This is inspired by a blog entry by a dear friend of mine. Reading that post led me down memory lane. I still remember my school days and can’t help but smile. All the memories are pleasant ones and still warm the cockles of my heart. I remember the teachers who took so much pain to deal with this bunch of almost anti social kids. Being from a small town, all the teachers knew all the students and their families by name. We had a good play ground and the games period was the most eagerly awaited one. There was always the added bonus of one of the teachers remaining on leave and his / her period being converted in to an impromptu Games period. Heaven. Even to this day in my dreams when ever I see home or school it is good old Fertilizer.
Our school was divided in to four houses (quaintly named Diamond, Emerald, Ruby and Pearl). The inter house competitions were fierce (IPL seems like child’s play compared to the levels of loyalty that we owed to our houses). Even teachers got involved and did everything possible to support their respective houses.
Memories come flooding back. The strict Hindi teacher, Mehta Sir who was convinced that this group of morons would never learn to differentiate between streeling and pulings. The simple Rana Sir, Behera Sir (Butru) and Pandey Sir (good ol Calcu), the sophisticated Jana Aunty and Varughese Aunty. The list is endless. Our Head master, KV Rao Sir, remains one of the most ideal teachers that any student can hope for. I still remember that in a desperate bid to induce students to converse in English, he encouraged us to pinch anyone found conversing in Hindi (our staple lingua franca at school). That led to serious pinching bouts with students enjoying the pinchings more than even attempting to speak the Queen's english.
Then there were the fledgling romances. Accompanied with idiotic shero shaairee and raunchy movie songs. The chalk and duster battles, the tiffin sharing, the so called combined studies in one of our friend’s houses (spent mostly listening to music, watching movies and creating chaos in general), the rush to be the first out of school during lunch breaks… I still remember that in an attempt at taming us the teachers had hit upon this novel idea of asking the more mischievous ones to clean the class rooms during the morning prayers. It was considered a matter of prestige to get nominated for this task. When the rest of the class returned from prayers, the classroom usually looked like some natural calamity (Richter 10 magnitude) has visited the class. All the desks and benches were usually removed from the class to do a thorough cleaning, leading to the first period being used up almost entirely. Other matters in which we took immense pride was being asked to stand out side classroom (great opportunity to roam about the campus), even standing up on benches (the maximum punishment that was inflicted) and so on.
Recently I had an opportunity to visit Fertilizer Town and my school. Sadly the school looks dilapidated and shrunken. Even the township looks small and shabby. Once this was our whole world and traveling out of the township in to the big bad world was considered something of an adventure. But now it resembled a glorified village. Had the Township changed or has our vision? The play ground looked puny and the classrooms tiny. Is this really where we had spent the most wonderful days of our lives?
