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EXCITING NEWS?

Sona Sharma lives in a large joint family full of happy people who argue sometimes. Relatives come over unannounced, the phone rings often, and everyone is always welcome whatever the time.
   These are Sona’s people:
  Amma – Sona’s mom.She is a music teacher and singer. She’s always humming a song or listening to music.
  Appa – Sona’s dad. He works with computers all day and sometimes at night too.
  Minmini – Minmini means “firefly,” and she is Sona’s baby sister, who is almost one.
  Thatha – Sona’s grandfather. He knows a lot of things. And when he doesn’t know about something, he tells a story about something else.
  Paatti – Sona’s grandmother. She makes the best sweets in the whole world. She always laughs at Thatha’s jokes.
 The President – Sona’s other grandmother. Sona doesn’t know her real name. The President used to be the president of some college, so everyone calls her that still. She lives in the only orange house in the entire neighborhood, called the Orange.
  Joy and Renu – Sona’s friends from school. They live a street away and go to school with Sona in an auto-rickshaw.
  Mullai – Sona’s auto-rickshaw driver. She picks up Sona, Joy, and Renu, in that order,
to drop off at school. In the evening she takes them home—Renu first, Joy next, and Sona last. She’s never late and recites a lot of Tamil poetry.
  Elephant – Sona’s best friend. He fits perfectly in her toy bag and her cuddly chair and next to her on her pillow. Sona never goes anywhere without him, except, of course, to school.
 
It was Monday morning and the beginning of a new week. Sona said goodbye to Elephant and went downstairs with her school bag.
 HONK!
   Mullai, her auto-rickshaw driver, had arrived to pick up Sona for school.
   “Bye!” she shouted to Thatha, hurrying to get into the auto-rickshaw.
   “You seem very excited to get to school today,” said Mullai. She started the auto-rickshaw with a loud FUT-FUT-FUT and they were off.
   “Miss Rao said she has something special to announce today,” said Sona. “I can’t wait to find out what it is.”
   Joy and Renu were excited too.
   “Maybe Miss Rao is getting married,” said Joy.
   “Ooh! Will she invite us to the wedding?” asked Renu.
   When they reached school, Miss Rao was getting ready for the day, humming a song to herself.
   “What is the exciting thing, Miss?” asked Sona.
   “Good morning to you too, Sona,” said Miss Rao.
   “Good morning, Miss Rao,” all three of them chorused dutifully.
   “Please tell us about the exciting news!” Sona prompted.
   “Not yet,” said Miss Rao. “After we take attendance.”
   Sona groaned. Taking attendance took a long time in their class. When Miss Rao called a name, that person had to reply back with a fact instead of simply saying “Present.” Miss Rao would choose the type of facts each day. They had already covered extinct animals, rivers of the world, and Indian scientists.
   “Let’s list states of India today,” said Miss Rao.
   After all the names were checked off, Miss Rao closed the attendance sheet and said, “So . . .”
   She was going to tell them the exciting news. Please, please, let it be a field trip, thought Sona, grinning at Renu and Joy.
   “You all know that every class must have a class leader,” said Miss Rao.
   Everyone nodded.
   “Usually, teachers pick someone who has demonstrated leadership,” continued Miss Rao.
   “How do you dem-on-strate leadership?” asked Joy.
   “I’m a leader,” said Pradeep.
   Pradeep had transferred from another city to their school the year before. Ever since he’d gotten there, he was always boasting about himself.
   “Shh!” said Miss Rao. “But this time I’m not going to pick someone.”
   “Then we don’t get a class leader?” asked Sona.
   “You’re all going to choose a leader in an election,” said Miss Rao. “Isn’t that exciting?”
   An election? Sona had always thought elections were for grown-ups and definitely not exciting.
   “Can children vote in elections?” she asked.
   “This is our class election,” said Miss Rao, “and so you will be voting.”
   “Will you be voting, Miss?” asked Renu.
   “No, I will be the election commissioner,” said Miss Rao. “That means I make the rules and ensure that the election is conducted properly.”
   “Who will we vote for?” asked Sona.
   “We will have candidates,” said Miss Rao. “Who can tell me what the word candidate means?”
   “A candidate is candy made of dates,” said Joy, giggling, “and we can pick the one we like.”
   Everyone laughed. Even Miss Rao. “Good wordplay, Joy,” she said, turning to the whiteboard. She wrote the word candidate with a blue marker and turned back to the class.
   “A candidate is someone who wants to become the class leader,” said Miss Rao. “If there is more than one candidate, then we need an election to see who gets the most votes.”
   “So we don’t need an election, Miss,” said Pradeep. “Everyone will choose me.”
   “Can anyone become a class leader as long as they win the election?” asked Joy.
   “That’s right,” said Miss Rao. “As long as you become a candidate and get the most votes.”
   Miss Rao explained that each person in the class would need to think about who to vote for because whoever they chose would be their class leader for the entire year.
   “What if we don’t like any of the candidates?” someone else asked.
   “Then you can abstain,” said Miss Rao, writing the word on the board. “That means you decide not to vote. But I hope none of you will abstain because our class surely has very good candidates.”
   “Everyone will vote for me,” said Pradeep. Again!
   Renu groaned loudly. Joy rolled her eyes at Pradeep. Sona decided she must do something about Pradeep’s boasting. She didn’t want the entire class abstaining. And she definitely did not want Pradeep to be their class leader for an entire year.
   “Well, you’re not the only candidate anymore, are you?” said Sona. “Miss, I want to be a candidate too.”
   Some of the girls clapped. Pradeep stuck out his tongue at her.
   Miss Rao smiled. “Good, we’re getting started. We have two candidates now.”
   Sona turned toward Joy and Renu triumphantly. But Joy wasn’t smiling. Neither was Renu. The rest of the day was filled with discussions about elections. In geography, Miss Rao showed them the symbols of famous political parties across India. In math, they drew bar graphs of election results. In English, they learned the meanings of words related to elections and how to spell them.
   Sona turned to Joy and asked, “Isn’t constituency the hardest word ever?”
   But Joy didn’t reply. Before Sona could ask about it, the bell rang and it was break time. Joy and Renu ran away together.
   At first, Sona didn’t think much of it. She decided to talk to them during lunch. But at lunch, when Joy and Renu sat on their own under the neem tree, far away from her, Sona’s eyes filled up with tears.
   This was the first time she had ever eaten lunch on her own. Even Paatti’s vermicelli upma didn’t taste good with tears. But she didn’t want to cry in front of her classmates. What if they thought she wasn’t a good candidate? Sona finished her lunch and went to the library to read The Big Book of Bad Dad Jokes. Appa always said funny books are great for sad times.