By 2:30 PM, the large school clock looked down on an empty courtyard. School had been officially dismissed at 1:30 PM, and while the rest of their classmates had long since sprinted out of the front gates to enjoy their afternoon, Arjun and Gopi had been marched directly next door under the stern escort of khanna Sir. Their real punishment was just beginning.
The grueling work dragged on far longer than either of the boys had anticipated.
The blistering afternoon sun slowly sunk into a hazy, golden west, burning away their remaining energy. What they had hoped would be a quick, thirty-minute sweep had morphed into hours of relentless manual labor. They had swept, scrubbed, lugged heavy iron buckets of water that made their already-sore muscles scream, and dusted under the hawkish gaze of temple volunteers—older volunteers who seemed to possess an almost supernatural, X-ray ability to spot microscopic specks of dust where none existed.
Inside the main temple hall, the white marble floor finally began to gleam under the fading twilight. Arjun and Gopi stood in the center of the vast room, armed with two ancient-looking, shedding grass brooms.
Gopi suddenly stopped sweeping and slowly straightened his posture.
CRACK.
A loud, terrifying pop echoed off the temple pillars. Gopi froze mid-movement, his eyes wide.
CRACK.
"Aaaah..." Gopi let out a long, pathetic groan, his face contorting into the expression of an eighty-year-old retired laborer. "Man... after Sharma Sir made us do the Murga punishment for forty straight minutes in class this morning, my back is completely shattered. My waist is gone."
He rubbed his lower spine dramatically, leaning heavily on his broom like a walking stick. "Honestly, Arjun, I think my lower vertebrae has collapsed."
Arjun didn't even look up, methodically pushing a pile of dust toward the doorway. "Well, what did you expect? Sharma ji was bound to take his pound of flesh. You can't just drop out of the stratosphere and land on your father short hieghted teacher without some cosmic blowback."
Gopi winced, a sudden wave of guilt washing over his face. "The more I think about the collision the more embarrassement i felt."
Arjun burst out laughing, the sound echoing through the cavernous hall. You are lucky that you landed on his stomach instead of his chest otherwise, the speed with which you were falling toward the ground, you would have flown right back up into the sky, with the exact same speed bouncing back from his pot belly."
Gopi snatched a damp, grimy dust cloth off a nearby railing and hurled it at Arjun's head. Arjun dodged it effortlessly with a dancer's grace, not missing a single stroke of his broom.
"But look at the bright side," Arjun continued, his tone turning a bit more serious. "At least they didn't call our parents. He preferred to settle the score personally with the rooster stance. If he had made that phone call, we wouldn't just be dealing with a sore back right now."
Both boys shuddered simultaneously, a cold sweat breaking out on their necks as two terrifying mental images flashed before their eyes:
The deadly, heat-seeking trajectory of mother's flying slipper.
And the terrible glare of their fathers.
Neither option seemed survivable.
"It's true," Gopi conceded, shaking his head to clear the nightmare. Then, he aggressively pointed the handle of his broom at Arjun. "But let's not forget the root cause here. None of this would have happened if I hadn't agreed to your colossally stupid plan!"
Arjun stopped sweeping, looking deeply offended. "Stupid plan? We atleast reached inside the school Gopi. Otherwise we would have been sent back to our home, Because the entrance gate of the school was already closed.
"By flying through the sky like flying squirrels, Arjun! That is not a commute, that is an extreme sport!"
Arjun waved his hand dismissively, turning back to his dust pile. "At the end only results matter, Gopi. We weren't marked absent."
"The process matters too, specially when the process is 99% proved to be fatal, resulting in almost killing of a faculty!" Gopi shot back at arjun.
"What's done is done," Arjun said, switching gears to avoid losing the argument. "Forgot about it and just focus on removing that grease patch near the inner sanctum. The priests will be here soon with his heard of devotees."
Gopi looked down at the smooth, highly polished marble. A slow, incredibly mischievous grin began to spread across his face.
"Hey, Arjun... just make sure you don't polish it too much. We don't want Sharma Sir to come here for the evening prayer, slip on the marble, and fly face-first into the donation box."
For a second, a heavy silence hung in the temple hall.
Then, both boys completely lost it.
Arjun let out a loud snort, nearly dropping his broom as he doubled over. He stumbled backward and leaned his weight against a massive carved pillar, shaking with laughter. "Oh my god, stop! Whatever remains of his poor spine would be permanently liquidated!"
"Exactly!" Gopi cackled, clutching his stomach. "Then tomorrow, instead of standing at the blackboard, he'll be wheeling himself into the classroom, lecturing us about gravity from a motorized wheelchair."
"Or he'll drag us back to the principal's office!" Arjun choked out, tears gathering in his eyes. He suddenly straightened his posture, narrowed his eyes, puffed out his stomach like an airbag, and perfectly mimicked Sharma Sir's high-pitched, outraged wheeze: "Principal Khanna! I tell you, I tell you, these two are not students! They are walking, talking natural disasters! You know this morning they fell on me from the sky like a missile and even with that they were not satisfied that in the evening they make me fell on the floor"
Gopi almost choked on his own spit, laughing so hard no sound came out of his mouth.
Their booming laughter bounced off the high ceilings and the ancient stone walls, filling the empty temple with pure, infectious energy. It took them a good three minutes of breathless wheezing before they finally calmed down, wiping their eyes and catching their breath.
...