The Electricity Bill - Part I

The 10th standard board exams were round the corner and half of the study holiday's were over. I was tired of reading the same subjects all over again but did not have any other choice.
I had fixed timings to study and it was something like this,

Getup in the morning and complete my bath and breakfast by 9:00am
9:00am to 12:00pm - First Study session
12:00pm to 1:30pm - Lunch break
1:30pm to 4:00pm - Second study session
4:00pm to 6:00pm - Snack break
6:00pm to 8:00pm - Third study session
8:00pm to 10:00pm - Dinner and TV break
10:00pm to the time I sleep - Fourth Study session(Usually by 10:10 I would be yawning and giving signals to Mom)

Just 1/3rd of a day for studies should not be much of a pain, looking at it now, but during those days it was a real punishment for me. I was never able to concentrate on anything subject for more than an hour and usually after the initial period my concentration would wander off to the happengings around me like friends playing outside and programs running on TV. My classmates who were well off in studies used to play cricket now and then but I was never able to join them as my parents felt that I should concentrate completley on studies and should not be distracted by sports. Ofcourse I was against it, but then I did not have either the guts to fight back nor the marks to prove that I was good in studies.

It was a tuesday morning and as I was just completing by breakfast the phone rang. My classmates were planning to have a game of cricket at 9:00 at the ground behind my house and were checking if I would be joining them. My answer was a firm no as I knew my mother would never allow me to play with the board exams 20-25 days away. I went into my room and took my History book and as I was reading through the various battles that Babar and Akbar fought my mother called out to me. Any sort of break from studies was welcome and I ran to my mother. My father had forgotten to pay the electricity bill and as it was the last day she asked me if I could go and pay the bill. Had it been any other day she would have ordered me to go, but as I was studying she wanted to check if I would be free. For me too if this had been any other day I would have postponed it or thrown a fit to go out, but to escape from studies I was ready to do anything. Without a frown on my face I collected the bill and money from my mother and set out to pay the bill.

The electricity office was just 5 minutes away via a short-cut path through which I could have walked, but I took out my cycle and used the long route. I was expecting a huge line at the electricity office and was praying to God that the line be big enough so that I need to return back only by lunch. But as fate would have it there was not a single soul in the office and it was as if the electricity office was opened for me to go and pay the bill. Mom had given me the exact change so the whole transaction was over in 2 minutes and there I was standing with the receipt and my dreams shattered.

As I slowly started pedalling back home, I reached a junction with road splitting into 2 directions. The one to left would take me back home, while the one to the right would take me to the ground where my friends were playing.

continued in part II