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Junkie
Girija Tropp
Natasha Polanski, our English teacher,
the new American VSO, wore squeaky space age trousers. She called us
functional delinquents. Papa Lotus says that western girls have big
twats. He used to work in a restaurant in New York so he should know. We pass notes to
look outs at the window.
The headmaster was being marched around the oval, still refusing to
give out information about his girlfriend. Kulap
was his girlfriend’s name. When he came past the classroom, his elbow
cupped by the terrorist, he had his mobile to his ear and was repeating
countdown countdown countdown. It became
our new password until the new teacher fell pregnant. We were sad when
she got married. She was a flirt.
She called us junkies because we liked to smoke hashish at school. We
had been working since four in the morning and it made us happy. She
was upset because all of us had grown up on opium. It settled us before
bedtime. I learnt by heart her special scent of roses. She begged me
to read a story of a man who turned into an insect. We told her that
all of us have had a relative who had been turned into an insect. When
the country was invaded, she and her husband were strung up on the banyan
tree. A flock of locusts stripped the tree so bare it gave up life.
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