The heartwarming story of Karma Bhutia
Part 3

Karma soon settled down to life at the school.

Having been used to hardships, school was a luxury! It felt great to lay down in the soft eiderdown mattress. The food was great! Others complained about every little thing they could think of but not Karma, no sir! He felt he was living in the lap of luxury.

Karma had always been intelligent. He learned quixkly, instinctively, but never showed that bright spark. Something told him to keep to himself; to keep in the background; to never show his brilliance.

His grades were always above average and there was no cause for complaint. His teachers, however, always felt that there an aloofness about him..............a remoteness that they couldn't understand. Oh, he was friendly enough, all right. And eager to please. But beneath the veneer, they sensed a strange indifference. They couldn't understand it.

Karma's needs were taken care of by the Government Of Sikkim. His fees, boarding and lodging were paid punctually. He even received a small amount of pocket money every month. He hid the money in a little tin, looking forward to the day when he would return to Sikkim and buy his beloved sister a lovely dress with it.

The days turned into weeks and the weeks turned into months. Soon he was in the ninth standard.

This was an age when boys started getting interested in girls and puppy love grew and flourished in the senior school; when a girl would give a guy a sly look and a smile that would devastate him for the rest of the week!

It was the time of passing secret chits to one another......... of "I love you" messages that met with less than a fifty-percent rate of success and left many a little lad depressed and moping.

It was an age when boys compared notes about their private parts and the size of various girls public parts.

It was a time of acne and pimples and cigarettes smoked on the sly, more to impress the fair maiden than for pleasure.

It was a time for all sorts of ailments, imagined or real.

It was a time of growing up.

And in the midst of all this chaos, our Karma sailed serenely on, blissfully unaware of the world around him. In his mind's eye the only two women he saw were his mother and his sister.

In his mind's eye, he would see his mother fussing around their little house, coping as best as she could with the household chores as well as the task of bringing up a family.

And in a completely different setting, he would see his sister alone, scared, unsure of herself, fending for herself against a drunken father; fighting off hunger as best as she could................

There was no place in his heart for puppy love; there was no time to get infatuated with a girl based on the momentary glance she gave him; there was no time for him to enjoy his childhood. In his heart he was a little man, in a hurry to grow up. Waiting to go back to Sikkim to rescue his beloved sister.

There were many matrons in the school............mother-figures that oozed love and kindness. But Karma's heart was hard. No one could take his mother's place.

The teachers noted that Karma never smiled or laughed. They would discuss it in the staff room. "He's a strange little fellow!" they'd tell each other. "I wonder what goes on in that head of his", they'd say. They analysed his shortcomings - both real and imaginary - to the hilt.

What they never realised was that, more importantly, Karma never cried.

He bottled all his emotions within him; he had a "mask" on at all times. No one could lay claim to the 'real' Karma.

That mask was to stay on till a fateful day when it would be suddenly ripped off.....................

That day came unexpectedly, like all fateful events do.

It was a weekend.

The boarders were allowed to go into the city of Kalimpong.

However Karma had never shown any interest in going into Kalimpong. He would spend such days alone, by himself in the school campus.

This particular weekend was no different. He wandered aimlessly around the school and, inexplicably, found himself in the school's sick bay. Why he went there he cannot recall to this day. There was nothing there that beckoned to him. But there he proceeded and found, to his astonishment, a teacher writhing in pain. She was moaning and appeared delirous.

Astonishingly, there was no nurse present.

Karma rushed to her side and felt her forehead. It was very hot!

He remembered that when he used to get a fever, his mother used to rip some old cloth, dip it into cold water and apply it to the forehead. He rushed to locate an old rag, found it, and dipped it in cold water. He applied it to the teacher's forehead.

"Thank you" the lady murmured, faintly.

Karma sat for the next several hours nursing the teacher. She alternated between bouts of feverishness and normalcy.

At 6 p.m. the nurse appeared. She shamefacedly admited that she had some urgent errand in the city and had gone leaving the patient alone to fend for herself.

A cold rage welled inside Karma but he didn't show it.

He would make it a point to ensure that he was at the teacher's side as often as possible so that she could get the best possible care. He was back at the infirmary the next morning after breakfast. The teacher appeared more lucid and in much better shape.

"Thank you, Karma, for having taken care of me yesterday" said the teacher smiling.

"Oh it was nothing, Mrs. Grey" the boy replied.

He spent the whole Sunday with her. He asked her about her family and she told him that she was British; that her husband had been a fighter pilot during the Second World War. "Flew Spitfires, he did" she said proudly. He gathered that Squadron Leader Grey had died in combat, leaving her behind with two children to take care of. She had struggled to make both ends meet to take care of the family till they had grown up. Her son got a job and moved out to set up his own establishment. Her daughter got married. That's when she had seen an advertisement in a London newspaper for a vacancy in India. "I have never been away from England" she thought to herself. "It may be exciting to see what is out there". So she applied for the position, had been interviewed and selected and here she was, albeit in not too good health at the moment.

"What about you, Karma. Tell me about yourself" she said.

Automatically his guard went up. However, when he looked into her eyes, he saw a bottomless pool of compassion. The words stuck in his throat and to his horror he heard himself sobbing. Suddenly he was crying uncontrollably. Mrs. Grey hugged him to her breast andlet him cry. He wept for nearly an hour. When he stopped, he felt much better.........relieved.

"Tell me about your llife" Mrs. Grey asked anew, and he started to eagerly tell her all about his mother and his sister and his life in Sikkim.

They spent the whole day talking and when he left her, reluctantly, in the evening, he felt that he had found a mother in her.