A Gloomy Sunday

It was a gloomy Sunday. My mother tore me away from my warm, cozy blanket-heaven by dragging me from my feet off of the bed. Being the eldest, back then I was the only child of age to attend Sunday school, a fact that I utterly despised. Despite the gut feeling telling me that the day is going to be the worst ever so far, I begrudgingly did my morning routine, drowning in jealousy at my siblings who’d get to watch Tin-Tin in an hour or so. It is funny how sometimes a six year old can have a better grasp of worldly affairs than the adults, and my six year old self was of no exception. To this very date, I agree with that scrawny short haired chatterbox, that Sunday schools suck big time, period.

I used to go to a prestigious Sunday school, which had a few thousands of students. It had three awful attributes, one, the morning assembly, two, the teachers and three, the prefects. The morning assembly, which I found stupid from the very first date that I went there was doomed to be stupider that day. As usual, my mother dragged me to the Sunday school barely on time, just for me to be dragged to the line leading to the morning assembly by a prefect. Yes, we had lines going to the assembly, and they were double lines because we comprised the biggest Sunday school student body. Usually I end up not having a partner because of my not-so-friendly attitude towards those obnoxiously enthusiastic girls who could bother waking up early in a Sunday morning just to prepare a flower platter. I always wondered how they could smile from their toothless mouths and say goodbyes to their parents without crying, knowing that they are just about to spend a few excruciatingly painful hours in this hellhole. But as my gut told me earlier in the morning, today is the worst day so far, and I was paired with a cry-baby boy, in the girls’ line. The boy was brawling his eyes out, and had a booger streak flowing down his right nostril. I was utterly mortified by being paired with him, so I directed my deadliest frown to that horrendous witch of a prefect who paired us. She smirked evilly at me and left, overly swaying her humongous derrière and plaits infested with ticks thinking that she was the ultimate femme fatale. I had a different opinion obviously.  

I looked at the boy beside me and it dawned to me that he was the only other sane person left in this crazy part of the world. He was bravely crying among a multitude of girls without a care of the booger streak flowing down his nose. While trotting to the assembly grounds I kept looking at the way he brawled, until I got enough of it. I reached for the handkerchief pinned in his chest and put it on his face, signaling him to wipe that booger, because I cannot let myself down to such a level where I had to talk to a booger boy in the girls’ line. He looked at me and wiped his face, and his crying subdued. I saw a greenish yellow patch on his hanky, because he used the outer side to wipe. I understood that being sane doesn’t necessarily mean intelligent. Ignoring the patch, I inquired him about the reason of his incessant brawling. He then pointed at a cement gutter, in which a black puppy, completely black from its nose to tail, sat curled in, looking at us. The boy had wanted to keep the puppy, but his father had refused. Then I realized that the boy wasn’t as sane as I initially thought he was. 

The boy, Jaliya, was indeed a good company in the boring assembly where overly enthusiastic students kept on ‘performing’ performances, which we both did not care about. Usually the performances comprise of speeches that do not make sense, horrible recitals and on rare occasions, corny dramas about how to become a ‘good kid’. Jaliya showed me how to make a traditional drummer shadow, which was actually impressive, and we had a little fun making shadow figures. But the day was doomed to be bad, and it started raining cats and dogs out of the blue. We ran searching a shelter, all of which were occupied by thousands of students. We were left with no other solution, but going to our class, and we were drenched. On our way we stopped by the puppy, but the lucky bugger was staying completely dry under that odd cement gutter, wiggling its tail happily at us.

We left the puppy there and ran to our building, where I got to know that Jaliya was not in my class. He was in grade two, the senior class in the upper floor, which broke my heart a little. I just knew that I am never ever going to meet him again, because I rarely go to Sunday school and I was determined to make my father stop from sending me there altogether by pleading to him nonstop. Jaliya did not know this, so he happily bade goodbyes and ran up the stairs to his class. I entered mine on the ground floor, and had three slaps from that ghastly woman that we call the ‘class teacher’ who volunteered at Sunday school just so that she got addressed ‘teacher’.

It kept on raining the whole day, so I was not allowed out. I had the habit of taking a break from that cluttered mess of a classroom by asking to go to the toilet. I never went to the toilet, because I could not imagine myself going in to that smelly, germ infested place. However, I did not want to lie, so every day I went to the entrance of the toilet, and then took a detour and roamed for about a quarter of an hour. I kept on sulking inside until the final bell rang, but because this day was going just about fine as a normal bad day would go, my father was late to pick me up. I kept on staring at the rain, and I saw the puppy looking at me from his gutter. Being a budding introvert, I felt uncomfortable under its gaze, so I looked away. I was elated when I saw my father finally coming to take me home, but he was walking, that meant his motorbike was broken. I hated walking home on rainy days, because all the dog poo on the pavement get dissolved in rainwater, and I have to step on rainwater while I walk. A disgusting thing to do.

I held my father’s hand and walked home with him. He’s a charming man with a smile always decorating his face. We had different personalities, but he was more understanding of what I felt. And talking about feelings I felt weird in my tummy and glanced back, to see that black puppy following us. I tried shooing it away, because I did not want another helpless being seeking my guidance in this cruel world. I had enough siblings to guide, and having a puppy would definitely make me too busy. The harder I shooed, the more enthusiastic it became in following us. Finally the absent minded person that I had as my father came to his senses and realized that his daughter who was holding his own right hand was doing something weird. He turned back and saw the puppy I was desperately trying to shoo away. Then he did the most sensible thing he could do – note the sarcasm - ; he lifted the puppy from his left hand and started walking towards home as if nothing abnormal happened. I advised him to leave the puppy, because otherwise he’d be spending more for its food and medicines and other whatnot, but he just smiled. I realized that sometimes my father wasn’t the brightest person on earth. So that day was the first of many which I had to take care of an imbecile who could not talk, but could bark very loud.

Today, more than four years later from the date we buried that dumb excuse of a dog near the pikake jasmine plant, I feel that particular Sunday, which dawned many years ago, wasn’t that bad after all.

--Thrividya--