Little Miss Samaritan

Natasha,wake up!"Papa's booming voice echoed inside my head.I slowly opened my sleepy eyes and saw him standing before me like a dictator.He was holding a sheet of paper and one look at it was enough for me to realize that my whole day was ruined.
"Solve them in fifteen minutes and show me"Papa commanded,handing me the paper.I glanced at the clock,it was already seven,which meant the two hours I had before leaving for school would be spent on a heated arguement with papa on the conflicting views we had about some of the basic mathematical operations.
I hated Maths at school.It was a subject that never made any sense to me.Even at those times when I could correctly manage to find the sum of five and four as nine,the answer failed to give me a quantum of pleasure because I hardly knew what I had done to those numbers on the left side.How could a change in sign between two numbers produce an entirely different answer?What is the difference between addition and multiplication?These were unexplainable questions that baffled me completely.This was especially a dilemma when solving those statement problems where one had to read the question and logically choose the operation to be performed.I answered them blindly following implicit cues like if the question has the words 'how many times'it would be probably multiplication.
"Another gloomy Monday morning"I sighed as I walked to my study table with the set of sums.I loathed Maths even more because in addition to the forty minutes of torture I'd to go through at school everyday,I had to attend daily practice sessions with papa at home which was even more annoying.
After straining my grey cells for half an hour I finished with the problems.Dearly hoping that all the sums would be correct I took my answer sheet to papa.Before starting the valuation he gave me a small lecture on the importance of finishing the assigned tasks on time.He scanned through the paper and found that I'd managed to get more than half the answers wrong (that is the most annoying thing about Maths,a change of single digit was enough to get the wrong answer)Being a man equipped with a patience which was yet to devlop from its early embryonic form,my pathetic performance was more than enough to stir his temper.I'd a short trip to hell in the next fifteen minutes,after which I returned to my table with a pair of swollen red eyes,scarlet red ears,bruised thighs and worse..another sheet of paper with a new set of problems in my hand.
I was totally exhausted after the fiery ordeal that my grey cells were in no mood for any level of intellectual stimulation .I pondered on how I could escape from the next cycle of the nightmare.I decided to sit with the paper for the next half an hour..may be by that time papa would realize that it was time for me to leave for school and would ask me to go and have my breakfast,with which I can sit for another half an hour and then there would be time left only to dress up and leave for school.But this inkling of hope was wiped away immediately by papa's voice from the next door,
"Don't think that you can budge from your seat without finishing those problems"
As all the roads to escape were closed,I decided to work out the problems(this time I'd no hope that I would get them right).After fifteen minutes I entered the lion's lair again.No miracles happened this time as well,my level of performance still touched the bottomline and Papa's reaction was also much the same.I cannot say what I disliked the most..his bark or his bite.He was still adamant to teach me the subject,so he prepared another set of questions and left me with a warning that if I failed to show an appreciable degree of improvement this time the outcome would be disastrous(ofcourse,it was just a warning intended to boost up my performance,but it didnot sound good).These were the moments when I was forced to think about running away from home.With a heavy heart,I returned to my place and started with the problems again.I couldn't even see the numbers clearly because tears were gushing out of my eyes.
It was then that the most unexpected thing happened.All this time Deechechi was sitting beside me engaged in her own studies.As I was deep inside the pool of trouble I'd failed to notice her.Suddenly,she took the question paper from me and started working out the problems.In less than five minutes she finished all the problems and handed the paper back.I was overwhelmed by surprise and happiness at this unanticipated act of philanthropy.As I was not the kind of girl who under such dire situations would cling on to moral values,I gladly accepted the paper with a broad smile.Afte rewriting the answers in my handwriting and waiting for another fifteen minutes,I went to papa with a newfound confidence I'd never experienced before.Now it was his turn to be surprised because even he didnot expect such an impeccable result.

"Randennam thannaal nee ethu kanakkun cheyyum,alle"?He said with a smile of victory.

I had not thought about the possibility of him reaching such dangerous conclusions as I was too much worried about the impending disaster.

I left the room unscathed.But the incident reaffirmed Papa's view that a stick can work wonders as a teaching assitant.
Deechechi doesn't remember helping me with the sums.She says she must have been completely out of her mind if she has done something of this sort.:)