The Ruler

I seated myself upon the threshold with my back leaning against the perpendicular wall, and stretched my legs forward, balancing myself on its narrow space. I was in the habit of sitting here in this posture whenever I had to ruminate on something that deeply affected my emotions or caused great rumpus in my mind, disturbing its peace. And I began to recollect what had had happened at the school or in the classroom. In reality, nothing noteworthy had happened at the school. But, I was feeling guilty, I felt like a man who had just committed a horrendous crime. I really was terribly depressed over the consequences to come.
It all had happened just when the social studies teacher had left the classroom. Had she stayed a little longer at the classroom, I thought, I would not have got myself into so much trouble as I had done now. Or if the mathematics teacher had come to the class on time, this terrible thing would not have happened either. ‘Had I stayed home today’, I thought remorsefully, ‘I would have been devoid of all these fears and worries.’ ‘But, what is the point in talking or thinking about different conditions or circumstances in which things would all have happened for better?’ I said to myself, ‘what happened has happened.’ Yet I was getting more and more anxious as I thought what was going to happen the next day. The worst was not over, it was yet to come.
I felt down in the dumps as some people put it. At the worst, I would be severely beaten by Rasanga`s father, that tall, lean, placid man with a stormy temperament; at the best, I would be thoroughly humiliated by him. ‘If the worst came to the worst’, I shuddered to think that, ‘I’d be both leathered and embarrassed.’ The future presented to me such a grim prospect that there was more or less danger in every possibility I considered.
When I had returned home at about three o’clock in the afternoon, I felt I was not myself. Usually, I would have stripped myself of the school uniform and put on a pair of shorts; then I would have sprinted to the well and had a brief wash; thereafter I would have wolfed down my lunch despite that I took lunch at the school too. But that day was different. I did take my school uniform off and put on a pair of shorts. I did have a brief wash too. I did so lest mother should reproach and perhaps punish me. But I had lost my appetite altogether; I did not even want to look at my lunch let alone eat it! Mother sounded rather incredulous when I said I would not eat. She said it was quite a remarkable thing to hear me refuse to eat my lunch and that it augured well for the whole family. If only I was in a mood to share her laughter!
If she knew what was going to become of me, her adorable little son the following day, she would indeed sympathize with me. But how could she know about my problem, when I myself remained so silent? She sure was to be totally ignorant about it for she was no clairvoyant. And when a fellow is in such great trouble as I did, does it matter whether he misses one meal or ten meals? How can a man enjoy himself today when he is so sure that tomorrow will bring him such great catastrophe?
I had heard that some people got killed when they were beaten, particularly if the blows landed on their heads, injuring their brains causing hemorrhage in the brain. ‘Tomorrow’, I thought with great fear rising in my heart, ‘I might be beaten to death.’ If I got killed in a skirmish with Rasanga`s father, the whole school would come to my funeral. My friends would have a great time eating biscuits and drinking soft drinks. I remembered how we had enjoyed ourselves at a funeral of a friend’s father. I had drunk several cups of soft drink and pocketed some twenty Mary biscuits to eat at home (in addition to what I had eaten at the funeral).The principal himself would make a speech at my funeral expressing his deep sorrow over my tragic but preventable death. No, he would not beat me to death, for if he did so, he would be put in the jail and would have to remain imprisoned for the rest of his life. Yet, he would embarrass me to death, and I should be made the laughing stock of the whole school.
‘Why do I think such gloomy thoughts over what tomorrow will bring for me?’, I thought while wondering if I could not be a little less pessimistic about my predicament. But the more I thought, the surer I felt that I was closer than ever to an ineluctable catastrophe. Oh! How so
stupid it was of me to do such a silly thing! I must be as mad as a hatter, no, still madder! Now I was beginning to realize why my wise, old father often called me a donkey. His calling me a donkey had always offended me, but now I was more convinced than ever that he was absolutely right in his judgment and that I was, in reality, a donkey in the human form. How is it possible that the parents can see in advance what their children are up to? It may be because they are older and wiser, or perhaps it is also possible that they can remember how they acted while they themselves were children and the little follies and stupidities they committed as children. It amused me a little to think that father was seeing himself as a child in me and that he himself must have been no less stupid in his childhood; this amusing thought lifted my gloomy spirits a little. But, presently, I relapsed into the old, fretful state of mind.
I shuddered to recall what Rasanga had told me at the school. He had told me that when they were living in Mahawa, a naughty boy in his class had broken his pencil box. He had complained to his father about that boy. The news of the broken pencil box, he told me, had infuriated his father. So both the son and the father had waylaid to capture the little culprit and settle the scores. In a fit of anger, his father had hit him on the head so hard that the boy in question had swooned. Rasanga had admitted to me quite frankly that he had been scared out of his wits by the blow his father had dealt that boy. I had felt curious to know if that boy had been killed in that deadly skirmish with his father, but could not ask him that since the teacher had come to the class. But, I guessed that he must have been killed by that blow. Now the disaster to happen manifested itself to me in such vivid detail that I shivered in fear. That he could have exaggerated the facts of the incident did never cross my mind.
