My Student Life - Part 1

Woh Kagaj ki Kashti .. woh barish ka pani...

Yeah you guessed it right, I am feeling nostalgic about my childhood. Not only childhood, in fact about my entire student life. right from nursery till my post graduation. I thought why not write down about my memories of good old school days. So this one post, and the next few are going to be my about my school/college days.... my yesterday, which built my today, and which will keep building my tomorrow.

I am gonna write about my memories of those times, my friends and non-friends of those times. I will also be very truthful about my life, and reveal even those things about my life which no one really knows till date..... ummm, being so much confessional is hard, Okay.. I'll try my best to be truthful, as I am typing this I don't really know if I'll have courage to press that Publish button, after writing some of those embarrassing truths about my life. It's a little hard thing to do, specially because I do not blog with a screen name like 'Deadly Punch' or 'Spoilt Dude' but with my original name, and also the fact that now a lot of people who know me in real life, also read this blog. In fact after i realized that perhaps some of my office colleagues also read my blog (something which i did not want to happen, i don't know why, i feel lil uncomfortable about it), i hv been thinking of blogging with some screen name, which does not reveal my identity.

Aaah!!!! I can so easily deviate from point. without wasting more time, I'll get back to the days of my primary education.

My Primary School days

My first school was St. John convent, I don't really have many memories left of my one year of schooling there. I only have a faint recollection that it was a 'L' shaped building with a huge ground. After this one year at St John, my parents moved to another house in another locality, and so my school had to be changed too, I am told at that time I was sent to a school for few days, but for some reason I did not like that school at all, and I always kept crying in my 2-3 days of being there. So finaly I was taken out of that school and put in another, which turned out to be my primary school for next 6 years.

Saraswati Shishu Mandir, that's the name of my school which actually laid the foundation on which I am standing today. It was a Hindi medium school, and the class names were also all in pure hindi. Shishu Varg (or nursery), Pratham (First), Dwiteeya (Second), Triteeya (Third), Chaturth (Fourth) and Pancham (Fifth). We called our male teachers as Acharya Ji, and female teachers as Behen Ji. All the Acharyas used to wear dhoti-kurta, and Behen Ji's wore... well what else but sari. We had a typical school dress with Navy blue half pant, White shirt, Black leather shoes and white socks, Girls also used to wear red ribbons to tie there long hair.

The school had a big enough assembly hall, which we called as Vishal Kaksha (vishal means big/huge, kaksha means room), I always found it extremely beautiful. It had a huge portrait of Goddess Saraswati - the goddess of knowledge. This Saraswati portrait was flanked by two man size portraits of Swami Vivekanada and a beautiful portrait of Bharat Mata (mother india). On all the four walls of this assembly hall were pictures of great figures from indian mythology and history, right from Godly figures of Lord Ram, Lord Krishna, Guru Nanak, Guru Gobing Singh to great humans like Shivaji, Maharana Pratap, Mahatma Gandhi, Pt. Nehru, Bhagat Singh, Azad, Veer Savarkar, Lokmanya Tilak, Subhash Chandra Bose, Taigore, Bankim Chandra etc etc.... Almost every well known freedom fighter, every respected historic personality had found place on one of the four walls of our vishal kaksha. There were also two huge painted boards, one having the lyrics of our national anthem - Jana Gana Mana, and another with Vande Mataram inscribed on it. The class rooms on the first floor were built on the periphery of vishal kaksha, and thru a balcony running around the walls of vishal kaksha, we could always have the top view of that beautiful hall.

