Gratitude 7 (Teachers' Day Special 2014) : Five

Teachers' Day Special : I suppose that's self-explanatory. Please read the entire poem before forming your opinions.

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Five

In the classrooms behind the cobwebs

Of our greying reminiscence

There lives a story of The Five :

Five high school friends --

Five rebels of hot young blood

Who found all things unfair;

Five devils of the school's halls,

Every teacher's nightmare

And how they ruled the place!

They mangled the chairs and walls

And broke the teacher's desk, and

Trashed the washroom stalls.

Every teacher, class and rule

Was branded as nonsense

By The Five, the high school bosses,

With the utmost confidence.

If ever perchance there was a class

That they deigned to attend,

It ended with one or all of them

Standing out at the hallway's end...

... and on Teachers' Day in Class Twelfth,

The Five, the smart and clever,

Decided it was revenge time --

Payback, now or never.

They usurped the stage on September Five,

All prudence dead and burnt,

And hurled every sick expletive

That they had ever learnt.

When The Five finally left the stage,

Anger spent and gone,

Their homeroom teacher of three years

Asked to speak with them alone.

The words spoken to The Five behind

Those closed classroom doors

Are unknown to all others till date --

Not even the Principal knows

But thereafter till Farewell,

The Five went underground;

Come school's end, they shook hands and parted,

Never again to be found.

Tonight, on September Five,

Fifty and five years thence,

Three people gathered at my place --

Three remaining of Five friends --

And on the moonlit rooftop

Looking skyward, we lay

Whispering to every star,

Happy Teachers' Day.

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