Pardy and Siddy stepped out of their classroom giving each other a thumbs up and a high five. The smiles on their faces were brighter than the warm afternoon sun. The spring in their step was proof of the glowing confidence that radiated that they had got all the answers right.
This was their English Novel class test.
Q1. Montmorency was J's
(a) Cat
(b) Dog
(c) Pig
Q2. The Three Men in a boat had a holiday on River
(a) Thames
(b) Ganges
(c) Seine
Q3. J thought he had
(a) Liver disease
(b) Stomach upset
(c) Almost everything
Q4. Describe what happens when one of the three men jump in the river.
Q5. What was the reality of the trout and how was it exposed?
"The first one is, I am sure, the cat," Siddy said, pointing at the question paper.
"What? Nooo..," Pardy exclaimed with eyebrows raised. "It's the pig, Siddy," he yelled.
"Pig? Go and read the book again, Pardy. Montmorency is Jerome's cat," Siddy claimed with conviction.
"No Siddy. There's a cat called Tom that Montmorency gets into a fight with. But he is a pig," Pardy countered Siddy, urging him to realise that he was wrong. Siddy had to be blind to mistake a pig for a cat, Pardy thought with a chuckle.
"Guys.. guys.. guys," Dev pushed himself and barged into Siddy and Pardy, both of whom shuffled their feet in an awkward movement. "The river was Thames, right?" Dev asked.
"No, it was Seine," Pardy replied with a quiet confident smile, and turned his attention to the next question.
"What?? Seine? That's in France. They went to India and sailed on the Ganges," Siddy looked at Pardy and howled at the top of his voice. Then he turned his gaze to Dev and said in a soft voice, "Dev, don't listen to Pardy today. He hasn't read the book well; he says Montmorency is a pig." And Siddy broke into a loud guffaw.
Dev had a confused expression which subsided in a few moments. He wiped the sweat on his brow.
"Well, I asked because I wasn't sure that the river was Thames. But I am certain it's not the Ganges, Siddy. They definitely didn't go to India," Dev said with a distinct swagger. Then, he looked at Pardy and jabbed him with his elbow. "By the way, Montmorency is a dog, not a pig," he said, before joining the other group.
As they walked past the other gang of boys, Pardy and Siddy heard sounds of laughter.
"Both Pardy and Siddy have gone mad. One of them says the three men sailed on the Ganges with a cat. And the other says they sailed on the Seine with a pig," they overheard Dev say over a loud cackle to someone.
Pardy and Siddy gave each other a blank look as they munched a snack on the way to their school bus. The radiance on their face was swept away by the dark clouds of doubt. As the afternoon started giving way to the evening, their faces became as long as their shadows. Confused and dejected, they walked with their heads down.
***
That was because, today morning as the clock had struck 6 AM, Pardy had got a panicked call from his buddy Siddy.
"The English Novel test is at 3 PM," he had yelled into the phone, even before Pardy had fully opened his eyes from slumber. It was dark and cold as most mornings were for Pardy and this news could not have made it any brighter and warmer.
"And we haven't yet read even a single page of it," Siddy added to the bad news. "In fact, we don't even have a copy of the novel," he continued. Pardy sat up rubbing his eyes realising the gravity of the situation. "At the Library by 8 AM," he ordered Siddy and rushed to the bathroom.
"No copies available, all issued," the librarian informed them.
Pardy checked for it online in a desperate bid, but all deliveries were two days later. Siddy called their friends and asked them to send across scanned copies. But nobody had the time to scan so many pages at the last moment. Everyone was busy doing their last reading. In a final act of desperation, they decided that it was time to call their English teacher in a state of mad panic.
"Good morning Madam, this is Siddharth. Me and Parth need a copy of the novel for today's test," Siddy pleaded to Mallika Madam. "There are no copies in the library, and our friends aren't sending us their copies. Can you please give us a copy?" he beseeched her in a fervent appeal. With his fingers crossed and lips quivering, Pardy watched Siddy.
Mallika Madam had a sense of calm around her as she heard Siddy out. She cleared her throat momentarily.
Then she replied, "Ok Dear. I will send you a link to an app. Download it from there and read the novel in the app," she said. "And tell Parth too," she added.
"Ok Madam, thank you so much," Siddy said, heaving a sigh of relief before hanging up.
Pardy and Siddy got into action after Mallika Madam sent them the link. They downloaded the app and got the digital version of the novel there. For the next five hours, they speed read the novel "Three Men in a Boat" in that app on their respective phones. Rushing through all the chapters, both of them had finished reading the novel by the time it was 2 PM. There was no time to discuss anything. After a quick lunch, they had rushed back to their class to be on their seats on time for the 3 PM test.
