My Student Life - Part 2

Jhooth hai sab.. Tareekh Hamesha Apne ko Dohrati Hai..
Jhooth hai sab...

As soon as I passed out from Saraswati Shishu Mandir, my primary school, I was no more a shishu (kid), and I had to face the reality of this bad ugly world, where you are always in a race, you always need to compete with everyone just to prove your existence to the world. And so I was appearing in my first competitive exam for admission to one of the best high-school in Kanpur (or in fact entire state of U.P.). There were students like me from all over the state who aspired to be a part of this school. I do not quiet remember how hard i studied for it, but I remember that it was my first summer vacation when I was not allowed to play all day. Only a couple of hours in evening I was allowed to go out and play gully cricket. Also I believe my mom had to work even harder to make me study, and take this exam seriously.

And after these days of not playing all day long, the God had mercy on me, and I cleared the entrance exam, and took admission in Std VI at Pt. Deendayal Vidyalaya. Deendayal was considered the best school, for it had maximum no of students making it too the merit list for Std 10 & 10+2 UP board exams. As soon as I cleared this exam, I became the hero of our mohalla. All the Auntie's of the locality where I lived in told their kids, "see Amit cleared Deendayal, now start studying like that", while my mom looked on with pride in her eyes. From that day onwards I got the reputation of being the most studious baccha of our locality, something which I was not.. I mean i sincerely hated studying right from the beginning. But who doesn't like all the attention and admiration, so I also posed like being a studious guy in front of other kids in my locality. And as a matter of fact, it may sound a little self-praising, but I definitely was much better than all those guys in studies anyway.

On my day one in my new school, I was simply overwhelmed by the sheer size of the semicircular building. The huge circular lawn in the front, a huge play ground on the back, bigger class rooms, 700 students in all, a magnanimous Vishal Kaksha, where all 700 students assembled for Prarthana in the morning (morning prayer), for Bhojan Bela (Lunch Break) in the noon and then for 'Vande Mataram' signalling end of the day. There was a big big change from my previous school days though, here we no longer had to call our girl-calssmates as 'behens'. And this did not make me any happier coz this new school was an All Boys School :-( ... (now tell me what's better, having all girls around as sisters, or not having girls around at all?) At that time though I didn't really know if that was a good thing or not, it did not really make any difference to me.

In the next 7 years that I spent their I went through a roller coaster ride, affecting all aspects of my life. Study wise I was never a extremely brilliant student (though people in our locality still thought so, out of the reputation my school had), I always managed to get decent enough marks and I was more or less content with it. But other than study, Deendayal Vidyalaya gave me the power to think, to debate with myself, to build on the morals and values which I had got from my parents. Whatever I am today, as a person, I attribute a big big share of it to my schooling in Deendayal.

And needless to say I had great n grand fun in these 7 years, gradually moving from being a new comer to becoming a senior, gradually from being a extremely shy student who spoke very less with very few friends to becoming a guy who communicated extensively within his gang of friends, and reasonably with others. We played cricket using the broken leg of chair as a bat, We stole rubber chappals from school hostel (yes, didn't I tell you, our school had a hostel too, for students from other parts of state) and wore them on our hands using them as an alternative to Table Tennis Bat. We also played football with a plastic ball, mostly kicking legs of opponent team players rather than the tiny plastic ball. We also played the conventional games like eye-spy, janjeera, vish-amrit, kabaddi, kho-kho etc etc.

During my last two years at school, our entire batch had become very mischievous, as we had started enjoying our senior position in school. We had a group of about 10-12 friends, popularly known as 'Gang'. Our gang consisted right from the most brilliant student of our class, to the average/moderate types like me, to the dumb-asses of our class. What we had in common, was the last row of benches and a mischievous mind. Almost everyday we stole some front bencher's lunch boxes even when the class was going on, finished its contents and placed it back into the bag of the owner, without him having a clue about it. Sometimes our chemistry teacher caught us having food even as he was teaching, and then shunned us out of the classroom. We played Kabaddi inside classroom (yes.. believe it) when some teacher did not turn up. We bunked school to play Cricket matches with outside teams. Some of these matches had some very little money involved, and so often a Lbw or Run-Out decision would turn into a brawl. During my entire 7 years of schooling, during annual sports week of school, I ran out of school twice (only) to watch a bollywood movie. And you are free to laugh when you read the names of movies I watched... First, 'Tadipaar' starring Mithun (aaarrghh!!!!!) and Second, 'Raja Babu' starring Govinda :)) And know what? some gaddaar (who is still unknown to me) puked about it to our class teacher.

I sincerely thank all my teachers for giving in their best to make me what I am, and for tolerating me for seven whole years. Though all of them hold a special place in my heart, I would like to make special mention of Mahesh Ji, our very strict Mathematics teacher, today I am glad for all the punishments he gave me. and Anand Ji, our Art & Crafts teacher, for all his affection and the capability of putting up with our stupid demands.

Among the school time friends, I am still constantly in touch with many guys from our gang. Infact few of them are my langotiya yaars (if loosely translated in english it means 'underwear buddy'). If I were to list all of my friends from those days believe me the list would consist some 40-50 guys. So here is a list of some of my very close buddies from school and their nick names are given besides them. And believe me, every one's nick name has a story behind it, I may write another post someday to tell you those extremely funny stories. Ashish (kalloo), Rohit (annu/Bade Thakur), Shailendra (sheelu/Chote Thakur), Amit Gangwar(Gangu), Manish Singh (Taua), Amit Kumar (Katora), Vivek (Chikna), Sharad (soordas), Alok (katta), Amit Rai (rai babu), Divyesh (dibba), Amit Awasthi (pandit), Ambarish (ambu). (you might have noticed there are 4 Amit's in this list, there were 4 more Amit's in our batch who are not mentioned here.. ah it's such a comman name).

Believe me summing those seven days in few paragraphs was a very difficult task to me. Still I do not think I have done justice to those days with this post, but the fear of this post becoming too lengthy and boring n loosing my new friends (you readers) made me cut it short. Every moment of those days brings special memories, and a big smile.

In all those days were wonderful, kind of perfect I'd say...... except the fact that ours being a boys school we had no interaction with girls (poor me), and I was often jealous of my other friends who studied in co-ed schools and always had so many stories about girls in their class, about their love life and about the chocolate they shared with a pretty girl in their class. But frankly none of us gave it a damn about not having girls in our school, firstly because none of us school friends had a girl friend, and secondly we were too busy having fun to sulk about girls not being in our lives. Though it was in these years only, when i knew only as much about the girls, as much i knew about aliens, I did have my first crush and I also indulged in "letter writing" to another girl...... hehehe, yes believe me, those are also some tender, some stupid and some embarrassing moments of my life, about which I'll surely write once I am done with "my student Life" series of posts. I promise.

Wait for my next post to know about my next phase of student life.... the college life, in which I also embarked my journey with the other half of human species, known as Girls.