Y is for.. Yearbook tale

When I got her friend request on Facebook, I could not recognise her at first. I scrolled her page to see all the pictures and realised she was the same, quiet girl from school.

I still remember the first morning she had walked into our class of 45 students. Her sparkling white shirt over crisp grey skirt partitioned by a brand-new grey and red belt already disassociated her from the rest of us. It was our last year in school, and parents were not keen on spending on new uniform for their 16-year olds. Eager to start a new life, we were not interested either.

‘Where can I keep my bag?’ she inquired upon entering.

‘You can place yourself in the front row, Ma’am will come and find you a spot,’ I replied trying to stop myself from smiling too much.

She kept her belongings on a bench and looked around for the timetable on the softboard, and then started to copy from it for future reference.

My friends and I stood in the last rows and spoke about her in hushed tones. ‘I hope I am not separated from you because of her, you won’t even have much space to sit!’ Payal remarked with her eyes rolling.

‘Shh, now don’t be mean. I can easily fit in with her,’ I said putting my hand on Payal’s mouth. ‘I am worried how the boys will react.’

The boys had occupied the last row at the opposite end and had been chuckling all along. Every student who entered kept his bag on his seat and joined the hullabaloo. Suddenly one of them walked up to the blackboard and changed the number of students from 45 to 48. There was a loud uproar on their side.

Payal and Riddhima could not contain their laughter. I couldn’t decide if I wanted to laugh with my old classmates or feel bad for the newcomer who was, thankfully, unaware of the joke.

The school bell rang, and it was time for our first period. Mrs. Newton entered the class and looked at fresh entrant in the front row.

‘Ah, you must be Yati Shukla,’ she said, lovingly putting her arm around the new girl. She looked around and introduced her to us. And then her eyes stopped at me, the class monitor. ‘Nisha, you will sit with her and help her adjust, is that ok?’

‘Yes Ma’am,’ I answered picking up my already packed bag. The boys looked at me with their mischievous eyes and I pretended to be completely fine with the shift.

Mrs. Newton took the attendance and stood up to scribble the number of students on the board. When she turned, her fingers stopped for a few seconds reading the number 48. We all thought she was conjuring a harsh punishment in her head. There was pin drop silence in class. She calmly took the duster and changed the number to 46. Then she turned around and looked at me and my eyes dropped with shame. At that moment we both knew that Yati won’t be making many friends this year.

And that is why I was surprised to see that only 10 years later, she had 1500 friends on Facebook. Yati now had perfectly sculpted body and oodles of make-up on her face which made her look very different from the chubby girl she was. Many of her photographs included celebrities from Bollywood, and on further stalking, I realised that she was a celebrated Public Relations Manager for countless.

And then there were my other classmates, all 44 of them, on her friend-list, some successful, some stuck in the same era, but none who had bothered to talk to her in that one year of high school.