The Principal sat at his desk. He did not invite Jai and Rohit to sit.

Instead, he held up their notice, and said, “Explain”.

Jai had no idea why he was doing this. First of all, he had respected the principal until now. Second, he already knew what the notice was about. What was the point in asking? Maybe he wanted to hear it from their mouths.

Rohit volunteered to do it.

“Sir, we’re interested in music, and we want to form a band. We wanted to find other students who are interested in forming a band, so we put up the notice.” He said it confidently. Jai was sure he himself could not have put it better.

“OK. This is not a music school, and I have decided to take action against both of you.” The principal leaned down and pulled two envelopes from his desk drawer. “Suspended. Indefinitely. Both of you.”

“WHAT? You can’t suspend us! We haven’t even done anything wrong!” Jai yelled.

“Well, I think I have the authority to do it, since I’m the principal.” He was obviously enjoying this. “I’ll inform your parents by phone when you can come back to school.” He paused, and said, “Don’t know when that will be, though.” He said mockingly.

Jai and Rohit took the letters from the principal, and stormed out of the room.

“Well, we have a lot to talk about. First, let’s go get our bags and get out of this place,” Jai said.

Rohit nodded in agreement and they went to get their bags from English class.

The teacher was teaching when they arrived.

“What happened, Jai?” The teacher asked. Jai had dreaded this. He had always scored good marks and the teacher liked him, because he was very punctual and never missed a single English class.

“We’ve been suspended.” Jai said, his head hanging.

“WHAT?” The teacher asked, shocked. In Indian schools, suspensions were handed out only on very, very serious occasions. The students were shocked too.

“For how long?” Siddharth asked, from the back.

“Indefinitely, man. Guess we won’t be seeing you guys for a long time.” Jai and Rohit picked up their bags and left the class.

They walked out of the school and decided to go to Coffee Day.

They ordered two frapuccinos and sat back.

“Damn! I hate that guy, man. I thought he was, normal.” Jai said.

“Yeah, me too. Look at the good side of it. You can write, and I can play guitar. We could get Malini and Sam and practice too.”

“Uh, they haven’t been suspended. They have to go to school.”

“Right. Doesn’t matter, we can catch them after school. I’ll call them and tell them to meet us, where?” Rohit asked.

Their frapuccinos arrived. They each took a sip.

“Mmm. My place, my mom will be out from 4 to 6 in the evening.” Jai said, savouring the aroma of the coffee.

“OK. Where does she keep going, man?”

“Some society meeting or something. She has them all the time. Atleast it helps us out. Now how do we present the idea of our suspension at home?” Jai asked.

“No problemo for me. Sometimes when you don’t have a dad, it helps.” Rohit said, and Jai knew how much saying that hurt him. He didn’t mean it that way, and he knew Rohit knew that as well. Rohit took a long swig of his frapuccino. “My mom thinks I’m doomed to failure. So, I’m cool.”

“Not me, my mom will kill me. The novel’s already created problems, and now here’s another one. Dammit!” Jai and Rohit took their cups, paid for their drinks and left the café.

_______________________________________________________________

Drk, lovelee, keep commenting, you guys are great. Drk, you'll notice I'm starting to let you a LITTLE bit inside the characters heads. It'll get better I promise. Right now it's a little shaky,I think.

By the way, do you listen to Nirvana? And what's your a/s/l? Just some thoughts.

R&R.

Peace.