"Marks" donor!

The excitement was palpable. Mrs Kher, our Hindi teacher, arrived in class with a bundle of answer booklets under her arm. Our exam papers, all neatly evaluated in red-ink, with the final score scrawled at the top, were distributed to the students. In fact, the final score was written more on the faces of the students than on the answer papers! Some exulted in obvious glee, others with a sense of relief and a few wore a pained expression. The class accountant ("bookworm creep" who used to sit in the first row, under the nose of the teacher) carefully jotted down the marks of each student in his dossier. A born statistician, he knew more about each student than the student himself! He made his findings public from time to time indicating which student was at the top of the class, who trailed behind whom and by how much and substantiated the information with a bewildering volume of bar charts and graphs!
Coming to the episode on hand, it was evident that Wayne was upset.  He had scored 6 out of 25. Wayne was a "boarder". Boarders were a separate breed with a stereotypical image- they stayed in school under the wing of some "Brother or Father", were brilliant at Sports and great fun to hang around with. If there was a blemish, as everything must, academics wasn't exactly their cup of tea. If they cleared exams, it was mainly to escape the torture cells that they would have to otherwise endure. Their lives were no doubt tough at times.

"Ma'am, ma'am, please ma'am, I need only two marks to pass ma'am! Can you please give me grace marks ma'am ?", pleaded Wayne in as plaintive a voice as he could muster.
"Wouldn't it be a disgrace if you scored all your marks with my grace!?", questioned Mrs Kher sternly and shut the door on his face.
Inexplicably, she made a sudden 'volte-face' (if that's the expression I'm looking for) and offered a tantalizing escape route to Wayne. "I can give you one grace mark. It's within my capacity to do that. But, you would need one more mark. If you can find someone amongst your friends who can donate you one mark, then, yes, you can definitely pass!"

Such a bizarre proposition had never been made. It was almost as if Wayne needed a donor, someone with the milk of human kindness who would forego one of his vital organs and gift it to Wayne!

In a first of its kind, Wayne had to go around the class with a begging bowl. At a time when marks were a more precious commodity than gold, it was tough to part with them! It was an awkward time. Some of us wished we were seated inside a car where we could roll up the windows and not have to go through the agony of watching someone cringe for one mark at such close quarters! We  tried to hide behind other heads in class and pretend to be a bit of furniture, but Wayne was persistent. He came by each desk, put on a sorry face and at times tugged at an elbow or touched a shoulder. It was tough to appear cold and aloof. At times, he reminded us of the torture cells and made us feel terribly uneasy and guilty. If he passed a bench with no success, he made it a point to hurl the choicest of abuses under his breath which provoked a few to no end!

We all had our compulsions which seemed perfectly legitimate- if I donated one mark, David would be ahead of me in the marks race. Valentino had a better excuse- "I would gladly donate you one mark, but I've scored 8 out of 25. Just passed! If I gave you one mark, then, you will pass all right, but I would then have to go around and beg!" It looked as if this beggary would never end. Sridhar was forthright in his response- "We should never encourage begging. Why can't Wayne study ? Afterall, he is hale and more than healthy. Never give a fish to a boy. Instead, teach him how to fish!" But it was unclear who would teach Wayne Hindi and fishing. Sridhar felt one of the Brothers could put his time to better use by teaching Wayne than minding the torture cells!

The class desperately needed a savior.
Pragnyat stood up from the last bench and said, "Ma'am, I will give Wayne one mark. Here is my paper! Please deduct one mark and give it to Wayne!" In a throw-back to the days of the Mahabharata, it looked as if Pragnyat could take a dagger, slice his armour and hand it over with minimum fuss!
If it had been a different yuga, the Devas would have surely emerged from behind the clouds and showered rose petals with full throated shouts of bravo-bravo or dhanya-dhanya! Paeans would have been sung and a special title of "daana-veera-shoora Pragnyat" would have been bestowed forthwith!

We like stories with a happy ending. We all went home happy that day with the confirmation that in the marks rat race, there was finally someone who was not a rat!

P.S: Some doubts linger in our mind as we look back at this incident. Couldn't Mrs Kher have easily donated two marks and avoided this entire circus ? Why did she come up with this strange proposal where she had to keep the total marks constant so that one person's loss would be another's  gain ?
All that we can conjecture is, the plot, bordering on the abnormal, should not be stretched beyond a point. As in other mythological stories, the whole focus is to prop up and highlight the character of the hero! The rest is mere trivia.