Sunday In the Orchard
Nimi Kurian
5 March 2008, 05:09The girls were hungry. Sunday afternoon was always a bad time. The school lay silent in the afternoon sun. The nuns had long since disappeared into the Community. Looking out onto the town they could draw no inspiration for food.
“Shall we run down to Rams?” suggested Vasu.
“Oh yes! Run down. But how will you pay for it?” asked Chris.
When they had pocket money, two girls would be chosen to run down the steps to the market, buy parathas and mutton rogenjosh and run up again. The others would keep cavey either from the playground or from the sceince lab garden. It was rather safe because the nuns never maintained a 24 hour watch. They trusted the girls!
“Or…we could run up to Mugda’s house,” said Harini.
“No, its already 3 o’clock. The nuns will be out anytime now. There won’t be time to get to her house, have a good feed and rush back…” said Shirley.
“Oh we have to do something. I am so hungry I think I might die!” said Chris.
“Shall we raid Apu’s bakery?”
“We could. But today is Sunday and Apu doesn’t bake on Sunday.”
Sadly they walked up the long drive. They had just turned the corner when Harini shouted.
“I know what we can do…” Excitedly they huddled together while Harini whispered her plan.
“We will raid the orchard!”
The others agreed happily. They crept down to the junior school and followed the steps that led them behind the kitchen and up the pathway into the orchard. The orchard was indeed a haven.
Soft green grass grew in profusion, birds chirped happily with the abundance of fruit and a faint sweet smell of decaying fruit filled the air. The peach blossoms had long since given way to nice, luscious peaches, the plum tree was full of small, red ripe plums, the pear tree too was laden. The purple of the passion fruit shone like Christmas lights from the depths of the deep green of the creeper.
“Wow! Its heaven!” whispered Chris.
Soon they were eating their way through plums, peaches, pears, passion fruit. After what seemed like an orgy of eating they sat down under the plum tree with satisfaction. They smiled at each other as they lazed around in the sun. It felt good to lie down under the trees with a cool breeze blowing, the sun not too warm and the peace only broken by the birds.
They must have fallen asleep because they woke with a jolt when they heard the five o’clock factory siren go off.
“Gosh! We are done for!” said Harini.
“Come on, rush! We could have been missed,” said Vasu.
They dusted their clothes so that no tell tale leaves would be clinging on and hastily pushed their hands through their hair and ran out of the orchard. Frantic with worry at being caught out they did not take care. For, from the kitchen who should be looking out admiring the bounty of the Lord? None other than the kitchen sister! She was a rather mean one, and was always thinking up schemes and punishments.
They ran down the pathway and just when they thought they had made it, they saw in front of them the white and black clothed figure of the kitchen sister!
“Oh no!” they let out a collective gasp.
She smiled at them. “And where have we been this afternoon?”
“Sister, we just took a walk down this path…”
“We never went into the orchard…”
“We were just walking up and down this path…”
But of course none of these excuses were good enough. She gave them a choice.
“You can have the cane or two teaspoons full of castor oil each.”
Naively the girls chose castor oil. The sister smiled.
A while later they were rushing to the toilet. But the good sister had got there first. All the toilets were locked!
I guess you had the castor oil too!!
— Jude · Mar 7, 15:59 · #