Chocolate is Good for You

Events of Saturday, April 7:

There must have been a twilight brawl between Luna and Sol, because at dawn the sun was brooding; fumes of heat scorched the Earth as all of the NISV children celebrated World Health Day by doing yoga in neat lines across the football field.  It was only 8:30 in the morning and yet the heat was blistering as a hundred bodies bent and stretched up to the angry ball in the high sky. I stood with the other teachers as a spectator, but the sweat still dripped like I was a participant. After only fifteen minutes under the sun’s harsh stare, I retreated to the shade and then went back to my room to change my clothes, threw on a refreshed attitude and was ready for the rest of the day.

However, near the end of the school day I was called to the principal’s office. Instead of marching to the administrative building with a confident air of a colleague, my brain went into student mode; I hesitantly stumbled to the building as if I was to be greeted with a black-hooded headsman with a gleaming axe. I began yanking the front of my blouse up to my neck as my mind frantically ransacked the filing cabinets of past actions, desperately searching for red-penned errors: Is my clothing unprofessional? Was I supposed to participate in yoga this morning in the grueling heat? Did my cooperating-teachers reveal a discrepancy in my curricula? What have I done wrong? My face scrunched and contorted; I tried to iron out the wrinkles before opening the heavy glass door to the principal’s office. The two RAs of the boys and girls hostel were already seated across from Mr. D’sousa and my stomach spun into a spool of anxiety – each strand of tension twisted and tangled around the Unknown. Shortly after I was seated, the director of the fine arts department and the drama teacher, Mr. Anish Chandra Renu, filed into the office and I was finally told the reason for this impromptu meeting: the concert for the student boarders. My stomach untwisted and untangled, stretching with deep sighs of relief.

On the last day of school, May 7, the students who reside in the hostels on campus will be showcasing their talents to their parents and teachers and celebrate the end of the school year in a variety show. I had already been asked to direct a one-act play for the boarders and have selected a comedic scene entitled “No, Not I” from Pole Sengupta’s anthology of children’s plays, Good Heavens!. There were extremely slim pickings of play scripts in the NISV library, but this script has a large cast and a lot of character interaction to allow the budding actors to practice relating to one other on stage. Plus, the plot is quirky and will bring out the energetic personalities of the students: a thief decides to climb a wall and steal from a luxurious palace one windy night, but as he was climbing the wall, it fell down onto his toe. The thief screams in anguish and a lawyer promptly advises him to sue for this new injury. The comedy of the script is enacted when the thief goes to the homeowner to sue for his broken toe, but the owner says that he is not to blame, but they should sue the one who built the wall. So the thief hobbles over the mason to sue him, but the mason denies responsibility and blames his cook for putting too much salt in his meal the day he was building the wall. So they all rush over to the cook to sue him . . . and the blame game continues. :)

          The meeting was called to discuss the various acts of the show and potential rehearsal times. It was revealed that the concert will include an introductory dance, my one-act play, a pantomime skit directed by Mr. Renu, and a song performed by the chorus and band participants. Mr. D’sousa also mentioned that we should incorporate different cultures into the program and suggested the addition of a Western dance. Before I could filter my response, the excitement gushed out of my mouth as I exclaimed, “Oh yes!  A hip- hop routine!” Mr. D’sousa nodded his head in enthusiastic agreement and asked if I would be interested in also choreographing this dance. Before I even agreed to this request, my brain threw open its filing cabinets again, feverishly searching for hip-hop songs and fun moves from my old dance team days. This is one of the first times I have been genuinely excited about my participation in this program and I whole-heartedly agreed to choreograph the hip hop dance and chose to do a mash-up of the following songs: So What by Far East Movement; Yeah by Usher; and Low by Flo Rida. Booyah! This dance is going to be bomb! :D

After school Sohini and I went to town, which was AMAZING since I had been cooped up in the hostel for the past week in her absence; I have never been so happy to be continuously jilted and disoriented in a rickshaw lol.  We went to various stores and malls to find professional work clothes for Sohini and since we had some time to spare before dinner I suggested that we eat dessert first and go to The Chocolate Room.  

It was a perfectly posh little place with dark brown walls and bright red booths and their menu is everything chocolate: chocolate shakes, chocolate sundaes, chocolate pizza, chocolate fondue, chocolate sandwiches . . . chocolate deliciousness. The slogan of this restaurant/café is “Chocolate is good for you,” which I will personally testify to be completely accurate. It was hard to choose which dessert to order due to the plethora of scrumptious chocolaty options, but I finally settled on the Chocolate Rocher Sundae, which was chocolate ice cream topped with fudge sauce and chocolate covered almonds. I’m pretty sure that I keeled over three times from pure happiness while eating this sundae lol. I was on a sugar high for the remainder of the evening, which made the day completely legen . . . wait for it . . . dairy!