Nargis

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Nargis Khatoun was my best friend in school. She came in the same bus as me. Her bus stop was at a masjid in Dighwadih. Her house was right next to the masjid. Green colored makaan single storied. She lived on the first floor. The staircase was outside the building from the road to her house balcony. We always saw really bright coloured clothes drying in her house. She had a round face, big forehead, wheatish complexion bordering dusky, brown eyes. Because of her, a large forehead got associated with Muslim girls.Now I see Katrina, Dia mirza all justifying my discovery with that big forehead.
I was one of the non English speaking girls in the convent and Nargis gave me company. We d talk about all our relatives and analyse all the school friends. We d sit and say which girls were best friends etc. I was extremely fond of her. Then, we had a maths test. In fourth std so we were into long multiplications. I got full marks in the test. Those days the answer sheets were given to you to check. That time girls would be very guarded and ask for everyone s answer sheets if they had good marks. For me, this was a the first time I had done well in my entire school life. She asked for my sheet and sat with it for the whole period.Just when the bell was about to ring, she went to the teacher with it. Nargis told her about all the mistakes i had made. The teacher saw the paper, reduced my marks from 100 to 58 and went away. I was shattered. I had thought she wanted my answer sheet to copy the correct answers. I could not believe that the teacher could did not find all these mistakes when she was correcting. The Teacher could not have missed out on so many of my mistakes.I thought she had changed some numbers in the answer sheet. I could see the eraser marks but I could not prove a thing. I had no face to show to my class mates. I had done my exam well, I had got cent percent and suddenly forty plus marks were deducted.
Nargis made new friends after that period and left school in a year s time.
I never trusted friends after that.

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