The Backbencher’, is about a fairly intelligent girl who is a backbencher because she ‘could not forsake the pleasures of life to be among the top rung in class’. Her whole academic graph reads a constant ‘average’ but when she performs better than the best girl in class, her hopes too, are raised for a good result in the Board Exams but she falters again, for the umpteenth time. The backbencher goes through a period of remorse, guilt, pain, anger, fear and self-doubt…..’Maybe I was a good-for-nothing after all; maybe the teachers were being nice when they said “Can do better” when what they actually wanted to say was….. “Can never do better”; maybe that was how I was going to be all my life”. Will the backbencher be able to pull herself out of the abyss she has pushed herself into and ‘ come good, ‘ as her father believed she would or will she remain a backbencher for life?
