One Scribbly Notebook

“What are you doing?!” Asks a middle aged woman to a little girl.

It’s a classroom full of ten year olds. While rest of the students are writing down what is written on the board this one girl is doing something else.

“I’m asking you, what is the meaning of this?” says the teacher raising her voice. She picks up her notebook to look closely what it is. After adjusting her reading glasses, the teacher still understands nothing. The page is full of weird random scribbly lines that make no sense. The girl doesn’t respond. She’s actually scared.

Getting no response from the little girl aggravates the teacher even more. She tares that page off her notebook, rips it into few more pieces and then crushing it throws it in the trash can. “Since you are clearly not interested in what I am teaching, better go stand outside the class.” she instructs pointing at the door.

The little girl does not resist, she simply obeys. There are tears coming out of her eyes, but she keeps it in until she reaches the corridor outside.

There she mopes silently the entire time while standing outside the classroom. Ten-fifteen minutes later, the school principal notices this girl in tears. He walks to her and asks what is the problem. When he gets no response he calms her down and waits for her to stop crying. Then placing a comforting hand on her head he takes her inside the class.

When asked the teacher is quick to complain, “She wasn’t paying attention to what was being taught. Instead she was making some stupid drawings in her notebook.” says the teacher picking the crushed paper out of the trash and showing it to the principal.

Principal is also confused to see the scribbles. Still he does not want to dismiss the issue thinking that the girl is simply lazy. Instead he gets on his knees and in a soft tone asks her,

“Can you tell me the meaning of this drawing?”

The girl nods. She then takes those pieces from the principal, walks to the teacher’s desk and arranges them such that it makes the original pattern before it was torn into pieces. Then looking at this paper, as if reading it, the girl starts talking. She performs it like a monologue. She talks continuously for ten long minutes.

The principal is in awe of this little girl’s performance. The accuracy with which she mimics the teacher’s actions while saying those lines impresses him. Meanwhile the teacher and rest of the class are shocked to hear what she just said.

The teacher’s legs start shaking as she struggles to balance her overweight body. So she takes support of the desk while looking at those scribbles again, “Ha… how… How did you do that Helra?” The teacher stutters. She does not understand how this little girl repeated the entire thing that she taught for the first time, in today’s class. Further it seemed that she didn’t do it out of memory but by reading those random scribbles.

“How?” the teacher repeats the question as she sits in her chair holding her head.

Helra Khiv is a special child. She was slow to learn to talk, she was slow to learn to walk, she was slow to learn the language of the normal people. She was slow in learning many thing but one thing she excelled at was scribbling. Hence, somehow she started recording all the things she observed through her senses in form of fixed pattern of scribbles. Not only that she taught herself to decode those scribbles and re-enact what she observed and noted down. In this case it was everything that teacher taught in the class.

Sounds exaggerated right? Something that is totally not possible. Something from the stories of science-fiction. Maybe… but that is not the point of this story.

Seeing Helra be silent, the teacher asks her again, this time with slightly more aggression. She grabs the little girl by her shoulders and says. “Tell me Helra, tell me now!”

Everyone wait for Helra to give an answer. Most of them expect her to reveal how she cheated, perhaps by stealing teacher’s notes in advance or asking the students of other division to tell her what is going to be taught. Instead Helra does this,

“I remember because I was paying attention. Just because you don’t understand the importance of what I do and how I do it, does not make make me dumb. It is your ignorance that builds in form of frustration which you eventually release on kids by punishing them. It comforts you because we are too scared to fight back but not anymore. Don’t blame me for your incompetence!”

This is what Helra would have said had see been a spoiled arrogant teenage brat. Instead she says nothing. Helra has received a lot of criticism from everyone for this very unique talent of her’s because people don’t understand it. Hence, now she does not waste her energy trying to explain it again.

Little ten years old Helra Khiv simply takes those pieces of paper, walks to her desk and sits down expecting for the lesson being taught to resume without any further delay.

TO BE CONTINUED

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