Righteous - Fear Or A Choice

This goes back three decades when I was in Class 5. I was an average student for most of my student life and that was true in class 5. Interestingly I was a close friend of the class topper. A boy by the name Chakravarthy, not sure why he made friends with me? Very soon it was time for our first unit test, all the students took the test and the results were announced. It was no surprise that Chakravarthy got the class first. To my pleasant surprise I got the class third and Venkat another friend of ours got the class third. Since it wasn’t very usual for me to get a top rank, I was very keen on announcing it to my family. At that time, I did not think there was anything was amiss. I went home and duly reported my achievement to my mother and my elder brother. My mother was not able to believe but did not pursue it further. But with my brother it was another story, my brother the smarter one in the family could not believe that his younger sibling could outdo him, he was always among the toppers in his class, that unit test being no exception.

Now, he started with his interrogations. After substantial persistence, he figured out that I had copied from the boy (Venkat) seated next to me and he copied from the boy (Chakravarthy) seated next to him. With the successful conclusion of his interrogation, he presented his findings to our mother. After corroborating all my brother’s findings with me, my mother met my class teacher the following day and shared the detailed analysis that led to my success.

The very same day, my class teacher reorganised the seating in the class for the rest of the term. The result was that there was always a girl separating two boys for the rest of the term. It was a different time and the boys were not happy being separated by a girl. To my brother pleasure, my grades returned back to their original levels. I don’t think any of my friends every discovered the that I was responsible for this seating arrangement. One thing that changed for me after this incident was that I had never ever copied after that. Why? Was it the fear of sitting next to a girl? Or was I trying to be righteous, who was watching me anyway?