“An unreliable narrator,” Tanya Sachdeva told Class Twelve B, “is not necessarily a liar.”
Thirty-eight faces watched her with the disciplined suspicion of people who had been promised an examination hint and feared they were receiving literature instead.
It was the second week of April, ten minutes before lunch, and Delhi had already entered its annual argument with the sun. The classroom air-conditioner had three settings—Arctic, Tractor and Dead—and was currently making a noise that suggested agricultural work. Two ceiling fans pushed warm air between the rows. Outside the window, a gardener was watering dust.
Tanya wrote UNRELIABLE NARRATOR on the whiteboard and underlined it twice.
“Sometimes the narrator deliberately deceives the reader. Sometimes they misunderstand events. And sometimes”—she capped the marker—“they tell the truth in a way that protects the version of themselves they prefer.”
Her phone vibrated on the desk.
She ignored it.
It vibrated again.
Then three times in quick succession.
Aakash Mehra, who treated every class as a negotiation, raised his hand. “Ma’am, I think someone urgently needs you.”
“I think someone urgently needs to pass English.”
The class laughed. Aakash placed a hand over his heart as though wounded by an institution rather than a sentence.
Tanya turned to the board and, using her body as cover, glanced at the screen.
Rhea: HOLIDAY CRIME NUMBER SEVEN: KISS A STRANGER.
Meher: Too vague. Define stranger.
Naina: Define kiss. Costs may vary.
Rhea: Tanya will provide rubric.
Tanya turned the phone face down.
“Now,” she said, with more authority than the moment deserved, “what evidence tells us that the narrator’s account may not be complete?”
Three hands rose. At the back, someone whispered. The phone vibrated once more.
She continued teaching while an image formed unwanted and precise in her mind: a beach at night, a man without a name, and herself behaving in a way that would make Class Twelve B require counselling.
“Ma’am?” Aakash said.
“Yes?”
“You stopped talking.”
“I was allowing you time to think. I appreciate that the experience is unfamiliar.”
The bell rang before he could reply. Chairs scraped, notebooks snapped shut and thirty-eight students became a crowd at once.
“Read the next story for Monday,” Tanya called over them. “And no, watching a five-minute summary does not count.”
“How will you know?” someone asked from the door.
“Your vocabulary becomes suspiciously American.”
When the room emptied, Tanya checked her phone properly.
There were twenty-six new messages in the group chat named Four People, One Brain Cell.
Rhea had expanded the list.
HOLIDAY CRIMES
1. Wear something our mothers would call incomplete.
2. Dance without checking who is filming.
3. Drink something served inside fruit.
4. Talk to attractive men without checking LinkedIn.
5. Stay out until sunrise.
6. No discussing marriage potential before first names.
7. Kiss a stranger.
8. Tanya wears the red bikini.
Tanya typed beneath her desk.
Tanya: Crime 9: I murder Rhea and teach symbolism through the evidence.
Rhea replied immediately.
Rhea: She didn’t deny owning the bikini.
Tanya locked the phone and collected her books.
At twenty-six, she had been teaching English at Eastbridge International School for four years. She could stop a paper aeroplane without turning around, identify copied homework by the sudden appearance of semicolons, and conduct a parent meeting using only calm sentences and internal screaming. Students believed teachers slept in cupboards behind the staff room. Parents believed teachers were publicly funded extensions of their anxiety. The administration believed teachers could generate time by being told something was urgent.
She liked the work more than she admitted during difficult weeks. She liked the instant when a bored face changed because a sentence had finally reached it. She liked finding the shy student’s essay that was much funnier than the child ever dared to be aloud. She even liked the small rituals: dates in the left margin, names on the right, no glitter on assignments unless the subject was an active volcano and even then preferably no glitter.
What she disliked was the moral halo people attached to the word teacher.
A teacher, according to the world, did not lose her temper in traffic, buy wine in her own neighbourhood, wear shorts where a parent might exist, or have romantic preferences more complicated than “nice settled boy.” A teacher could analyse adultery in classic literature at nine in the morning but was expected to become personally unfamiliar with desire by lunchtime.
In the staff room, Arjun Khanna was reading a newspaper as if personally responsible for the Mughal period.
“You look guilty,” he said without looking up.
“You look unemployed.”
“Free period. It’s an important distinction.”
Arjun taught history and believed gossip became respectable if described as institutional observation. He was thirty, permanently in need of a haircut, and one of the few colleagues with whom Tanya could complain without later hearing her complaint quoted in a meeting.
She placed her books on the table and opened her lunch.
“Goa planning?” he asked.
“How do you know?”
“You have checked your phone eleven times since morning and smiled at least twice. School communication produces neither behaviour.”
“We are finalising the itinerary.”
“You have been finalising it since March.”
“April.”
“My apologies. A model of decisiveness.”
The staff-room door opened. Mrs Anita Suri entered carrying two files, a laptop and the moral urgency of someone arriving from a minor administrative fire.
“Tanya, the Class Eleven holiday worksheet?”
“Sent last night.”
“The revised version?”
“Sent this morning.”
“With the new header?”
“Sent at ten-fifteen.”
Mrs Suri checked her phone, found the email and appeared faintly disappointed not to have discovered negligence.
“Good. We will need another activity for students who finish early.”
Arjun lowered the newspaper. “Could they experience leisure?”
Mrs Suri looked at him.
“A worksheet,” he translated.
After she left, Tanya opened the group chat again.
Meher had sent a poll: North Goa base with South Goa day trip OR split stay?
Naina had replied: Split stay adds transport and check-in time. Same base.
Rhea had replied: Where are the men statistically better?
Meher: This is itinerary planning, not wildlife distribution.
Tanya voted for the same base.
The trip had begun as a joke at Rhea’s birthday dinner in March. They were discussing how difficult it had become to coordinate one evening when Meher had said, “At this rate, we will next travel together after someone’s divorce.”
“Whose?” Naina had asked.
“We’ll decide based on destination.”
Goa emerged because it was familiar enough to plan and distant enough to feel irresponsible. The last week of May fit the school vacation, Rhea’s court calendar, Naina’s approved leave and the narrow space between Meher’s two campaigns. By April, flights had been booked. Once money left their accounts, the joke developed legal standing.
That afternoon Tanya taught two more classes, supervised a club meeting and returned three essays with comments longer than the essays themselves. At four-ten, she walked out through the school gate wearing a pale-blue kurta and carrying two bags. Heat rose from the pavement. The guard saluted. A line of cars idled beneath a NO IDLING sign while drivers called children who could not hear them.
Her mother had messaged twice.
Coming home?