that is what I hate about myself. I soon started feeling unworthy, useless. Sometimes I see myself as a nerd and other times like a bitch.
And as I was coming to the 4th standard, I decided that I just couldn’t take this anymore. So I did what I thought was right (it was an agenda for me, now it sounds funny).
So, first of all, I stopped talking to them and they were not even affected by it. I started sitting far away from them and of course, for that, they asked the whole class not to talk to me as they termed me Ajeeb (now I genuinely believe that they were the kind of villains in Ekta Kapoor’s shows).
So that is it, and today I’m here sitting all alone. Nobody in the class is talking to me. And I’m finding who is guilty of all this. So, I guess I myself am guilty because I should know that I’m good enough just the way I am.
As the bell rang, we have to stand in our respective places, for the prayer whose lyrics gave me hope for the very very first time,
or I have noticed it for the first time in my entire school life to the date. It goes:
“We shall overcome,
We shall overcome.
We shall overcome, someday.”
Although, it’s a revolutionary song, enough to give hope for once because this represents the certainty of a better future.
After that, I survived the 4th standard and then I changed my school. Sometimes thing doesn’t mean better, it just means change.
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