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soon.’
    ‘Who’ll marry her?’ Chitre asked. ‘Anybody would run away seeing her face.’
    ‘What about her big boobs?’ Surya remarked. ‘Isn’t that reason enough?’
    We sat there in the cool shade of the woods, enjoying our ice-candy. There was a damp, greenish smell all around. We could hear someone chopping wood somewhere. Someone must be cutting the branches. I thought of Shirodkar and wondered what it would be like to sit here with her, all alone.
    ‘How nice it is to sit here, isn’t it?’ Chitre remarked. ‘It would be great if we could have our classes here.’
    ‘You bet!’ Surya said. ‘We’d even understand everything then.’
    An image formed in my mind. The rocks were large enough for our entire class to sit on and we could have the blackboard resting against the big tree trunk. We could sit in a large semi-circle, unlike the straight rows in the class. Shirodkar would be right across from me and catch me seeing her then!
    ‘Joshi, Ichibhana, your ice-candy is dripping.’
    That broke my reverie. The ice-candy had left a big stain on my shirt. I would have to wash it off before reaching home or hear a mouthful from Aaisaheb.
    ‘Surya, when shall we visit the bay?’ I asked.
    ‘Anytime. Shall we go now?’
    ‘No. Not today. But we should visit soon.’
    ‘Whenever you say. ’
    We saw Bhaishetye coming towards us sucking on his ice-candy. He has come to our school this year from some remote village in Konkan. He stays with his sister and calls her husband jijaji. ‘My jijaji got transferred here, you know. So I had to come with them, you know.’ He speaks in a typical Konkani sing-song accent, and did not quite seem our type, until the day he told us about Bhaween from his village. God, that was unbelievable! We were stunned to hear of her exploits. Surya could not believe his ears. We realized this fellow was far beyond his age. We stopped teasing him from that day onwards. We wouldn’t have minded if he had joined us at our adda, but he is always running late. In fact, he just about manages to reach in time for the assembly every morning.
    ‘Come!’ Surya said, making space from him on the big rock.
    Surya allowed Bhaishetye to lick his ice-candy and said, ‘Ichibhana, Shetye, can anyone visit this Bhaween girl of yours?’
    ‘Anyone,’ Bhaishetye said, without looking at him. ‘All she needs is a maund of rice.’
    ‘Even boys like us?’
    ‘In fact, she prefers boys like you. They don’t last long, you know!’
    ‘What fun, bhenchod,’ Surya said loudly, jiggling his knees. ‘Have you ever visited her?’
    ‘Me?’ Bhaishetye looked at all of us. Then he confessed, ‘No. I could never dare. My mother would have broken my leg.’
    No one said anything for a while. Surya broke the silence asking, ‘Joshi, what’s the next period?’
    ‘Physics; followed by Biology, Drawing and PT.’
    ‘Ichibhana, what the hell is this Physics all about? I cannot make head or tail of what that fellow teaches.’
    ‘Me too,’ Phawdya added. ‘He simply drones on and on and on.’
    We sat there for some more time. Our Physics teacher, Redkar sir, mumbles and lisps so much that we cannot understand anything he says. What’s more, two lower teeth are missing from his mouth. When he reads out a formula or a theorem, it is total chaos. The other day, he was teaching some properties of liquids and gases, when Teredesai decided to play a prank. While explaining the property of gases, Redkar sir drew a big circle and another oval one, more like a balloon. Teredesai asked, innocently pointing to the elongated shape of the oval one, ‘Sir, what does this look like?’
    The whole class began to laugh as everyone knew he was referring to the shape of a condom. We expected Sir to get angry and give him a tight slap, but he bowled a googly.
    ‘You’ll understand it well when you grow up. If you don’t, come to me. ’
    Teredesai did not know where to hide his face.
    ‘Oh, we have Biology