The Emerald Greens Annual Day was a tradition of twenty-three years' standing that had, in its history, featured a children's fancy dress competition, a talent show that had once included a man from Block D playing forty minutes of uninterrupted classical guitar, a quiz that had generated the 2019 inter-block rift over the answer to the question about the year of Pune's founding, and, for the past two years, a cultural performance by the various society groups.
It was Freddy who suggested it. He raised it in class one Monday morning with the kind of cheerful, unself-conscious confidence that Vikram had come to respect as a character trait rather than a performance.
"We've been going two months. The class looks great. I think we should perform at the Annual Day."
A chorus of responses ranging from Yes! to Oh God no. Vikram's internal response was firmly in the second category, which he kept to himself as a matter of discipline.
Nirmala, to her own surprise, felt something that was not exactly excitement but was in that postcode. The specific alertness of a person who has been given an assignment that is slightly beyond their current ability and finds, despite everything, that this is interesting rather than frightening.
