Lesson by Mohit Manohar

At dinner time, Ankit leans over the table and spits on Raunak’s food. Ankit’s followers—“gang,” as he calls them—laugh. 

“Ignore him,” Shashi, who sits next to Raunak, whispers.

At bedtime, the boys of Walsh Memorial Boarding School chant the Lord’s Prayer. After lights out, Raunak feels the need to go to the toilet. The toilet is connected to the dormitory through the dark corridor of the Cupboard Room and to most boys felt very far away, especially during the nighttime. One cupboard, forever locked and claimed by no one, was said to have skeletons in it. Raunak makes it to the toilet, sprinting past the Skeleton Cupboard. But when he pulls down his pants and sits over the latrine, nothing comes out. Just a minute ago, he needed to go to the loo, but now that he was there—nothing. He tries to push, feels a pressure build in his belly, when suddenly, someone knocks very loudly on the stall door.

“Who’s that?” Raunak whimpers.

Silence.

Raunak pulls up his pants. His heart hammers. The second knock rattles the door, shaking it by its hinges.

“Who’s that?” Raunak asks, a little louder this time. 

He thinks he can hear someone trying to suppress a giggle. He cracks opens the stall door, when someone from the outside kicks it open and a splash of cold-water hits him. He sees Ankit holding a mug in his hand, looking pleased with himself. His gang howls with laughter, as though something very funny has occurred.

The next day, during Value Education, Mrs. Sen asks the boys to open their books to Lesson Two. 

“This is an important lesson,” she says, “So I want you all to listen carefully. We will read the lesson aloud and then go over its meaning. Now, who wants to start reading?”

A few hands go up.

“Yes, Shashi,” Mrs. Sen says.

Shashi stands up. “After Jesus selected twelve of his disciples to be the apo-stools…”

“A-poss-tulls,” corrects Mrs. Sen.

“…a-poss-tulls,” says Shashi, “he came down from the hill and many people came to see him. Some of these people had diseases and they hoped that Jesus would cure them. Jesus cured them and said: love your enemies, be kind to everyone, even those who are unkind to you. If someone slaps you on one cheek, you should offer them the other.”

There is giggling from the back of the classroom.

“Is something funny?” Mrs. Sen asks. “Yes, thank you Shashi. You can stop there. We’ll go down the row and read in turns.”

Another boy stands up and starts reading. “The Father of Our Nation, Mahatma Gandhi, was inspired by the Holy Bible. He took this lesson from Jesus to heart and said, ‘An eye for an eye will leave the whole world blind.’ When the English were violent, Bapu said to us, we must be non-violent. We must treat others as we want to be treated by them–”

“Quiet in the back there,” Mrs. Sen says. “Pay attention to this lesson—all this will show up in your exams. Yes, Ankit, tell me, how must we treat others?”

Ankit is caught midway between tearing pages from his notebook and making paper planes. He was throwing these planes out of the window to see how many could make it to other side of the gutter that ran behind the Classroom Building. Only one plane had managed so far.

“Stand up,” Mrs. Sen says. “When a teacher talks to you, you must stand up.”

Ankit stands up.

“Now. Tell me.”

Ankit looks at his shoes. He looks out of the window.

“Minus twenty points from Blue House,” Mrs. Sen says.

Those in Blue House grumble. “Please ma’am,” Raunak says. “I know the answer.”

“Yes, Raunak, tell me.”

“You must treat others as they would have you treat them.”

Mrs. Sen smiles. “Close enough,” she says, “but you must treat others as you would want to be treated by them. But I’ll give you five points for that.”

“But ma’am,” Raunak protests. “You just took twenty points!”

“Yes,” Mrs. Sen says. “That is the only way some people”—she looks pointedly at Ankit—“will learn a lesson.”

During recess, Ankit and his gang corner Raunak by the water faucets. 

“You think you can act over smart in class?” Ankit asks.

“I was only trying to get us points,” Raunak stammers.

Ankit slaps Raunak on one cheek. “Now show me the other, you sissy.”

After class, Raunak makes an excuse to go to the toilet, but he goes to the dormitory instead. He knows he will be in trouble if anyone catches him there. He goes to Ankit’s bed and spits on it. He watches as his spit leaves a wet patch on Ankit’s white sheet cover. But spitting is not satisfying—should he pee instead? 

