The principal was patrolling the middle school corridors, his hands interlocked behind his back, when the peon waylaid him. “Sir, Mr. Mendonca is waiting for you in your office.”
A frown marred the principal’s mature forehead. “Does Mr. Mendonca have an appointment?”
“Yes, sir.
“Well then, serve him tea. I’m coming in a few minutes.”
The peon shuffled his feet.
The principal delinked his fingers and waved him off. “Come now, Biharilal! Go do your work! What happened? Mr. Mendonca is not going to bite you!”
Biharilal seemed to brightened at this suggestion. “No sir, but his companion might.”
“His what?”
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The principal abandoned his invigilation and hurried alongside the peon to his chambers.
At the threshold, he stopped. The picture before him brought to mind a postcard, the kind one of his animal-lover friends – no, his “pet-parent” friends – might have dispatched from merry vacations.
Both the occupants of the chairs sat still, facing his desk in silence, their backs to him. He imagined their eyes glazed over, as they regarded the portrait of Rabindranath Tagore adorning the wall.
Mr. Mendonca had adhered to his regulation outfit of khaki shorts and matching shirt.
Next to him, perched on a throne all of its own – a Golden Retriever, its furry tail brushing one leg of the chair.
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The principal set a cautious foot inside his threadbare office.
Mr. Mendonca turned around. “Ah, Principal sahib! I hope I didn’t disturb your busy day.”
The principal lumbered to his desk from Mr. Mendonca’s side, anxious to maintain more than an arm’s length from the giant canine.
“Not at all, Mr. Mendonca. Who is your friend?”
“This,” he said, motioning to his companion with a grand flourish, “is Thomas Mendonca.”
“Ah, I see,” the principal said, though he didn’t.
“You must be thinking – what is a dog doing here?”
“The thought had occurred to me, yes.”
“I have decided to enroll Thomas in school.”
The principal’s taut shoulders relaxed. “That is admirable. There are several good training institutes for dogs, perfectly excellent trainers who –“
“No, no, Principal sahib, I am talking about your school – The Central Public School. It is the best as far as I am concerned.”
“You want your dog to attend a children’s school?”
Mr. Mendonca tapped his index finger on the table. “Technically, he’s a child.”
“What?”
“He is just the same as any third or fourth grader in your school.”
“Mr. Mendonca, I cannot grant him admission. You must be well aware of what you are asking here.”
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“Why not? Under the RTE Right to Education Act, you must grant permission to children of varying backgrounds and financial condition.”
“But Mr. Mendonca, you are talking of a different species itself!”
“Why not? What is the problem? He is a perfectly docile animal. Observe, he just sits still and watches us talk. He will not interject until asked to.”
The principal regarded the hound. He could not deny the truth of Mr. Mendonca’s statement. The dog – Thomas – reposed on the chair, his tongue hanging out, his liquid brown eyes fastened on the principal.
“Already he is well-trained, and who knows, with the education this school offers, he may turn out a canine prodigy!”
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The principal shook his head. “I am sorry but I must refuse. There is absolutely no guarantee when he might snap and start barking at students or even biting them.”
“This is an outrage, Mr. Principal. You cannot deny admission to a prospective student without any grounds.”
“I have perfectly logical grounds!”
“Such a flimsy pretext will get thrown out by a court in minutes! I will file a case instantly. Just you watch!”
Mr. Mendonca stormed out, Thomas tagging along at his heel. Biharilal, poised near the door, jumped aside to dodge the swish of the tail.
The peon must have been loitering there for some time, the principal gathered, without offering the tea and refreshments he always set before guests. On this occasion, the principal could not scold him for the omission. Biharilal had not found a chance to offer beverages, and even a warm cup of masala chai might have done little to restore Mr. Mendonca to his senses.
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“What do you think, Biharilal?”
“About what, sahib?”
He observed the peon’s hangdog expression and decided against it.
“Never mind. Fetch me some tea, please, Biharilal.”
