Touched by an Angel

Truthfully speaking, I do not know when he came and went. It was almost as if it was destined to be. I became firm friends with John Donald Hunlang Khongjee.

Standard V. Khongjee gets alphabetically sorted before Koch and so his roll number was one before mine. And in the term exams, he'd sit before me. And we'd check our answers. We had a weird method of communication which only he and I could practise. We did not devise a code or sign-language. It was as simple as, "Johnny! Question 5. Trick?". A nod and I'd know we both got it right otherwise we rechecked. I cannot even call it cogging just that we felt so powerful, almost supernatural at being able to check our answers in that way. We'd come out of the exam hall and feel so proud.

Johnny had two dots on his head. I do not know what you call them but they are the circular bald spots that everyone has and when you cut your hair real short, they stick out prominently. It is a Khasi saying that people with two dots are very naughty and one of his real childhood exploits was that he had kicked sister Aloitious when not allowed to meet his sister in St. Mary's Montessori school where he started his school life. He would break into a fit of laughter and note that he was wearing Naughtboy shoes from Bata.

Standard VI. Johnny and I could not sit together because we could not help giggling in class. But everything was so funny and every person seemed like a character out of Enid Blyton. Our favourite was Moon Face from The Magic Faraway Tree. I once said to him, "We suffer from imagination John". And he had said, "I hate the way you sum up things in one sentence like that".

Mrs. Jenneth Lyngdoh was our class teacher and John and I looked up to her a lot. Mrs. Lyngdoh was calm and composed and very-very good at explaining fractions and made us maintain a small book for gentlemen called "Little things that matter much". Johnny and I really took our notes very seriously and almost always found faults with others, specially Manav Sehgal.

Sandard VII. Anita Das' class and the influence of Synjuklang Rynjah, a real clown but one Johnny and I had to take in as a close friend because Synjuk was, without doubt, the only person who was mad enough to be taken in. And we did not have to accept him or initiate him or any such thing. It just happened and neither John's nor my Piscean intuition said anyting. Ofcourse, we had our own language that ranged from Mod-mod, mango ripe, Kong Dil and so many more phrases that defined a complete situation, person and place. Synjuk would start something like, "Rupert was being very mod-mod" to which John would say, "You are always persecuting poor Rupert" to which both Synjuk and I would say, "John, don't be a Kong Dil".

Johnny and I loved science class. Our teacher till we graduated out of school was Mrs. Gopalakrishnan. We called her Gopala, Gopu and what not but John and I competed fiercely to get the highest in science in class.

Standard VIII. Mrs. Neogi's class. John was verily the star of Chemistry and how I envied him because all the bonds and equations and concepts were just so easy for him. Mrs. Mowhead (we also called her Moronhead) would call on "John Donald" for every difficult question. I can never forget class 8 because Johnny and I discovered the love for computers at the same time. And so when the winter approached, we decided to take the CAT (Computer Awareness Test) and Miss. Passah, our computer teacher helped us along. That is when we decided that we wanted to be engineers.

Standard IX. Mrs. Krishnakali Sen's class. And she was our Chemistry teacher too. And Johnny outshone us all in Chemistry. Between Chemistry, Biology and Computers, Johnny and I did not have much time to fall in love with anyone else.

Standard X. Interschool quiz competition and Johnny outwits Radhika Naidu from Pine Mount. We were ecstatic and Johnny gets teased for the whole year with Nightmare Naidu. John also played the role of the father of the family in the play entitled 'Godmother'. National Science seminar and quiz competition. Johnny and I get selecetd to represent Meghalaya in quiz and extempore' and we also wanted very badly to take part in the software development competition.

We did not know when ICSE was over and when we found ourselves in college attending class XI and XII. Throughout school, Johnny and I shared roll numbers next to each other. Throughout school from V to X, I saw Johnny everyday and saw him off every evening when we walked down from Edmund's onto Don Bosco Square. We grew up, but felt just the same always...in Moon Face land!

Very soon, Johnny and I completed class XII and both started engineering school. He went to Fr. Agnel college of Eng. in Vashi in Navi Mumbai. From there he graduated. In the meantime, I went to BITS, Pilani and made a whole new group of friends. Johnny and I kept in touch. So did Synjuk. Very soon we graduated and I came down to Bangalore, Synjuk went to Delhi with his degree in Hotel Management. Johnny started working in Mumbai. Initially he had problems with finding a good job and we spoke quite often working out ways of getting him a better job.

And then one fine day, he left me to meet God.

Someday I shall catch up with you too Johnny. Till then I shall continue to serve here knowing that I have been touched by an angel. Thank you for being my guiding light.