Then Raunak has an idea. He takes Ankit’s pillow and throws it in the garbage bin. But Ankit will easily find it there. So he takes Ankit’s pillow, runs past the area where Boxman sits with his stale baked goods and where the Canteen is, and throws the pillow in the big gutter that snakes from the back of the Classroom Building to the back of the Dormitory Building. Not many go to that in-between area between the Classroom and the Dormitory buildings. Raunak watches with satisfaction as Ankit’s white pillowcase, landing with a splash in the gutter, turns brown in the murky water.

He then runs to the Dining Hall, just to catch the end of the teatime. If you’re late for teatime, or indeed any meal, you risk getting caned. 

At bedtime, Ankit notices that his pillow is missing. He reports this to Father Matthew.

“Has anyone seen Ankit’s pillow?” Father Matthew bellows. “It’s a maroon pillow in a white pillowcase.”

Some boys shake their heads. Raunak tries not to smile or to look too suspicious.

“No one?” Father Matthew asks. The boys are all silent. Father Matthew becomes angry. “This is completely unacceptable. There is a thief hiding among us. How can Ankit’s pillow go missing if one of you has not stolen it? Stealing is a sin, and you will go to hell for this. I’ll cane each and every one of you if I do not find who took the pillow.”

Father Matthew once tried to cane each and every one of the boys over something else, but the operation was so exhausting that he gave up quickly.

After lights out, Raunak lies in his warm bed with a cool pillow underneath his head. He thinks of Ankit, who must have had to lie flat with nothing to prop his head up except his own hands, which, after a while, can get quite uncomfortable, and thinking this last thought makes Raunak so happy that when he wakes up the next morning, he realizes that he has slept an entire night without being troubled by the nightmares that usually visit him. 

Later that day, during recess, Shashi finds Raunak sitting by the playground.

“You heard about Ankit’s pillow?” Shashi asks.

“We all heard about Ankit’s pillow,” Raunak replies. “Matthew was shouting at the top of his lungs.”

“Arre, not that,” says Shashi. “Did you hear what he kept inside his pillowcase?”

Raunak shakes his head.

“All of his pocket money!” says Shashi, laughing. “After those seniors had their money stolen from their cupboards, Ankit thought that the pillowcase was the safest place. No thief would think to steal a pillow.”

“Who told you that?” Raunak asks. “That he stored money in his pillowcase?”

“I heard him saying it to his apostles in class,” Shashi says. “He’s very scared. His father had given him extra money before school started, and he is terrified of what his father will do if he finds out. Serves him right, if you ask me.” 

After class, teatime, sports, and washes, and right before Evening Studies, the boys of Walsh Memorial have some free time. That is when Raunak sneaks to the forlorn spot between the Classroom and the Dormitory buildings. The pillow is still there, soggy from the gutter water. Raunak fishes it out with a fallen branch and puts his hand inside the pillowcase. He pulls out—he cannot believe his eyes—five hundred rupees.

The smiling face of Mahatma Gandhi is wet from the gutter water, but otherwise, the notes would be good to use once dry. Raunak has never before held so much money in his life. With five hundred rupees, he could buy one hundred cream rolls or vegetable patties from Boxman. He could buy one hundred plates of vegetarian momos or fifty plates of chicken momos from the Canteen. He could avoid the Dining Hall food for months.

Raunak pats the notes dry with his handkerchief and then rolls them up very carefully, trying to draw out the moisture. He puts the bundle in his pocket. 

There is a rustling sound from somewhere nearby. Raunak worries that someone might have seen him. Going behind the Dormitory and the Classroom buildings is out-of-bounds, and he would be in serious trouble if anyone catches him there. He runs to the Study Hall. If you are late for Evening Studies, you get caned.

During Evening Studies, Father Matthew walks into the Study Hall and breaks the silence. “Raunak Sinha,” he announces, “Please come to my office.”

Raunak immediately thinks he has been caught. Someone has seen him sneaking behind the Classroom and the Dormitory buildings. Or Ankit has put two and two together and realized that no one else but Raunak would have stolen his pillow. Father Matthew is surely taking him to his office to punish him. But in his office, Father Matthew gives him the key to the Cupboard Room so that he can go and pack his bags—someone from Raunak’s home will come tomorrow to pick him up—and Raunak is so relieved to hear that he has not been caught that he forgets to ask Father Matthew why he is being allowed to go home in the middle of the school year.

