Reminiscences
Reminiscences
I remember. For someone who has not set foot on the grounds of his school for over two decades has any right to, beyond what all-erasing time affords us, I remember.
The early morning bus ride, the hive like buzz of the school as you turn up, the bright blue windows through which curious eyes of my peers peek, the long corridors which opened up into umpteen classrooms humming with activity, the teachers, the squeak of the chalk on the blackboards, the rain that unfailingly drenched you on your first day of school, the fragrance of the rain falling on the gravelly grounds, the slide in a corner of the that very ground and the multitude of scrapes it had gifted me, the tests and the anxious wait for the results, the holidays that inevitably followed,
the innumerable jokes that we told each other in the classrooms, pestering the teachers to let us play when a free hour pops up, the anxious wait for your turn to read a book or submit your work, the play fights, the nicknames, the competitions, the feverish revisions before the examinations, the curtains coming down on the stoic demeanours of your favourite teachers as you are ready to leave the school for one last time, the mad rush to the bus stop as the bell rings in the evening, and the ride back home. And when it is all over and your friends and familiar faces part ways one final time, the gnawing feeling in the pit of your stomach that reminds you that your school days are truly over.
Perhaps it is because I like to think that the school offered me that butterfly effect-the small initial condition that conspired with the cosmos and nudged me down the many a forks in the journey of my life so far, to get to this exact time and place I am currently at. And for that, I am eternally grateful. Thank you Rani Jai.
By Sajan Muzhapravan
Class of 1996, 10 A