As I entered the teachers’ room, I saw a tall, slender man sitting on the chair nearby my cupboard. He looked like a gentleman, wearing spectacles, track jacket, and well-ironed cotton pants. He had a black trekking bag on his lap which he was holding in such a way that somebody might come and snatch it away.

‘Nothing can be done in this case,’ my colleague Bhesh Raj, a science teacher said, ‘It was found with him and the situation of that time revealed that it was his.’

‘Sir, Namaste,’ greeted the man to me as soon as he saw me at the door.

I greeted him back but got confused for a while because I did not recognize him instantly. I extended my right hand to him for I assumed that he would like to shake hands with me. However, he did not his. So, I drew it back. I felt uncomfortable in front of my colleagues.

‘But he is a child, and for it he should not be punished so harshly…’ I heard the man say in a plaintive voice as I opened the door of my small cupboard and kept the textbook in my hand into it.

‘It is a general exam rule well-accepted everywhere.’ Manoj, the health teacher sitting opposite to the man said, ‘A college or school student caught red-handed while cheating in exam hall can be immediately expelled.’

Now I remembered. The man had phoned me two days before, on the result day. He askedme for information about his son’s result. At that moment, I was sitting at a table with files of exam papers of the students to distribute them to their parents. As the class teacher, it was my duty to provide the information to a parent like him. Therefore, I dug up the result sheet of his son from the file, and stated the result to him on the phone.

His sonhad failed in science. It was an unexpected result for me because his son was regarded a bona fide student of the class. Though sometimes he used to be reported that he had cheated in exams, no teacher had any proof.

This time he had failed science. He had secured good marks in all other subjects. Then, I searched his file of exam papers in the big pile of result files and turned the pages to find out the truth while talking on the phone. On the cover of the exam paper where the obtained mark was written was 0/60 in red ink. It meant he had got just 0 out of 60 marks in the Second Term Exam. There was a small piece of paper, filled with tiny handwritingin blue, stitched at the top of the exam paper. Also, there was a one line note in red: This candidate was found cheating in the exam. It was signed by the Vice-Principal. I told him all this on the phone. He thanked me, and then hung up the phone.

Just three or four days after, the father phoned me again while I was enjoying the winter vacation at my home. ‘As the class teacher, can you give him just the pass marks in science so that he would not be depressed and not take any wrong step?’ he pleaded to me in a tone of blackmailing, ‘After all, you know, he is a young boy.’

‘Sorry sir,’ I replied, ‘I cannot do that as it is the decision taken by the V.P. and the concerned subject teacher because your son was found with the cheat-sheet.’

‘But he says that one of his friends had forced him to carry it in his pocket, and then he was caught.’

‘It may be true, but as the invigilator has written in his note that he was found copying the answer from the piece of paper and was caught red-handed, I cannot help you and your son in this case because all the students were pre-informed to the possible result of cheating in the exam hall.’

The man was not ready to accept that his son had done wrong by cheating in the exam hall.

‘If my son falls into depression because of it and takes any wrong step,’ he threatened, ‘I think I will have to seek legal support.’

‘I don’t know exactly,’ I replied him, ‘but I think you’ll be at the losing end in that case.If you need the right solution to it, you can talk to the principal.’

I gave him the principal’s cell phone number and hung the phone up.

I looked around. The room environment was tense. The man was much excited as his face was red and his voice was high. Both Bhesh Raj and Manoj were trying to make him understand in vain as he was arguing with them to prove his son’s mischief as a childish act of innocence. I didn’t know how to handle the situation.

‘If only he were not found with the cheat-sheet …’ I had just said this when the man suddenly questioned me, ‘You are the English teacher, aren’t you?’

‘Yes, sir.’ Said I.

‘Why did you distribute the question paper with a new passage and old questions under it?’ He attacked me.

‘It was an error, but we immediately corrected it.’

‘Why did you do such a grave mistake?’ The man became more aggressive. ‘Don’t you have an exam committee here that checks and corrects a question paper before it is distributed to the students?’

‘We do check and correct mistakes, but again sometimes this kind of mistakes happen.’ I said politely, ‘This time this human error occurred.’

‘How can you say this is a human error? Do you do just copying and pasting in question paper?’

‘Not only that, but sometimes it happens. You would be right if the mistakes were not corrected.’

Then, Manoj asked the man, ‘Don’t you see any mistake in the national daily newspapers where there are huge teams of editors and proof-readers?’

Now, the man lowered his voice a bit. Finally, we saw him wincing with the painful feeling of losing the hot debate.

The school bell for the sixth period rang outside, and I had to go to another class.

When I came back from the class after forty minutes, he was already gone.

Itahari, teaches English,  stories