With this kind of last-ditch attempt made in preparing for the test, it was no wonder that they had long faces as they walked to their bus in the evening after the test. It was disappointing for them to realize that both of them had got the first two answers wrong. But both Pardy and Siddy were still confident that they were right. Or on second thoughts, they weren't. Doubts started creeping into both their heads.
When the others were away, Siddy asked Pardy with a sense of hesitant trepidation, "The third one, Pardy? By the way, what did?umm.. you ..err? answer?" A drop of sweat fell from his forehead as he spoke, even as the afternoon sun had gone down.
"Well, I thought?hmm.. it was.. wasn't it.. almost everything?" Pardy stuttered when he asked a counter question with a similar serving of doubt.
"Yeah. I .. well.. marked that. But what if both of us are wrong?" Siddy raised what seemed like a legitimate query.
Pardy shrugged his shoulders in resignation. "I suspect we are?hmm.. wrong?err.. in all the rush, we have messed it up.. I am sure?err.. we are ..umm.. confused," he said.
"What about.. umm.. the fourth one? No, err.. let's talk about.. umm.. the last one first?I wrote?, " Pardy asked dithering.
"Oh that should be simple, isn't it? I remember that scene to a T," Siddy cut him off and jumped in excitement.
"The trout turned out to be a glass fish tank. It crashed when they tried to get it off the hook. Then they all got blisters on their feet as they danced on the glass amidst the fish gathering them. I wrote a nice couple of pages about that scene," Siddy explained with a wide grin.
His voice was full of delight remembering the comic scene, till he saw the expression on Pardy's face. His eyes twitched as he had never seen more wrinkles and frowns on Pardy's face.
"What happened?" Siddy asked. "Didn't you write about the fish tank?"
"I don't know, well, what.. fish tank.. err.. you are.. umm.. talking about," Pardy muttered.
"Why?" Siddy asked.
"I thought the trout was a bowl in which they found some tasty cooked pasta. And they got it down together with a ladder, and shared a nice, hot meal," Pardy explained.
"A bowl of pasta?" Siddy scratched his head. "Where did you read about that? You had pasta for lunch, Pardy. Why did you write about that in the test paper?" Siddy howled at his friend.
Pardy didn't know what was wrong. Was he too tense about this test? he asked himself. Had he read everything in such a hurry that everything got mixed up? Looks like it, he convinced himself.
"I am going to fail. None of the answers are right," Pardy murmured and shook his head, tears welling up in his eyes.
"Me too, Pardy. Unless you want to discuss the fourth question and check?" Siddy replied, still hopeful.
"No, forget it. What difference would one correct answer make?" Pardy remarked in stark melancholy. With hands hanging loose, and neck tilted sideways, he stared into blank space. Something didn't seem right.
Siddy opened the app on his phone and asked Pardy, "Do you want to recheck the answers from the book? For our satisfaction?" Siddy felt that if they check once, they may realise that they could scrape through. There might be some hope against hope for them, after all. Only a faint chance, he thought, holding on to the last straw.
"Forget it, Siddy. Let's see when Madam declares the scores tomorrow. Anyway, we are getting a D," Pardy replied, forlorn.
***
The next morning when Pardy and Siddy went to school, it might have been their worst morning in a long time. They waited for Mallika Madam to declare the scores.
Pardy and Siddy got the shock of their lives that morning. Mallika Madam declared that both of them had got an A+ in the test yesterday.
"How is that possible?" Pardy pondered aloud to Siddy, during the recess over lunch. "How did we get A+? We know what we answered. Besides, if one of us got an A+, the other should have flunked, right? How can we both be right, when we had different answers for almost all the questions?" he asked with a finger to his chin and eyebrows uniting in a frown.
"I have no idea what's going on. I know everyone calls us teacher's pets, but isn't this a bit too much? Why is Madam making it so obvious? We don't need such blatant favours," Siddy revolted. He sounded almost embarrassed with the unexpected A+.
"We should go and tell Mallika Madam to give us what we deserve. There is no need to gift us this A+ only because she likes us," Siddy continued. Then he bent forward towards Parth and whispered, "What will we tell Dev and gang?"
Pardy agreed. "This is too much. How can we get A+ when we expected to fail? Whatever we discuss after a paper in the future, everyone will think we are pretending," he asserted.
"This is not done. Let's meet Mallika Madam today after school," Pardy decided, and Siddy nodded in agreement.