It was one of my inveterate habits to sit in front of the television from 5.30 in the afternoon to at least 9.30 in the night. There were many days when I watched TV for even longer time. My parents would often berate me for my addiction to the television which my father had rechristened as “Devil’s box”. Many a time he had threatened to smash it or sell it off to some fancy buyer. But it was pretty obvious that he was only blustering out. No sane mortal would ever buy an over-used black and white television with a broken knob, a twisted aeriel, and a dusty tube. Besides that, it needed the expertise of a rocket scientist to tune it to get clear pictures; I alone knew how to tune it setting the aerials at the right angle to get at least moderately clear pictures. That day, however, I was too depressed to watch TV, and opted to remain on the bed in my room under the pretext of reading a book. So great had been my father`s consternation at my absence before the television in the parlor that he himself came to my room and asked half-mockingly and half-anxiously, ‘Are you ok?’ I nodded my head to imply that I was well. I feigned to be so engrossed in the book I was reading that father presently left the room. To be honest, I felt great fear that he would dig deeper and force me to creep out of the shell into which now I had withdrawn.
At the dinner-time, unlike on all other occasions, I did not take my plate to the parlour, but sat at the table pecking at the meal. Father did seem to have noticed my change and cast an inquiring glance at me. What if he began to interrogate me? The very thought that he would grill me gave me quakes since I had known him to be a relentless interrogator. And he was about to pose a question to me when the grandfather asked him about the fertilizer subsidy offered to paddy growers. As he was expatiating on the matter of fertilizer subsidy of which I had hardly any idea, I slipped out of the kitchen, like a stealthy cat, into my room. Soon I was on the bed, with the quilt thrown over my body, covering it from the head to my toes. But all night I lay tossing on the bed, and was unable to catch even a wink of sleep….
To me the following day was more or less the day of Last Judgment. I felt like a criminal to be hanged in a short while. Yet I knew I had little choice but to go to school, since my parents would never abide my staying home on a school day even for the fairest of the reasons. The rule was so stringent that I never dared to transgress it. I literally trembled as I thought, ‘This may perhaps be my last day at the school.’ It was, however, both frightening and comforting: frightening because I would no more be living on this earth; comforting because I would no
longer have to get up so early, go to the school, and get punished by those horrible, unkind teachers for neglected homework…
I was about to cross the road, when I saw Rasanga and his father coming from the right on a scooter. I could not venture to look in that direction, and felt my heart beginning to beat faster than ever….As I crossed the road, the previous day’s incident flashed across my mind in the vividest details. I had been toying with Rasanga`s ruler, a precious gift from his aunty who had just returned abroad. Suddenly I had wondered if it could be bent in two placing it between my thumb and forefinger. I tried to bend it in two, and was applying pressure from both ends to bend supple ruler, and make the two ends meet in the end when Rasanga warned me against breaking it. And I replaced it in his pencil box. Yet soon when his attention was focused on a neighbor, narrating some adventurous story, I resumed working on it. Suddenly, to my consternation, it cracked in the middle and broke into two parts. I was beginning to wonder what really had happened when an angry Rasanga yelled, ‘You, you broke my ruler, you stupid donkey…’ and threatened to complain the matter to his father. I made many an attempt to mollify his anger but to little avail….
When I was about to enter the school premises through the huge iron gate, trembling like a fish out of water, I heard someone calling me. Turning back, I found Rasanga signaling me to stop. He and his father too were crossing the road and were coming towards me; I knew that the moment had come. That decisive moment between life and death! My fears were doubled, tripled and quadrupled….I felt like running away from them as far as my short legs could carry me. Yet, how could I even walk let alone run when my feet were so stamped to the ground? I had no doubt that the worst was just a few inches away from me; and the gap was getting narrower and narrower with each second passing. I heard the sound of water rushing through the gutter, which ran by the wall encircling the schoolyard. What if he picked me up and plunged me headlong into the gutter? I looked in terror at the gurgling gutter and felt sure that there was water enough to drown me, a dumpy fellow…
Now that they were as close to me as ever, I felt it could happen at any moment. I tried to smile but felt as difficult to move my lips as if they had been sewn together. To my vast surprise, that lean, tall man asked Rasanga with a genial smile, pointing at me, ’Is this your friend Thanula?’ Rasanga nodded with a smile. ‘Glad to meet you young man we’ve heard a lot about you from Rasanga.’ I wanted to speak out something for the sake of politeness but felt too astonished to do so due to that anticlimax, so I tried to grin as broadly as I could. To be frank, I was still suspecting that the volcano would be erupted sooner or later. But, soon he wished us a good day and walked back to where he had halted the scooter….Now that we were going towards our classroom, talking about the Test match between Sri Lanka and India to be commenced that day, I asked as casually as if it was the world’s most ordinary thing, ‘Didn’t you tell your dad about the broken ruler?’ I used the phrase, ‘the broken ruler’ as if to imply that the ruler had broken itself or that it had happened to be broken and that I had no connection whatsoever with regard to its` being broken. ‘Yes, I did’, said he, ‘and he told me that such type of rulers were available even here and promised to bring me one today itself on his return from the office.’ Oh! I sighed with great relief, and hoped he did not notice my sigh….