“I haven’t seen you in my office for almost a month! I was starting to miss you Rishidhar.”
Radha groaned. He had told Ameen miss several times his name was Radha and not Rishidhar. But she insisted on calling him by his first name. He had to let it go though. She was after all the principal.
“I’m glad you missed me,” he said mutinously.
Radha was an unusually well-behaved and obedient child. He usually followed instructions and listened to his teachers. But he had had a bad morning. His latest test results had gone home and though he hadn’t failed in anything this time, he hadn’t scored as much as he should have, according to his parents.
His father had given him a long lecture on focussing on his studies as he completely ignored the near perfect score he had gotten in Chemistry and English, and his mother had taken away his books, his magnifying glass…and his chart. He could have dealt with any other punishment but that?
Then to add insult to injury, when he reached school all ready to dig into a new clue that Sagar had accidentally discovered, both his sidekicks had informed him they were going to stop playing detective for a while since they hadn’t been as fortunate as Radha.
Though they had assured him it was a minor setback and they’ll be back in action soon, it had been too much for Radha. He had snapped at his teacher during class and she, having little patience for hooligans such as himself (not that he completely understood what the word meant but there had been enough fire in her eyes to let him know it wasn’t anything good), had promptly sent him to Ameen miss’s office.
“What happened Rishidhar?”
Radha pouted and turned his head away. He wasn’t going to give in. Not this time. He was tired, so tired of being told how to behave and to stop – stop what he’d like to know. He had even contemplated the grand idea of running away. Energee bhaiya had killed that in its bud though. He had taken Radha to his house and seeing that small square of land and potentially what his life may look like if he ran away had sent him running home instead.
Ameen miss tried again. “Rishidhar if you don’t tell me what happened I can’t let you get back to class. And if you can’t get back to class, who is going to solve all your cases?”
That got Radha to crack a smile. The dark cloud suddenly lifted and he found himself chuckling. “I didn’t do anything miss! I was only asking Gayatri miss why it is called elephant in the room and not room in the elephant because that would make so much more sense.”
Much to his pride, Ameen miss grinned. She asked despite herself, “And why would it make more sense?”
Warming up to the subject, glad someone had asked him to clarify rather than asking him to shut up and sit down, he said, “Because if there is a room inside the elephant, it means the elephant is dead and we can go back to learning something more useful like who has been stealing pencils from the arts and craft room.”
Ameen miss shook her head. Students like Rishidhar were rare and you could either learn to deal with them or allow them to disrupt the class. It seemed Gayatri still hadn’t learnt the art of handling him. She sighed. “Rishidhar please apologize to your teacher and try, really try, to focus on your studies a little, yes?”
“I am focussed!” said Radha indignantly. “It’s Gayat…”
“Radha I do not want to argue with you. You may go.”
And perhaps it was the usage of the moniker that did the trick but Radha left quietly, suddenly feeling a whole lot better – Ameen miss had that calming effect on her students. Room in the elephant, he thought with a chuckle. Or was it elephant in the room?
Oh who cared! It wasn’t like an elephant would enter his classroom anytime soon. For starters how would they climb the three floors? Besides, why would they even want to be…
…and Radha found a pleasant diversion from his abysmal morning. For the rest of the day was spent in happy reflection on how English was indeed a funny language.
This is the fifth post in the series. To know more about Radha, click here.
tales of Suchita 
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