At about 4 PM, Pardy and Siddy walked fast to the teacher's staff room, and accosted Mallika Madam. She didn't seem to be in a hurry. It seemed like she was waiting for them.
"Hello, I was expecting you both," she said with a broad, welcoming smile. "Surprised?" she asked. They noticed a distinct, mischievous smirk on her face.
"Yes Madam," Siddy spoke in all seriousness, neglecting her smile. "Why did you give us an A+, though we didn't deserve it?" he asked in all honesty, straight to the point.
"Madam, please give us the grade we deserve. You know we started reading only this morning. Next time, we promise we will read the novel in advance, so we don't mess up," Pardy backed up Siddy. Mallika Madam paused for a while.
"But I have given you what you deserve," Mallika Madam then replied, shrugging her shoulders, to their utter surprise. "Do you think that I will give you A+ when you haven't earned it?"
"How have we earned it, Madam? All our answers were wrong, isn't it?" Pardy asked.
He glanced at Siddy and waved at him to speak.
"Yes Madam, we checked with.. umm.. each other, and with Dev too. All our answers were.. err.. wrong," Siddy said.
"No, all your answers were right," Mallika Madam reaffirmed, with an enigmatic smile. She twitched her eyebrows twice as if to ask them, 'how was that'.
Pardy and Siddy glared at each other, scratching their heads. Either they had lost it, or Mallika Madam had lost it, each of them got this creepy feeling within.
"How is that possible, Madam?" Siddy asked.
"Because you answered all the questions right. They were based on what you read in the novel," Mallika Madam replied.
"But Madam, we gave different answers. How can both of us be right on the same novel?," Pardy pointed out.
"That's because you read different novels," she said.
"Different novels? No Madam, we read the same one - Three Men in a Boat," Both Siddy and Pardy yelped in unison.
"Well, same novel, different stories," she clarified, and laughed out aloud. She gave an eyeful to the huge number of question marks on the curious, blank faces of her favourite students.
"Sit down dears. You were part of an experiment, let me explain," Mallika Madam said. "And the experiment has succeeded," she added.
"What experiment, Madam?" Pardy asked, and Siddy looked on shellshocked.
"Well, of an app," Mallika Madam explained.
"An app?" Siddy asked.
"Yes, do you remember where you read the novel?" Mallika Madam probed.
"Yes, Madam.. On that app you sent. Ohh - So that app?" Pardy howled, slapping his hand on to his forehead. It seemed like a tube light had, out of the blue, switched on in his head.
"Yes - that app," Mallika Madam said with a grin.
"What about it?" Siddy asked, trying to keep pace.
"Madam - do you mean?.?" Pardy had a huge grin on his face as it dawned on him.
"Yes - you got it," Mallika Madam confirmed.
"So that app showed us what we?.?" Pardy started.
"SShhhh.. Yes, it's a secret," Mallika Madam replied, with a finger on her lips.
There was a stunned silence from Pardy on the other side of the desk for a few moments.
"Oh, that's why?.," Pardy gathered, and stared at Siddy, who was still wondering what was going on.
"Yes that's why Siddy went to the Ganges and saw a fish tank, and Pardy went on the Seine and had pasta!" Mallika Madam said with a broad smile. And then, she added, "And that's why there were no wrong answers."
"This is awesome," Pardy said, jumping six inches in the air. "Astounding but,?it is bizarre," he said, his smile giving way to a frown. Siddy starred at him blankly.
"What happened Madam? What happened Pardy? What's going on? What about the app?" Siddy asked.
As she walked away, Mallika Madam warned Pardy.
"This is a secret project. Don't tell anyone else. Otherwise, you know what will happen to your A+ grades." She winked, walking away, adding, "Explain it to Siddy."
Pardy had started thinking of spilling the beans of this awesome reading app to all their friends. How excited would it be to tell them about this awesome app? But if it was a secret experiment, now he didn't know how they were going to justify getting the A+ grades.
"Let them think we are teacher's pets," Pardy said, after giving it some thought, and explaining everything to Siddy.
"Yes, Pardy. We have no choice," Siddy agreed, jumping with joy when he understood the app experiment.
"And for heaven's sake Siddy, after the next test, will you stop discussing the answers with others?" Pardy implored, as they walked towards their school bus with arms on each other's shoulders.
As he boarded the bus, Pardy secretly wished that, someday after this experiment was over, every subject has books that changed based on who the reader was, and what the reader liked. So that there were never any wrong answers.
***
Know more about the author at ranjitkulkarni.com