I was an extremely shy and introvert boy then, I remember that once when I was perhaps in standard One (or Pratham) our class room was shifted from ground floor to first floor, for a good number of days I did not even know where the loo was on the first floor, and I was too shy to ask that to any body. I generally used to go all the way to ground floor to use loo, once some teacher who saw me using Ground floor loo, advised me to use the loo on first floor instead of ground floor. Now I took that advice as an order, and being the too shy guy that i was, i still did not ask any one about where the loo was on first floor. So next few days here I was following my teachers advice and controlling the 'calls of nature' with all my might till the school was over. But then came the black day.. when I could not hold it any more, and even as i rushed out of class room towards the ground floor loo, not worrying about what my teacher told me...... it was too late. On that day after the school was over, no body sat next to me in the school bus, every one who looked at me laughed, and some wicked boys even gave me a nick name, okay I am not gonna tell that to you guys. When I reached home I cried, cried and sobbed in my mom's lap, and told her about my teachers order. Next day i knew where the First floor loo was. Sometimes you learn things in life in a hard way. (now a warning: do not dare to comment about this episode, and if you know me do not ever mention this thing to me, the consequences may not be good for you.... yeah I am dead serious).

I do not know why... I mean WHY... the boys in school were termed as 'Bhaiya' and the girls as 'Behen'. And believe me in those days (I think our generation was so dumb as compared to todays kids) a day before Rakhi we used to celebrate rakhi in school, and used to take pride in the no of rakhi's we got tied on our wrist/forehand/arm from our fellow girl classmates proudly making them all our sisters. So dumb of us. When I look at todays kids, they are so much smarter, one of my cousin who is in class 5, already has more girlfriends than I ever had in my entire life time. A nephew of mine who is just in Second standard, needs privacy and takes the phone to another room when he talks to one of his girl classmates. His face turns red when we tease him about his class 2 girlfriend. And me... till the time i was in class 5, i did not make any girlfriends, i only made sisters... huh!!!

My favorite teacher was Arvind Acharya Ji, he was our maths teacher, he was very smart, handsome, and he used to like me too. I was most fearful of our Sanskrit lady teacher, Shakuntala Behen Ji. However later I realized that she was very loving, I once met her after 7-8 years of passing out from Shishu Mandir, and I loved that look in her eyes, I cant really describe that look in totality..... the look which a teacher has seeing his students growing up and doing well in life.

Hmmm.... my friends from those days. Well i remember three good friends from those days.. Dharmendra, Rishi and Umang. I lost touch totally with Dharmendra after we passed out of Shishu Mandir. He was a good friend very funny and well built. I remember him taking my side and saving me whenever we had some fight in school. I being a skinny, tiny boy was mostly at receiving end in these fights, though i always had a policy of 'hit and run', but whenever i was not able to run, there was always Dharmendra for my help.
Rishi, was also a good friend, I got along with him very well. After passing out of Shishu Mandir he took admission in a different school than mine. He in fact visited my place a couple of times after we passed class five. After a year or so we lost touch. Years later during graduation days I heard about him, he had become active in student politics. And knowing the level of student politics we had in our colleges I did not have a good feeling about it. Only a few days later, I saw his picture in a news paper, in which he was lying unconscious on the road, the heading read student leader attempted to suicide over some student welfare issue. Later i heard in college that it was all a drama to evoke sympathy as the student body elections were coming close. I thought he had lost it completely.
Umang, the only friend from those days, who is still in touch. After we took admissions in different schools in standard sixth, for about a year or so we kept in touch through letters, and then next 4 years we were out of touch. Then while in standard 11, he joined my school only, and we were again good friends. Today he runs his family business successfully, is married and is a father of a year old girl child.

Among the girls, I only recollect two of them, One named Vandana and another named Shalini. Vandana was this cute girl i liked, i often tied her long hair with the chair she was seated on. heheh... that seemed fun. The other girl Shalini was the class topper, and that was the reason why i had a liking towards her. Absolutely don't have any idea what these two girls are doing now.

Apart from the fact that I did not make any girl friends, I love those years of my life. I am really thankful to all my teachers, for they played a big role in laying a perfect foundation for my life. The values which they instilled in me are still very close to my heart. I want to go back to the same vishal kaksha right now, stand in front of that huge Saraswati portrait, and say school prayer with all school mates on top of my voice.

coming up... the next 7 years (class 6 to class 12)