Free I Kissed A Girl In My Class by Abhilash Gaur Page A

Manu dropped his bag on his bench, and hurriedly drew a
Jolly Roger on the blackboard since there was no witness around to
tell on him. Then he hurried down to the tap stand and filled the
watering can with the hose that had not been removed since the
previous day.
    He saw Rachna
Ma’am’s green Premier Padmini come in as he walked down the
driveway to Neha’s sapling. Some students had also been dropped to
school by their parents and they were playing on the swings. It
won’t be long before Neha arrived, so Manu quickly poured water
around her plant and then did the same with his own, all the time
taking care not to splash his shoes and trousers. He had to give a
long explanation for the state of his uniform at home the previous
day.
    Manu hurriedly
returned to the building and stood at the newspaper stand to await
Neha’s arrival and enjoy her surprise. But he was disappointed.
Neha came in a hurry and rushed up the stairs without noticing him.
A minute later, she hurried down the steps, towards the ground,
again without noticing him. It was clear that she hadn’t stopped to
see the sapling on her way in. From the door of the school
building, he saw her filling the watering can at the tap stand and
carrying it with great difficulty, using both hands, to the
sapling. She stopped and stared at the soil for a few moments,
obviously puzzled. Then she walked down the row of saplings to see
whether the others had also been watered.
    Manu suddenly
panicked. All along he had wanted Neha to know he adored her, and
now that she was about to figure out his feelings, he was very
afraid. How will she take it, he thought. Will she be angry, will
she hate me, will she tell the other girls and mock me, will she
complain to a teacher? A jumble of possibilities arose in his mind.
Neha had finished her survey and was walking back, leaving the
filled can in the ground. Manu fled up to his classroom and waited
with bated breath. His heart beat wildly and he hoped that no other
student would be around to witness the scene, if a scene was what
Neha intended to make.
    He heard
footsteps, and then the small smiling face peeped inside. “Hi,
Manu, did you water our sapling?” An idea came to Manu suddenly.
“Er, not really,” he said, “I was left with a little water in the
can and thought I would pour it on your plant. But it was only a
little, Neha, and you will need to pour some more. These are hot
days”.
    Neha nodded, not
knowingly or wisely, but innocently. She hadn’t read his mind and
had gone back to pour more water. The crisis had blown over. Manu
leaned back in his bench and thought how foolish he had been, and
decided not to woo Neha so overtly. Instead of coming in early, he
would time his arrival with Neha and then help her openly.
    Manu again came
early on Thursday but instead of running down to the taps, he
browsed at the newspaper stand. When Neha came, he asked her if she
had seen any of the others in the ground, and when she said ‘no’,
he suggested that they go out together and finish the job rather
than crowd around the taps for their turn with the others. It was a
wonderful feeling, just he and Neha tending to their saplings with
no Priya or Anisha to bother them. He talked to her about the
coming unit test and algebra and whatever else came to his mind.
She laughed at some of his jokes, and he felt encouraged, but she
didn’t understand some of them at all, and Manu realized the
foolishness of trying to act smart.
    This became his
morning routine, and he finally found the confidence to walk up to
Neha and talk to her whenever he saw her outside the class, and he
was quite sure that she had not gauged his feelings about her at
all.
    Two weeks passed
in this manner, the saplings had not grown much, but some had grown
more leaves than the others. Samar’s sapling was covered in tiny
leaves like a cleaning brush, Deepti’s was also looking strong, but
Manu’s had actually lost a leaf or two, without showing any