The Cog-not

The snow on the hilltops, they say, lay unwilted since centuries, uninterrupted by gales or the decrepit warmth of the short-lived summer sun or the numerous footfalls of the transitorily draped in local attire tourists, or the tousled hammering of the terrain through nappy trekking shoes, or the ceaseless indentations of undying love carved into the snow by young lovers. 

Somehow, the perpetuality of the stubborn, unyielding disavowment of the frozen waterfalls brings back the untouched school memory from the ghost of Class 6th past. That one chunk of cognizance that refuses to unhook from the ever-budding set of morale-making episode cropping through life, where it had lodged itself, contributing in major proportion to the idea of polity and a cog-wheelistic helplessness that has so doggedly become a part of mature conscience.

It was lunch-time at school. Montonocity dictated, the closing bell rang and all the girls were to be formed in a line to be escorted back to our regular classrooms for the after-lunch classes. The whole process was a daily hassle as each one of us were subjected to an avalanche of dragooning and a near stampede took place everyday. Everyone refused to put an iota of effort in trying to remain standing at our original position so that at least the remaining line of girls in front of the respective effort-putting-pioneer could be saved from all the pushing back-n-front dilly-dally the girls at back were being subjected to. All it would have taken was a little muscular effort. So one afternoon, a little girl finally made her mind up not to be physically regulated from her position and remain put, standing at her spot, no matter how much impetus she had to bear in order to not be organically moved. I must mention here that the girl was a plump, heavyset bundle of physical prowess during those days and therefore, her decision to take a stand (literally!) was not entirely thoughtless or unpractically dramatic. Anyhow, she put her plan to action. And it worked; or so it seemed in the beginning. To paint a sketch of acute accuracy, I would blow my story a little out of proportion so that it would be easier for the reader to mellow it down, thereby arriving at a pretty precise picture. So, to an onlooking bystander, it appeared as if the girl was putting every last bit of essay she had to stay rigidly at her position, an ever greater magnitude of confused rampage of domination, perplex and chagrin on the back, and a perfectly undisturbed, tranquil line of students to her front. This went on for a while, until a teacher spotted the proceedings. Not unpredictably, she had eyes only for, or to rephrase, she had her eye only on the girl. To a completely unaware, unrelated and just-introduced-into-the-frame-of-things person as her, it seemed as if the girl was the sole source of all the commotion taking place on her back; the effort she was putting in to keep the students on her front stay unaffected from the totally antonymous discomposure morphed in her eyes to look like the primitive provenance of the more-than-usual pandemonium than the teacher was used to handle, and consequently, ignore. Without any further ado, she marched straight up to the girl and planted a tight slap on her face for allegedly fueling the tumult. The girl was pulled out of the line and made to stand out in the sun for the rest of the day. The infuriation of being misunderstood seemed maddening to her. 

For a really long time after that incident, the girl refused to get involved in any trailblazing, colonizing, spearheading fountainhead activity.