#
The legal notification arrived in a brown formal envelope. Somewhere on the first page in the sea of letters and legalese, he glimpsed the name ‘Mendonca’.
He called the chairman of the board, who assigned Barrister Sengupta to represent the school.
The lawyer filed the necessary injunctions and warned him to prepare himself for a day in court, should the case ever make it that far. The principal accepted with some trepidation. Surely the court would not hear such a preposterous motion. When even human schoolchildren did not receive the necessary education, it was ridiculous to expect man’s best friend to swoop into their place and filch it from under their very nose. And why stop there? Why not grant education rights to every species? Why not shepherd every variety of lizard, whale, hawk into a classroom, and force them to recite times tables like everyone else did in school? Why should other animals get by with acquiring only survival skills while humans alone suffered the whole gamut of subjects?
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Despite the Principal’s sound logic and sense, he found himself in a few months plonked down in the front row of the courtroom, before a scowling judge. The whole atmosphere threw him back to when he was eight years old, and had been summoned to the headmaster’s office. He had received a stern dressing down in his father’s presence. The present situation rung eerily familiar. It was a regular civil court, but sitting there beside his lawyer, he felt like a common criminal.
Mr. Mendonca and his furry friend sat across the aisle. Thomas Mendonca occupied a chair with his tail sweeping the floor as he wagged it in apparent glee. His owner directed a sideways glance of annoyance at the principal.
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A policeman standing a few feet ahead of him ensured order in the courtroom. The lawyers for both sides made their arguments. Barrister Sengupta delivered a passionate speech – the RTE was clearly worded as to grant right of education to “children” who were underprivileged. Children, in accordance with dictionary definition, meant human beings.
The prosecuting lawyer stated the definition was open to interpretation. It was ambiguous. Barrister Sengupta objected, and declared it an outrage – the definition was quite clear. The judge thought otherwise, and eventually placed the onus on the school to prove why they could not provide education to the dog.
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This should have pleased Mr. Mendonca, but the principal saw him lean over to his lawyer and whisper something into his ear. The lawyer then rose to his feet, and his next words chilled the principal’s heart:
“Until then, your honour, we request that a temporary injunction be granted so that the dog can begin attending classes. We can view this as a trial period.”
The judge nodded. “Excellent idea! There is too much intolerance these days. These cross-species integrations will only increase our unity in diversity.”
The judge’s pounding of the gravel echoed the thudding in the principal’s chest.
#
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Mr. Trivedi stood at the head of the class, staring in wonder at the bizarre mix of students in his classroom. Tall, short, sweaty, thin, stinky, plump and bushy-tailed.
In all the years he had toiled to achieve his Bachelor’s degree in Education, he had never received instruction in the art of tutoring furry students. He had had to blink several times to absorb the sight of the front row, where a special chair replaced the usual bench. The dog sat upright on the chair, watching Mr. Trivedi with an apparent air of anticipation. His minder stood by him, bearing the same sheepish grin as his charge.
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Even though the children were only in second grade and learning basic arithmetic, he did not believe his new student could withstand the stress.
On Thomas’ first day in class, the students hurried to stroke its muzzle and pat its fur.
The leash around his neck and the minder accompanying him bolstered their confidence, and they did not run away screaming as Mr. Trivedi believed they would.
They called him Thomas, as instructed, for he did not respond to Tom or Tommy or any other condescending variation of his name.
The children recited their times tables, and the dog joined in with his rhythmic growls, short sharp, staccato barks in tune with the chanting of “Two twos are four, two threes
are six.”
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The principal stopped by.
“How is it going, Mr. Trivedi?”
The principal’s moustache was drooping, his face had aged ten years. Mr. Trivedi had shared with his colleagues, in the privacy of the staff room, that their headmaster now resembled Atlas, the weight of the world pressing down on his shoulders.
“What can I say, sir? We’re doing our best.”
