Monu's World: Teepi K and Teepi A

Teepi K and Teepi A were best friends and classmates too, if they got lucky. The school they studied in had a policy of mixing up the students at the beginning of every academic year, and consequently, the students had no choice but to mingle with new classmates and make new friends every new school year if they ended up in a section that their friends were not in. None of the students liked it and every year in April when school reopened for the new academic year rows of students could be seen crossing their fingers and fervently praying that they could be with their friends in the new class. Teepi K and Teepi A would be seen doing the very same thing and they would be glad about every opportunity that they got to be together in school if it turned out that they were not in the same section. If, on the other hand, they were in the same class then they would be inseparable and would gleefully celebrate their good luck by buying the 50 paise vanilla ice cream from the ice cream seller who came tinkling his bell every evening alongside the main road beyond the red brick wall.

It used to amuse Monu no end seeing the two Teepis go together everywhere and hang on to each other's arm as if the world were coming to an end. The older kids used to tease the Teepis for their conjoined-twins-like behavior, while the younger ones generally indulged them. Teepi A did not live anywhere near the neighborhood but a little distance away near Jhoole Ki Maatth. While this did affect Teepi K somewhat, she did not let the distance act as a damper to her overall spirits or need of a playmate. There were the other children including Pinchu who was the same age as herself and Teepi A, but Teepi K preferred the company of Teepi A to everyone else. Teepi A had a younger brother, but he rarely came to play in the neighborhood. Whenever the children went to Jhole Ki Maatth to play Teepi A would happily join them as it meant that she could play for a longer time since her house was located just adjacent to the playground.

Sometimes Monu, Meethi and Raka would wait patiently along with Teepi K for Teepi A to join them. These slow-ticking minutes were usually spent in the living room of Teepi A's house where the quartet would be stationed on the comfortable sofa with all eyes fixed firmly towards the kitchen doorway of Teepi A. The reason for this patient wait was rather unique. It so happened that Teepi A lived with her paternal grandfather along with her parents and her brother. With both parents working, it was up to her grandfather to watch over and take care of her and her younger sibling. And usually on weekdays, when Teepi A and her brother came back from school, her grandfather used to prepare hot phulkas with a dollop of butter to eat with tea or milk, whichever the kids preferred. The aroma that came off the plates when the phulkas with hot butter melting over them made their way from the kitchen towards the living-cum-dining room of Teepi A's house was simply heavenly, and the quartet of Raka, Meethi, Monu and Teepi K would not be able to take their eyes off the dishes as Teepi A and her brother hungrily devoured the food. Although Raka, Meethi, Monu and Teepi would have had their evening snacks when they came back from school, the sight of melting butter on hot phulkas was something that always made their mouths water and took them on a culinary high from which they did not want to come down at all. As each phulka topped with melting butter made its way towards the small table that acted both as a hall table as well as a dining table, Teepi A's grandfather would courteously ask the quartet eyeing the plate longingly, whether they wanted a phulka, and every time the quartet would shake their heads saying "nahi uncle", but never taking their eyes away from the plate. And so the process would continue as a group of four dark heads would follow in unblinking silence every plate of phulka and butter as it emerged from the kitchen and was placed before a couple of hungry children who wasted little time in cleaning up the plate, even as few drops of saliva would seem in danger of falling from the corner of the mouths of the four dark heads who never seemed to get tired of watching the same thing over and over again.

Once Teepi A and her brother had had their fill, they would take their plates back to the kitchen, and this would be the time for Raka, Meethi, Monu and Teepi K to come down back to reality from the culinary heaven they had been in just a short while back. The experience would have left them with a longing and bliss that only childhood is capable of providing and as Teepi A would come out of the kitchen the quartet would happily join her on the veranda looking back just once more at the kitchen doorway, and making up their minds to wait until the next opportunity came to make them forget any worries for a few precious minutes and rise up like feathers in a calm cerulean sky.