First Smile

Kritvik Bhatt

The white clock in the middle of the white painted wall was slowly ticking. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.

“The Napoleonic Code, or the Civil Code of eighteen-zero-four, did three important things. First of all, it…” The faint voice of a female teacher surrounded the clock. Then, what followed her voice was the sounds of chalk continuously being scratched and hit on the blackboard.

My eyes were narrowed, fixed on the needles of the clock. My head was tilted down a little, and was fixed from the support of my right hand, with my elbow on my wooden table with a smoothened yet rough surface. The teacher’s figure, who wore a green saree, turned to us kids again, and I turned my uninterested eyes to her. My eyes had dark spots beneath them, and I felt like I was about to sleep. My lips were shut.

“Damn… History is so boring…” I thought.

“For some reason, everyone thinks that History is a boring subject. However, I used to love all those stories and facts we were taught, at least till the ninth standard. So, in tenth this year, I didn’t really think I’d be associating the words ‘boring’ and ‘History’ together. But, no doubt, it’s obviously hard and only rot-learning at some point.”

Some more seconds passed by as I heard her lecture, uninterestedly hearing her words. “The civil code, however, outlived the French ruler,” She said, empathizing on each and every word. “That’s the essence of this code, kids. And that’s what makes it so revolutionary. It’s even seen as a transitional code between the ancient monarchy and the modern times.”

I tilted my head down at the book lying open on top of my desk. The left page of the book was pure white and empty, and the right one was half-filled by the words ‘The End of The French Revolution: Napoleon Bonaparte’. There was a picture on the right too, where Napoleon sat on a horse which stood up on its hind legs, against a dark mountain blurry background. “The schooling system sure knows how to make someone as interesting as Napoleon boring,” I thought. “No doubt people criticize the education system.”

As I was glaring at the words in the book, my mind suddenly diverted to the thoughts of Sana. I remembered her cute little face with smooth plain white skin beneath her black face mask. I remembered the little golden beads she was wearing, and how straight strands of her open hair smoothly fell upon her ears.

I didn’t give any expression, and I zoned out to reality just after a second. “Oh, what will she be thinking about me if she notices me in this weird position?!” That was a little silly to think, but I acted upon it too. I suddenly moved my back backward, straightened it, moved my right arm down on which I had been balancing my face, and tried to look a little representable, formal, and charming, at least by my body posture. “Hope she didn’t watch me in that position. She would have been thinking I’m unenergetic and boring, maybe,” I thought with my eyes seeming a little more focused and attentive.

DING, DONG! DING, DONG!

The bell rang and the History class was over. Everyone stood up at once. The teacher turned to her desk at the left—her right—and then walked over toward it. She closed the book in her hands, took up the other books on top of the desk, and then turned back to the door.

As she started walking to the door, I turned my head back, noticed everyone standing up, and then turned to the front, doing the same with my legs. “Thank you, ma’am,” Everyone sang in unison. Yeah, they sang. But I, who obviously didn’t know about this ritual of saying bye to her, stood silent as I looked at her walking from front of me to my right to the door of the classroom. She stepped in the corridor, turned right, and vanished away.

There were no classrooms on the other side of the corridor. It was an open one which had just a lane of windows attached to each other through which people could look at the greenery of the school below on the ground, which stood in the middle of our building and the juniors’ one on the other side. The other building in the front was a part of our school, but it didn’t have an open corridor like ours. In fact, they had closed ones with a wall of glass between the climber-plants climbing at them and the corridor.

Just as the teacher left, the voices suddenly rose up. What was a disciplined mass of students suddenly turned into a chaotic pattern-less lump of people in the same white shirt and trousers who were all roaming here and there, out of their seats. The room was suddenly filled with the indistinct chats and laughs of my classmates.

I sat down again and turned to my back, looking uninterestedly at all those people who were somehow so happy as they cracked jokes and laughed at other’s. It felt like everyone was happy with life, without any worries.

I then, acting like the one who was filling up the quota of all the sadness and despair of the class, turned my head to the front, looked at the ‘Civil Code’ written on the algae-like dark greenish board with white chalk. Some more words were written below it, and some on the right, after being divided by a horizontal line in the middle. My lips were shut and silent, my eyes focused as I didn’t have anything better to do.

Suddenly, for some reason, I turned to my left, and then slowly rotated my neck to my back. I looked at Sana standing beside her seat and talking to a girl on the back of her seat. I noticed that she had long, straight hair touching the belt of her trousers.

