Tail within a Tale

The librarian's second day on the job

Parul was sweating. The bell was about to ring, and this would bring in the third graders. There's nothing intrinsically dangerous about third graders most of the time, but when you're a young librarian facing your second day on your first job, you feel you'd rather take on a horde or hornets ...

The bell rang.

"The moment of truth," Parul thought, closing her eyes and clenching her fists, then opening both pairs - eyes and fists, that is. Had she been stupid, to give the kids a creative assignment to do on her very first day, to bring back on her second day? The definition of her job was to stamp in and stamp out books and give periodic pep-talks, not creative writing assignments to potential authors. What if nobody responded? What if somebody complained? What if the storytelling left so little time before the next bell that the kids couldn't exchange their books properly?

"Good morning, Miss Parul!"

They were there. They looked eager and excited. Parul took a deep breath. "Good morning, class! Now, who has done the assign—"

They didn't let her finish. Every hand in the class was raised and there was a chorus of "Me, I, Me!"

One by one, they came to the front and narrated their stories. The family stories she had asked them to get from their parents. Since Parul was still on probation, seniors were sent to observe her from time to time. Parul noticed Mrs. Thivani, Vice Principal, walk in just as Shruti began her story.

"My story is about a trip I took with my family to Kerala. The whole, extended family had gone - my grandparents, my aunts, uncles and cousins were al there. There were twenty-one of us in all.

Now since Kerala is within India, we didn't think we'd have to go through customs. Aha, I see all of you looking surprised. But yes, we did go through customs. Only, it wasn't indoors, it was outdoors. You see, we were awaiting the boats to take us on the river. We had piled our handbags on to a bench nearby and were huddled together under the only shade-giving tree we could find.

Suddenly, there was a troop of monkeys there. They descended from what seemed to be the open sky and every last simian, man, woman and child, was among our handbags.

They didn't make any mess, oh no. In fact, they were very fastidious, even the smallest ones.

They picked up each handbag carefully by the handle and unzipped the main zipper first, followed by the side zippers. They sifted the contents with great care, and replaced all quite neatly for monkeys. Only Aunt Naomi's lipstick got eaten.

Then they came to Uncle Ben's handbag. It was bottommost, as it was the bulkiest. You see, he was carrying packets of protein powder in case he starved on the tour.

That was what didn't go through customs. It was confiscated immediately, the whole half-dozen packs of it. The packs were efficiently torn or bitten open, their contents dumped on the floor, and the monkeys had a feast.

The moral of the story - trust that you won't starve and trust that your lips are the right colour already when you go to Kerala. Otherwise, the contents of your handbag will be eaten at customs."


"Bravo!"

Parul turned, startled. It was Mrs. Thivani, clapping away. "What a comical story and what vocabulary! Great work, child!"

The child blushed. "My parents helped me write it, Miss," she said. "They're both journalists and they keep teaching me new words."

"That's great, Shruti dear," the Vice Principal said. Turning to Parul, she added, "And you, Parul, as Librarian, are encouraging this. That's wonderful. I'm going to write this up in your report."

"Thanks, Ma'am, thanks very much."

Parul's face was glowing again, but this time, it was not with perspiration.