The Model Volcano with the Neat Wires

Prisha’s volcano took eleven days and cost about ninety rupees. Most of that went on paint, and a big jar of vinegar, and the cloth.

The cone was paper and flour paste over a plastic bottle. It took four evenings to dry properly. On the third evening her little brother put his thumb in it. She painted it in two browns and one grey. Then she went back and did a black line down one side, because in the photographs there is always a black line down one side.

Inside, at the top, sat the cut-off bottom of a bottle. Soda in a paper packet. Red colour in a cup. Vinegar in a jar, with a spoon standing in it, ready.

The whole thing stood on a metal tray on top of a cloth. The first time she tested it in the kitchen it went further than anyone had planned, and her mother said a word.

It worked. It worked every single time, eleven times out of eleven, if you counted the kitchen floor, the newspaper, and her mother’s cloth.

It also wobbled. The tray was not quite flat on the table and the cone leaned a little. There was nothing to be done about that at this stage.

The science fair was in the hall on a Saturday. Thirty tables, a paper label on each one, and a jug of water and two glasses at the end of every row.

Roshni’s project was on table nine.

It was a model of a lift.

It was in a wooden box the size of a big shoebox, open at the front. Inside was a real cage that went up and down on two rails. It had a switch on the side that clicked properly. It had four small lights that came on in order as the cage passed them. The wires ran along the inside edges of the box, flat, in a straight line, held down with little white clips at even spaces.

The joints were soldered. You could see them, small and silver and perfectly round.

The label was laminated.

Prisha stood behind her tray at table nineteen for two hours. She explained her volcano forty times. She set it off nine times, and it worked nine times. Two Class 4 boys came back three separate times to watch it. A father from somewhere took a video of it. Her mother had come and was standing near the door being extremely casual.

The judges came round at half past twelve. There were three of them, and one of them asked good questions, and Prisha answered them well.

They gave first to table nine.

The box, the switch, the little lights, the label.

The certificate was read out at two o’clock and Roshni went up to get it. Everybody clapped, including Prisha, who clapped properly with her hands up.

Here is the other part.

Roshni is eleven. Roshni did not solder anything. Roshni cut the card and painted the cage. She had the idea about the lights coming on in order, which was a genuinely good idea, and was hers.

Her father is an engineer. He came home on the Tuesday and looked at what she had built. He was not unkind about it. Then he sat up until about one in the morning and made it work properly.

Roshni stood next to that box for two hours on Saturday, with her hands behind her back and the certificate table in front of her.

For two hours people who knew about wires stopped at table nine and said how neat the wiring was. Three different adults asked her how she had learned to solder. She said “my dad showed me” three times. Each time she said it, something went through her like cold water.

She could not say the other thing. Not at eleven, in a hall, next to her own father’s work, with two hours still to go and everybody being nice to her.

She did not say it. She has never said it.

The box, the rails, the four lights, the label.

Prisha does not know any of this and probably never will. She was at table nineteen with her tray and her jar and her spoon.

At half past three they packed up. Down came the labels, and the tables went back against the wall, and the chairs went into a stack by the door. The trolley came round for the big ones. Prisha’s tray went on it, and Roshni’s box went on next to it. They were the last two tables, and the trolley was going that way anyway.

The two of them pushed it down the corridor together to the store room.

They talked about a teacher on the way. They talked about a boy in Class 8 who had set fire to something in his own project. Everybody agreed that was the best moment of the day.

They pushed it past the door and the boxes and the stacked chairs. At the store room they lifted the projects off.

Prisha took hers off with one hand. It was paper and flour and one plastic bottle on a tray, and it weighed nothing at all.

Roshni needed both arms for the box, and had to put it down once, halfway, to get a better hold.