When, Dorji, the only friend of mine was in eleventh
standard, twice plus one ahead of my class.
Two of us were good friends despite of difference in age, I
assumed he was of seven years older than me but age didn’t make any compromise
in our friendship. In fact that was more than just a mere friendship. I still
remember him, most of the time guiding me to the right path as he was able to
differentiate between do’s and don’ts of the life, a guiding principal of human
architect as he was much more seasoned than me. But on other hand despite of
his advices, I use to get indulge in to unexpected activities as I was not much
aware of what will be the consequences.
Without my notion the time was just running with its own
pace as someone rightly said “time and tide waits for none”. The days got
matured to weeks, weeks to months and by the time I could realise, it was too
late for me as it was a time for me to attend my term examination, the only
fear of student life.
Although I was not at all prepared to write, neither I could
pull my feet back from it, so I did it. On 17th December of year 1999, early in
the morning, in my half sleep I heard “kota wooii ko … roog tey bak tham chan
school ga result doog pay dey na na. Nan bo dey lay khey du may mo?”[Dear boy,
you better wake up, all the students are going school to get their result. I
suppose you should be going] it made me suddenly awake and start rubbing my eye with my hand, were I saw my
mom standing right in front of my bed and about to say something more. But I
excused myself from her and with a brief daily morning chores, I made my way to
the school without any willingness to go.
In the school at the time of result declaration, I was with
Dorji who was also anxiously waiting to know his result. My heartbeat increased
its pace as the result for my class started declaring by our class teacher from
ascending order. It went “Chenhco 1st rank, Pema 2nd and so on so for … “but I
didn’t heard him uttering my name besides of almost more than half of my
classmate. Even then, I stood there with patience, mean while my friend Dorji
got his result whereby he stood a first rank among his class. Then he
approached near to me with an excitement on his face, nose held up in the air
with protruding chest as if he is going that YES I DID IT holding is result in
his hand. He whispered “nan ga result ma nong chi mo” (you didn’t get your
result), instead I first congratulated him and I was about to say that I didn’t
get yet but the husky voice interrupted from the back side of me, “Sonam” it
was my class teacher and there was a pause in his speech. Then said, “hope you
will do your best next time”. I could not interpret what he really means to
say. Instead I made my way towards him from the crowd of other students and got
my mark sheet.
From there I look at my friend Dorji but I could not see any
more smile on his face as I doubt he was able to understand what my class
teacher really means to say about me. Without looking in to my mark sheet in
front of the crowd, I ran towards Dorji with result in my hand and had a closer
look on it. To my surprise white sheets was full of red markings and on the
extreme corner written in a bold letter “FAIL”. For the moment I could not say,
neither was able to think besides of wishing to get disappeared from the crowd.
Even these days when I go back to my childhood memories, I
find a vivid picture of my friend boldly standing in front of me saying “my
little friend, you must make hay while the sun shines”. From that incidence I
was able to realize that the only reason behind my failure was not studying
when I was given an opportunity to study.
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