ASAD knew something was amiss about the school from the first day he joined it. When he sat down at his assigned desk in class, they all stared at him curiously. Some whispered among themselves. It was very unnerving.

The teachers were all either scary or very unhelpful. When he asked to be excused to go to the washroom, they would dismiss his need altogether or make him wait while they filled out a hall-pass. And during the first four periods, he discovered that his class had a rather odd, erratic behaviour. It could be as solemn as a funeral procession or as wild as a full-scale riot.

What exactly signalled his classmates that it was safe to monkey around? It certainly wasn’t the gap between the periods, for they behaved unusually disciplined then.

During recess, Asad was sitting in a corner of the cafeteria eating his lunch alone — as he expected to be doing on his first day — when a gang of five or six surrounded him. They were the ‘naughty’ kids of the class and they had their shirts untucked and laces undone. One of them was missing his tie.

“When did you get admitted?” asked the fattest one of the lot, who wasn’t actually all that fat, just chubby. He asked in a threatening tone, as if Asad had done something wrong.

“Last Friday.”

“Who did you meet?” chirped the tie-less fellow.

“Excuse me?”

“Did you meet the secretary or the principal?”

Asad thought it an odd question, and he had half a mind to ask what business it was of them all, but he had no desire to get his socks knocked off by the chubby boy who was still squinting at him. “My parents met the principal. I met the secretary and she showed me around.”

The boys all looked thoroughly disappointed. “He hasn’t seen her!” complained the tie-less boy. “Let’s go.”

“I’ve seen the principal!” Asad declared suddenly somewhat dramatically, surprising himself.

They all turned toward him, interested. More kids had joined the group. Some looked sceptical, others amused. A few were downright awestruck.

“I didn’t see her face,” Asad added. “But it was hard not to notice her. She’s a very big woman. And she’s very red. She even has red hair.”

The gang grinned appreciatively and nodded around. Nobody said a word. A very little girl looked as if she was about to cry. The rest were silent, as if waiting for him to go on, but Asad had nothing else to say about the very large principal.

“Did you see her eyes?” the chubby boy asked finally, impatiently. Asad shook his head. “I didn’t see her face.”

“Her eyes are every bit as red as her hair,” the boy said solemnly. “Her teeth are very long and sharp, and usually they are red too …”

Some of the taller girls guffawed at this and left. Asad was beginning to suspect that the gang was playing a horrible joke on him. It wasn’t very thoughtful to set a lonely young boy against his principal on the very first day at school. The boys had joined him at his lonely table now though, and he felt a bit better. They were all talking among themselves about their fiery red principal.

Asad listened disbelievingly, but at the same time he felt a little apprehensive. What would they gain from instilling a mortal fear in his heart of this academic authority? If it was really all a prank then they must know that Asad would sooner or later run into the exaggerated person of the principal and realise it was not as horrible as they all described it.

“I want to see her now, let’s go to her office,” he said to the gang who closed their eyes and shook their heads together as if Asad was being very immature.

“Nobody can see the principal,” one boy said. “If somebody meets her, it’s because she wants them to. And then they don’t talk about it.”

“See that skinny boy over there?” said chubby to the alarmed Asad. “He used to bunk his classes. Talk back to his teachers. One day the principal called him,” he stopped there and Asad looked at him in surprise. “And then what?”

“Nobody knows,” said chubby mysteriously.

The boys were cryptic and uncooperative after that, and Asad eventually grew weary of listening to them talk among themselves. Asad had never been a position holder but he liked to think of himself as a pleasant boy who could always remain in his teachers’ good books with a little effort and charisma. To think that the consequences of misbehaviour had worsened so disproportionately made his child’s mind uneasy.

By the eighth period, Asad had a whopping headache and could not bear to go to attend the physical education class. Why did they insist on keeping PE at the end of the school day? At any rate, he could not go that day. Not with the sun beating down in full strength upon the sandy ground and a big military man with a moustache and a whistle announcing that they would all do volleyball.

Asad did not enjoy volleyball on the best of days. Their fourth-grade bodies were too frail and tiny for the bulky white ball. He did not want to call more attention to himself, and let the others file out of the classroom and slipped behind some desks unnoticed until their footsteps could not be heard.

After about half an hour Asad got tired of trying to find a comfortable spot to rest his head on the wooden tables. He got up and peered out of the classroom. There had to be a water-cooler somewhere so he decided to go look for it.

The corridor was a long white one, with doors on one side and a blank wall on the other. All the doors were closed. He reached the edge of the corridor and almost bumped smack into a big hard thing. That big hard thing seemed to go on and on forever as he looked up to make head or tail of it. He finally saw that it was a very large, very red person. This realisation hit him at the same time as a big resounding slap that narrowly missed his eye and sent him staggering back a few paces. He lunged out to steady himself and then without thinking, turned and fled. He fled past his classroom, he fled past the bathrooms, he fled down the stairs and before he knew it, he was out on the sunny ground where his classmates were milling around the volley net after practice, and the military man was thankfully nowhere around.

News of Asad’s encounter travelled fast, but it was soon followed by a more substantial, relieving announcement. The school was under new management. It turned out that the principal’s abuse in the hallway did not go unnoticed. Some visiting families had glimpsed the scene and were appalled at the unwarranted violence.

Asad never found out how much of what the scruffy gang had told him about the big red principal was true. He certainly didn’t recall seeing her fiery red eyes in the corridor, but thankfully, he recalled very little from that day. He did remember the sting on his ear though, and he has developed an irrational but understandable aversion of people who are too big, too red and too prone to hit you across the face.