The chant of the times tables rent the air. The principal and the teacher beheld their charges, both the human and non-human ones, as they attempted to imprint basic arithmetic into their memory.
#
Mr. Mendonca dropped in one day when Mr. Trivedi was teaching.
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“How is he doing, Mr. Trivedi?”
The teacher grew morose. How could he answer this question? How could he articulate that the dog, well-intentioned though he (not ‘it’) might be, could not pronounce times tables or even answer two plus two? Thomas might have well have been saying four, but his bark proved inscrutable, and Mr. Trivedi found himself incapable of translating it.
“Uh, not bad, Mr. Mendonca.”
The owner latched on to these words as high praise. “Oh, that proves it! He is such a smart boy! Aren’t you, my lad?”
He tickled his ward behind the ears.
“Mr. Trivedi!” A voice boomed. “Where can I find the principal?”
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Mr. Sharma stood outside the class, his hands on his hips. His sudden appearance surprised Mr. Trivedi, for Mr. Sharma stayed in the shadows mostly. He had, like most fathers, relinquished the control of his children’s academics to his wife, and had scarcely stepped inside the premises of the school.
Mr. Trivedi said, “He must be in his office.”
“He is not! I need to find him instantly, and complain about that infernal monster!”
He had spotted the dog, and thrust a quivering finger in the brute’s direction.
As Mr. Trivedi feared, Mr. Mendonca took umbrage.
“That monster, as you call him, is my child, Mister!” Mr. Mendonca raised an equally vicious set of pudgy fingers and wagged them in Mr. Sharma’s face. Mr. Trivedi quickly intervened. “Let us all calm down and go find the principal.”
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“Your child? Have you lost your mind? Has your wife has borne this monster in her stomach for nine months? Have you ever stayed up all night to feed this hungry pup? How dare you compare our loving little packages of mush to this animal? See how he bares his teeth and growls!”
Mr. Trivedi beckoned the peon urgently. “Biharilal! Fetch the principal, please, and the watchman too!”
“He is not a hulking animal! I have a court order that grants him permission to attend classes.”
The dog began barking. The children seized their cue and soon, little whimpers and whines broke out throughout the room.
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“I will get your court order and your stupid dog thrown out, you rascal!”
The next few minutes, Mr. Trivedi later said, had blanked out in his memory. In truth, he chose not to remember it. Each time he relived the sequence of events, the trauma arose fresh in his chest.
Mr. Sharma lunged at Mr. Mendonca, and the dog, correctly interpreting this as a sign of aggression, leapt at Mr. Sharma.
The ensuing kerfuffle drowned out a small but significant gasp. The dog pawed Mr. Sharma, while Mr. Mendonca and his helper tried in vain to pry him off.
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One of the children yelled above the din. “Sir! Jitesh has fainted!”
Mr. Trivedi rushed to the spot. The boy lay still on the floor, his lips blue and his face ashen.
The Principal and Biharilal arrived by then.
“Biharilal, take him to the nurse.”
#
The retreating monsoons had done their job and left the land cleansed and wet. The sky had cleared, and the sun had broken through the clouds, shining down upon the inhabitants of The Central Public School.
An air of calmness reigned in Mr. Trivedi’s class when the principal stopped by.
“How is it going?”
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Mr. Trivedi glanced up from his desk, bent over a stack of notebooks he still had to review.
“Very well, Principal Sir.”
“What news of Jitesh?”
“He has recovered well. Have you calmed Mr. Sharma down?”
“He promises to not file a police case against the school. Have you heard from…?”
“Mr. Mendonca? Oh yes, sir, I chat with him on WhatsApp. He lives in Switzerland these days. They have opened the world’s first interspecies school there. Thomas is progressing excellently.”
“Amazing! The Swiss are capable of anything, I tell you!”
Suddenly the silence struck him. “Why are the children so quiet?”
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“I have set them a composition to do.”
“Excellent. What’s the topic?”
“My favourite pet.”