The next morning, Raunak waits at the front of Walsh Memorial. The view from the front of the school is one seen in all of the school’s brochures: the stately colonial building of the Staff Room, the undulating hills studded with pine trees, and the Kanchenjunga Range glimmering in the distance. Raunak expects to see his father, who generally came to pick him up from school, drive up the road any minute, but instead, it is his uncle who appears in a Maruti van.

Raunak touches his uncle’s feet. “Where are Mummy and Papa?” he asks.

His uncle hesitates. “They are a little busy,” he says. “So they sent me.”

“Are they angry with me because I complained about the school?” Raunak asks. In his last letter to them, Raunak had pleaded that he be taken out of school. Now he wonders if he angered his parents by making such demands.

“Angry?” Raunak’s uncle says. “No, they’re not angry at all. They love you very much.”

Raunak’s home is a long car ride and a train ride away. When he finally reaches home, he finds his house packed with people. Some he knew, many he didn’t. He is taken to see his father, who is dressed in white, and when his father sees him, he bursts into tears. Raunak is shocked. He has never before seen his father cry.

Raunak is taken to his mother’s office, which has been rearranged. Her big study desk—where she met with her clients and discussed their court cases—has been pushed aside for a machine that looks like a long ice cream fridge, the kind Raunak has seen in the Kwality Walls store. But instead of having different flavors of ice cream, it has Raunak’s mother inside. She is asleep, dressed in a white sari, and there are small pieces of cotton balls in her ears and nostrils.

Raunak asks his father what his mother is doing inside this strange machine? Why is she not greeting him? Did she get his letter? His father cries even harder, his uncle cries, and Raunak too clasps his hands around his father’s waist and cries and cries like a baby.

Raunak’s head is shaved later that day. With a priest supervising, Raunak and his father clean Raunak’s mother’s body with cow dung, sandalwood paste, and Ganga water. Raunak notices that parts of his mother have frozen completely and feel as smooth as ice. The men in the family tie his mother to a wooden stretcher and load it in a jeep. They step out at the bank of the river—the elder men of the family carry the stretcher—and proceed to the ghat. They place the body on a pyre. The priest chants something in Sanskrit and gives Raunak a betel nut to place in his mother’s mouth. But his mother’s mouth is cold and stiff. Raunak’s uncle helps him, putting his fingers between the frozen lips to pry them open.

“Gently,” Raunak whispers.

The priest gives Raunak a piece of camphor to put in the mouth. This is easier to place as the betel nut keeps the lips apart. The priest breaks off more pieces of camphor and sprinkles it all over Raunak’s mother. He gives Raunak a burning torch and asks him to touch it once to his mother’s mouth. Raunak watches as fire rises from his mother’s mouth and her face begins to melt behind flames. 

Several weeks later, Raunak returns to Walsh Memorial School. Nobody knows what to say to him. Mrs. Sen excuses him if he doesn’t complete his homework. The Boxman gives him a free cream roll. Even Father Matthew doesn’t mind if he is late to meals or Evening Studies. Ankit and his gang stare at him solemnly from across the table. Nobody calls him a sissy when he cries, and he cries when he can’t help it, even when others are watching. Only Shashi holds his hands and comforts him. “Gays!” the boys would have yelled before. Now they just look away. 

Several days after returning, while searching for something else in his cupboard, Raunak comes across the notes wrapped in his handkerchief. He knew he had the money, but he had forgotten where he had stashed it. Now he wonders if what happened to his mother was linked to what he did. 

The next day, he makes an excuse to go to the toilet and goes to the dormitory instead. Ankit has a new pillow. Raunak pulls out the crinkly notes from his pocket. He thinks of Ankit spitting on his food. He thinks of Ankit throwing water on him. Slapping him. He thinks of how happy he felt when he stole the pillow and threw it in the gutter. How happy he felt when he found the money. And he thinks of his mother lying in the ice cream machine and of fire rising from her mouth. 

Mohit Manohar’s stories have appeared in Michigan Quarterly Review, Nimrod, Best Debut Short Stories 2020, and Los Angeles Review, and have received a PEN/Dau Prize and Nimrod’s Katherine Anne Porter Prize. He is currently an assistant professor of South Asian art history at the University of Chicago. 

21 March 2025