All About Hussain: Two Knights and A Queen

Two Knights and A Queen

The school was done for the day and all students left except a few who stayed back for “extra hour” of study. Our Head Mistress took an extra effort to head these few students who took an extra effort to study and learn. My sister and Kiran’s sister were in the same class and who were taking this tuitions. Kiran and I too stayed with them. That day as soon as the tuition started and Madam entered the class both of us stood and said, “Madam, we don’t have any homework today.”

“Oh, ok. Not even to study anything?”

“Anh, we have a hindi poem to read,” said Kiran.

“Ok, study then, and then recite it out to me, Aloud! Without seeing!”

We wanted to go out and play but the poem was not too hard to learn it by heart. We quickly recited the poem to her and hesitatingly asked her, “Madam, Can we go out and play?”

She smiled and said, “Ok, But don’t go outside the school.”

We ran out of the class as two happy souls, who had nothing to worry about except the fact that the tuition was only for an hour and after that we cannot play. We first had a race to reach the sports room first and when we reached there we really laughed out loud without worrying about who had won the race. We ran back again, but as we reached to the door of the class Madam was in, we suddenly started walking for the fear that Madam would call us back again. As we moved ahead and she couldn’t see us, we started running again. We ran back.

Just then I saw “Choti Madam” (Younger Madam) coming from opposite direction. She was the daughter to our Principal and we seldom see her in our school. I asked Kiran to stop and said, “Kiran, Choti Madam is coming. What to do? We would have to wish her!!”

“What to do?” asked Kiran. We both were afraid to even wish her. I said, “Idea! When she comes we will start tying our shoe lace and pretend we didn’t see her.”

It was a small corridor where she came walking and as soon as she entered the corridor we both sat down in opposite directions of the corridor facing each other, bend our heads and opened our shoe lace and started tying them. We were tying it slowly as she walked between the two of us. When I saw her walk completely past us I raised my head and saw Kiran who was smiling. We both saw her enter the classroom to meet our Madam. We quickly ran into other room and started giggling. We then started to search other classrooms if any student has forgotten anything.

Another fifteen minutes of our search operation got us an eraser which Kiran allowed me to keep on a condition that we both will use it equally. Everything was going fine until we saw Choti Madam coming back from the room. What were we supposed to do this time to avoid wishing her? We quickly saw each other’s face and unanimously came to a conclusion without talking to each other.

We suddenly sat down in opposite direction facing each other to tie the lace of the other shoe.