“Yeah, and then that guy quitted the game in rage!” She said.

“A real piece of shit, wasn’t he?” The other girl, whose figure was actually covered by Sana’s, replied. However, I could make out that the other one was sitting, because Sana had her face tilted down, and some of her left side was visible.

“Like, I don’t know what the problem with such males who just can’t accept their mistakes is! Like, the team just lost the game because of you, and then you’re acting like…” Her angry but cute faint voice reached my ears in the middle of all that indistinct chatter.

I was twisting my head to the front again, avoiding being looked at as a creep, and then I noticed some guys and girls in front of the board taking out their lunchboxes as they chatted with their friends. I then turned to my right, looked at the corridor where students were talking and chatting with their lunchboxes open.

I then turned to my left, tilted my back down, opened a zip of my bag, and then pulled my lunchbox out, while closing the zip. I kept the box in front of me on top of my table. “I would like to befriend someone, but all of them already have their own friends, maybe,” I thought as I kept the box on top of my desk. I then fixed my fingers at the lid of my red colored thin lunchbox, about to open the lunchbox, and then I felt a little uncertain. I frowned a little, turned to my right, noticed students eating, turned to my left, noticed students eating, and then as I had my face fixed at the left, I slowly opened the lid. I then turned to my lunch.

“There are not even new admissions in tenth grade, man!” I thought as I took a bite inside my mouth and started to chew, with the class having fun behind my back, and my eyes fixed on the blackboard since I had nothing better to do. “Ninth and tenth in India are considered as one, because for the national level ‘board exams’ in tenth, registration starts one year prior. Therefore, transfers from school are rarely granted in tenth, and only granted in exceptional conditions,” I, for some reason, was explaining it to me. I then gulped in as I turned my head downward at the lunchbox, looking at the rice mixed with the cooked kidney beans, my favorite. I sat there silently as I noticed some people walking from my left side to outside the class. “Yeah, no doubt no one’s gonna come talk to me. At last, I must be looking so… so unapproachable, so… depressing, and boring, and all that stuff. Why… would anyone come talk to me?”

As I took up the spoon filled with my favorite dish, I opened my mouth and moved the spoon in. I closed my lips, moved the spoon out, and then started chewing it slowly. My eyes were fixed on my lunchbox–out of nervousness… or maybe out of introversion.

I remembered the voice of me laughing heartily. “Ahahahahahaha! Ah damn, ah damn! Ahahaha!” I laughed out loud.

“Maybe… that… No doubt, that was the last time I had laughed real with my real friends,” I thought.

“Stop it, Jiya! You’re… You’re being too funny now!”

“Hey!” Someone banged at my desk.

I quickly turned my head to my left, looking at the figure of a girl looking into my eyes, frowning. “You’re new here, right?”

“Y-Yeah,” I replied shyly, scared by her imitating posture.

“What’s your name, then?” She then asked.

“Kr-Kritvik…”

At this, I saw her face turning from serious and angry to a little disgust. She smiled a little. “That’s why the teacher had difficulty pronouncing your name.”

“Y-Yeah, I know.”

“So, how did you manage to transfer to another school in tenth? You were not here in ninth grade, were you?”

“Yeah, I’m new to the school.”

“So, how did you come here?”

I started to open up and cool down a little. “My father got a job here. So, I just had to come here with him.”

“Ah, good. Where were you living before Noida?”

“Faridabad.”

“Ah. Close to Gurgaon and Delhi, right?”

“Yeah,” I nodded, my eyes lighting up a little.

She nodded a little as she heard me and then moved her right hand up from my desk, straightening her back. She then turned back. “Okay then, Kritvik. Meet ya soon.” She said as she turned to her right—my back—and started to walk away.

“See, I said ya he was new here,” I heard her faint voice telling someone. “I know everyone in our school.”

“Like, really, he got to transfer in tenth grade…” I then heard Sana’s faint voice replying. My eyes opened wide. I then turned to my lunchbox again. I took in another bite from the spoon, moved the spoon out, and started chewing. As I chewed, I smiled a little as I thought about what just happened, my head tilted down.

“No doubt, it was gonna be the topic of discussion in this school.”

“I didn’t even talk to Sana, but, for some reason, I was still smiling. Yeah, I had never really had any experience with girls, and even such an incident as this was making me smile and blush, man!”