Jasmine

The world outside was grey, and the air felt heavy and dark. I stood on the veranda, gazing out at the rising intensity of rain, wishing it would never cease, but continue for hours, even days.

It had been raining relentlessly for three days. Our morning tuition was called off. Ashish sir our tuition teacher who usually cycled four miles to our home, couldn’t make it that day. About an hour later, we got the news that School had declared holiday due to the heavy downpour. With that unexpected holiday, my joy soared with the rain and happiness echoed amidst the clouds. I stood still at veranda’s edge, letting the rain grace my face. A cool breeze brushed against my skin, carrying the earthy smell of rain drenched soil and the redolent breath of jasmine, and white roses. From afar I could hear the chorus of birds, croaking of frogs, with clatter of thunderous clouds above my head. A delicate mist pearled across my forehead, the droplets adorned my face before tracing their paths down to my chin. By then, my feet were soaked and my pant legs had darkened its hue on bottom. Splashes of water, from veranda’s eaves gave me the cool tingling sensation on my feet. As happy as I was, there were three others, who also thrilled, with the sudden holiday message. The message came from a village student’s father, who got the news from school peon, Khyama. Brimming with excitement, the four of us gathered in our room, just off the veranda and discussed how to fill our bonus time. We decided first to play Chor-Police, a paper game, planning to play until the rain stopped and after that venturing out, perhaps along the riverside or up the mountain roads. Though I never wanted the rain stopped.

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Chor-Police, it is basically a four-person game, requiring four paper chits, each bearing a role: King, Queen, Police and Chor with assigned points. A blank sheet of paper is taken which serves as a scoreboard. The rules were simple: the four chits were shuffled and tossed. Each player would pick one and secretly look at their assigned role. The player with the Police chit had to identify the Chor. If the Police guessed correctly, they got points; if wrong, the Chor received the Police’s points, while king got the highest point and second highest the queen. You could say the real game is always between the Chor and the Police. King and Queen are simply the audience who enjoy the suspense and chaos. We busied ourselves with the game preparation and setup. Tasks were divided: one person cut paper into identical pieces, another assigned roles and points (King: 10,000 pts, Queen: 5,000 pts, Police: 500 pts, Chor: 0 pts). To ensure fairness, a third person folded the chits perfectly, and a fourth was ready to track scores. The four players’ names were written on the blank sheet, in the order: Shikha, Barsha, Samit, and Seema. Shikha insisted that her score be noted in the first column, as we believed the player in the first column usually won. We had to concede, as she had the advantage of being smallest, a ‘six-year-old’ stubborn child often cried and called out to Mama if things didn't go her way.

The game began. As the tossed up chits landed, we each grabbed one. A serene restlessness prickled through me as I opened mine and saw ‘500 pts’. Now I got the very unwanted role. My job was to find the face of Chor among the faces of Kings. I prepared myself for the tough moment and cracked a joke, hoping to spot a less smiley face with hiding eyes, which must be the Chor. But it never worked; they were all too familiar with my tricks. I switched to my next strategy: reading minds through eyes and expressions, like Bond reading his adversaries across a high-stakes poker table. I observed keenly, every frantic movement, every misplaced smile, every pattern that might drag me towards a clue. Then, I spotted something unusual, a disorderly change in Barsha’s usual pattern. Her eyes wouldn’t meet mine for long, and an escalating tension seemed to ripple beneath her sudden, unexpected smile. Aligning all my observations I cast my final die. I raised my accusing finger towards Barsha and made my final accusation pointing her, “You’re the Chor!”. Silence gripped for a very moment. There were only the sounds of dripping raindrops from the broken thatch onto a pot nearby, and the buzzing of a wasp flying in the room. A thunderous voice erupted from my left. “I am the CHORRR!!” It was Seema. Barsha, smiling, revealed her Queen chit and wrote down everyone’s points on the score sheet with a big zero on mine.

This time, I prayed to God a little for the better chit before picking one. Finally, I picked it up and started looking for it. Midway, I saw ‘Ch-‘ and folded it fully. I smiled with a heavy heart and drowned fate. Barsha, now the Police, began looking for the Chor. She started scrutinizing Seema and Shikha. I also began asking counter-questions to both of them, attempting to show my confidence and assure Barsha I was certainly not the Chor. After a while, Barsha made her accusation: “Samit is the Chor!”. The gripping silence was filled by cheer and laughter. After two rounds of the game, I had got two consecutive zeros.

Chaos filled the air, drowning every breath in the room until the phone buzzed over our shoulder. Interrupting the game, Shikha scrambled up in hurry to answer it.

Her little hands fumbled as she picked it up.

‘Halooo…’, she chirped into the mouthpiece.

‘Yes, we are playing’, she giggled listening to the voice on the other hand. ‘Sure come along!’

‘Okay, I’ll tell them.’ Her giggles continued.

‘That was Ashish sir, he has some sort of fever.’ She said after hanging up.

‘So, what else did he say?’ responded Seema, with three of us starring at her.

‘He isn’t coming today, though he wants both of you to complete all of your homework by tomorrow morning. Otherwise you two will be sentenced to the zoo in replacement for monkey and donkey, where I’ll be in charge of yours.’ Shikha tossed the receiver back into the cradle.

Mama brought us some golden, entangled snacks, the kind with a name I could never quite pronounce. Once we had finished every crunchy bit, we dove back into our game. I glanced at the scoresheet once before we started, there was a bleak sequence of zeros in my column, while the first column had countless zeros trailing behind a single winning digit.

The game began with the third round , Barsha tossed all the chits into the air. All chits were picked up after they landed, there remained one. Before I could unfold it, Shikha exclaimed that she was the Police and, the very next moment, declared me the Chor. I shifted my gaze towards Seema and Barsha, hoping one of them would reveal they were the Chor, but both remained seated, looking towards me. I had accepted my fate and opened the chit. I saw there were many zeros written on it, and a one as well, I was the King. Shikha cried, “Noo!” and shrunk her face like a shrew. I jumped up, and the other two chuckled.

Again, a final toss was done, again the tossed-up chits caught random hands. And again, Shikha got the Police chit. Mama was observing our game for a while, “This is brutally unfair to my baby girl” she remarked, striding towards the kitchen. Barsha fought to mask her predatory smile, but Seema exposed it with a wince. Shikha became pale. A train of tears came silently down the side walls of her nose, accompanied by a whistling sniff. She threw the chit and strode towards the corner of the room where an air cooler was placed. She sat herself behind it, silently facing downward, both hands cupping the unstoppable current of tears. I went to her and asked her to come play. When she didn’t respond, I hauled her to the game by dragging one of her hand. It was then her sobbing transformed into a high-pitched wail, getting fiercely louder. Mama ran out of the kitchen and took her obstinate child after scolding me. Whenever I encountered children like these, I thought that, these are the ‘tiny demons’ of our world. Seema and Barsha watched all this, sitting there like the King and Queen of Chor-Police.

I stepped back onto the veranda. The rain had softened, and miniature raindrops created small, round waves on the water collected in the courtyard. Clouds were racing, rays from a distant sun pierced through them, casting a bluish-orange hue to the sky. Nani entered the room, announcing she’d heard from Khyama that the school would open, and there would be no holiday today.

The world shed its grey and the air was clear. Everything had changed, there remained only the intoxicating fragrance of Jasmine, keeping the very moment alive.