eFiction India eFiction India Vol.02 Issue.09 | Page 24

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STORIES

THE TEACHER
    USHNAV SHROFF                                   

Born and slapped immediately by a
rather angry doctor, Ushnav Shroff is
one of the few Parsis walking on this
planet with a dark sense of humour.
An ardent fan of Heath Ledger, he
claims to have wasted his life seeing
‘The Dark Knight’ at least a prime 67
times. Writing is his passion and the
words his boon in the sense that the
ink is his water and a pen his spoon.
Rhyming obsessively, he likes being
happy with the little things in life such
as a novel or a hammock to read it in.

I

T WAS THE spring of a new decade.
Flowers bloomed on the trees outside
the diner, whereas the shrubs were
the defecation spot of the dogs. In 2010,
America seemed to be blessed.

The eighty-year-old guffawed and stalled
from slurping the soup. Evans had seen
everything in his life, but getting a warning
before consuming soup was not one of
them.

The name might very well be deceiving, but
for the past nine years Ivy Studios entertained a horde of people. Divorces were
settled at these tables and marriages made.
Birthdays were celebrated, marking the
occasion of being one year closer to oblivion. From illiterate drunks who could
barely hold their forks, let alone their laughter, to sophisticated graduates who deemed
the arrival of a new age, this place had seen
it all.

“You think I haven’t burned myself enough
in this body of mine, eh kid? Huh? I mean,
look at you. Having dinner with me, when
you could have been out enjoying with
the ladies on a special night like this. You
should be worried about that. Not some
imbecile old man ruining his mouth.”

On the fourth of July, when evenings were
spent in homes smiling over a cheeseburger
and waiting for the fireworks on television, two individuals found themselves in
the diner. Specially decorated for the occasion, the national flag was on each table.
The smoking area had both fags and flags.
On a day where family reunions were more
important than television reruns, Evans
Narmunto and Timothy Sanders sat around
a table, sharing the restaurant’s infamous
chicken kungpao soup.
“Take a mouthful slowly, sir. You don’t want
to burn yourself.”

eFiction India | June 2014

It was Timothy’s turn to snigger now.
“Come on now, sir,” Tim’s mouth brought
up a sneer. It was just possible that the
teacher was teasing him. You could never
know anything with him. Once in a lecture
of his, he’d directed the students to rest their
heads and drift off to sleep. The elated students hadn’t even questioned his train of
thought and had gone off to sleep. As and
when each of them woke up in the span of
an hour, they had to jot down and analyse
every dream they had in the class. People
with excuses of not having had any dream
during the class were failed, whereas the
others were marked. Such was his eccentricity. “Who are you calling an imbecile?
You taught us the best there was to learn
and you know it. It seems only like yesterday that you entered the class for the first