Life of An Indian Girl (@ KSA)

|2| Am I screwed?

When the bus rolled in through the back gates of our school, the students had started to crowd the ground for the morning assembly. We hopped off the bus and went in our separate ways. Megha promised to complete her story in the afternoon. I rushed through the ground and climbed the stairs two at a time to make it up faster but the kids coming down and the weight of my bag pulling me down stronger than even gravity wasn't helping matters.

As I reached up and turned to the corridor, I saw that Stephy was walking towards me. Before I could speak, I was pushed from the behind.

"Could you be any slower? Keep your things in the class and come out fast or you're in it for today", came the voice from the back.

I sighed and turned to look at her, "My sweet Manu, have we ever been late to the Assembly before? No. So just chill, okay?"

She just arched her eyebrows, her face set in a judgemental look. I decided not to argue any further. I entered the classroom and left my bag and abaya on the chair and hurried out.

—————————————————

When we reached the ground, most of the students were arranging themselves into their correct positions under the watchful eye of the teachers.

"Anu, look. There's Maureen", Stephy whispered.

"I can see that. Now let's go take our place before the teacher notices that we are actually late every single day", I whispered back as we ran to the front and got into the line. There was a collective groan as my classmates started moving backwards to accommodate us.

"Hi Pretty!", I said standing behind her and taking one arms' distance.

"Oh, you ca-"

What she said next was drowned out by our PE Teacher's sound, but I did get the gist of it.

"Good morning everyone. Teachers and Students, please get ready for the assembly. School, Attention! Stand at ease. Attention!"

After the daily encouraging (yeah, right) piece of advice from that teacher whose name I have no idea of, even though she's been at it for more than a year, it was time for exercise. Our PE Teacher gave everyone the rhythmic beats.

"1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.
8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, next, change."

We lifted our hands in unison out of fear of the teachers. The first two exercises were pretty easy. Just hand play. The last three exercises were the problem. It included moving our body. I mean, the nerve of the school authorities to make us, the students of IISR, jump and bend over and take sit-ups! It's just blasphemous! And I had the biggest fear of hitting the person behind me with my butt.

But we did it.

Or at least some of us did.

I stifled in a laugh as I watched Pretty taking sit-ups. It was better to call it stand-ups in her case.

We fixed our uniforms and prepared ourselves for the long assembly as the exercises came to an end.

In our school, every day any one class from Kindergarten to Senior Secondary section took turns conducting the assembly. The assembly of the kids are inevitably too cute and precious whereas those of older ones are almost always hilarious as they keep screwing it up.