Butterflies and Hurricanes

She always walked two steps ahead of me. Maybe because her legs were way longer than mine, and I had to walk twice as fast to keep up with her. But mostly because I was always too sleepy to be brisk walking so early in the morning.

I would hastily shuffle my feet faster, bag straps slipping off my shoulders, hands dangling at the wrists like a T-Rex’s, and cry out “Didi, rukoooo!” She’d look back at me, always a little irritated, and say “Walk faster. We’ll get late!”

The auto-rickshaw ride to school was always the same – long, boring, uneventful. All I could see as I sat on a wooden plank behind the driver’s seat – or the ‘patta’ as they called it –  were blobs of bright red. Big and small, silent and noisy, snot-nosed and chirpy. All of us stuffed like steaming momos in that tiny vehicle, parts of our bodies dangerously oozing from every crevice. Only big didis had the privilege of sitting on the cushioned seat. It was an unspoken rule that prevailed in every auto-rickshaw kingdom. Even the big seat had a system. The alpha didis always got to sit by the window. All of us tiny ones had to somehow adjust on that narrow piece of wood, usually with our bums half-dangling in mid-air.

Didi and I were usually silent while we half-walked, half-sprinted to our respective school buildings together. Both of us silently preparing ourselves for the horrors that awaited us. Half-done assignments, difficult teachers, unit tests we were grossly unprepared for, the friend who we had had a fight with, the fact that our ribbon was too scraggly, or that our P.T. shoes weren’t white enough, or that we’d forgotten our S.U.P.W. assignment back home.

We always underestimate how disheartening school can be for children. Just ask a kid who has a teacher’s remark in their diary they need to get signed by their parents. That was always the most humiliating, the most horrendous thing we ever had to go through. The red squiggles marred the purity of those white pages. They glared at you, screaming “Shame on you! What have you done?! Now you can never be the house captain!”

For us, the worst part was always getting up in the morning. The endless knocks on the door (and the bathroom), water sprinkled on our faces, the shakes and the slaps and the kicks and the groans every single day. Getting those five extra minutes of sleep if the bathroom was occupied were the sweetest, most cherished moments of my life. Running around to fill the water bottle, getting our hair tied, and drinking that godforsaken glass of milk. Oh, the milk. It was always too hot, and it was always too much. And it churned inside our stomachs till we reached school.

When we’d arrive at the cross-section, I knew she would take a right, and I always took the left. The senior school building – a grand, mysterious place. A place I had never dared to venture into. We’d casually say bye to each other at that point, and we would go into our separate lives for six hours every day. Hers, filled with economics and accounts, whispered conversations about boys and non-veg jokes. Mine, filled with silly made-up games, ghost stories and story books.

A few steps later, we would always, always look back at each other and wave again. We don’t know how it began. We don’t know why we did it. But to me, it meant a lot of things. It made me feel that there is someone around, ready to lend me six rupees if I wanted to have a burger. Someone who could always submit my leave applications if need be. (I was too scared to go to the principal’s dark, steely office). But mainly it made me feel that there’s someone who’s got my back.

My sister and I sat in the same auto, had the same milk, and walked the same steps to the only school we ever knew for fourteen years. But every day, our routes diverged like two railway tracks and took us to completely different worlds. Worlds we had very little idea about. But at the end of each hot day, I saw her sitting in the auto already, waiting for me, so we could go home together. And to me, that was enough.