A Fond Farewell

A Beautiful Memory: Learning, Belonging and Other Musings

High School Reminiscences, part 16 of 16, final essay

Things were in a rush; time was at a premium. Syllabuses completed, the theory part of each subject was referred to back and forth and given mock tests on: written and oral, even always-exciting science practicals were coming towards the fag end of their glory days. Thanks to the nearing of the final year board exams, we were put through prodigious amounts of previous years' solved question papers and clearing doubts sessions.

Paudwal sir arranged special classes to drill down mathematics into our heads with a renewed vigour. His co-inmate, our English teacher, Curien P. Coshy, whose English articulation was by far one of the most endearing to listen to, rolled his sleeves up and got down to work. Everybody from the class made sure they attended these revision classes without fail. 'Special inputs sessions' in chemistry, biology, and physics subjects by their exponents were also underway.

Yet, all that whirl of fun we experienced while working out math problems or learning chemistry or biology was coming to an end. Our school days began to get seriously busy. There was no chance to allow mistakes from being committed in mathematics or any other subject. Reaching out for help to correct them was an open option, but not in a way that might look good in the eyes of the teacher. Even as we kept revising the lessons within the four walls of our classroom, some of us folks couldn’t help feeling that maybe we have taken on more cud than we could chew! The final exams were imminent, as though sounding out its make-or-break bugle forewarning that our glorious school days are soon going to be over, and whether one likes it or not, slog days are ahead

From now on, it is going to be: putting the legendary stuff of plain and old-fashioned hard work into the game of exam preparation, day in and day out. Hard work alone can make sure we pass the Class Twelve final exams with good marks. What is more, if you want to relieve yourself from the firm grip of high expectations and your career aspirations, then you better do it the way you are jolly well expected to do. That is by preparing well for the final examinations - a cumbersome fact always seems to be easier to misjudge its propensity.

A few days remained for us to savour the bonhomie of our friendship for one last time before we went home and took preparations for the finals, and then all will end for good, hopefully. Our classroom, with a 360-degree view of the deep playgrounds, Class Eleven, badminton court, and the basketball court at the back, will be locked up. There’ll be no classes anymore; no one will come.

The idea of leaving school had, I remember, filled me with vague tremors because the familiar atmosphere of it will soon cease to exist. It was a strange feeling. Most of us were slightly more than usually ridden with the unmistakable tenseness feeling and preoccupied knowing that our beloved school days are all going to come to an end; I wish there were Class Thirteen after Twelve! No one knew who will be in touch with whom or who will go away forever, never to be seen or heard from again. In all those days preceding the final exams, I was feeling mystified by loads of work that needed a constant wheeling-dealing daily, and all this took a heavy toll on me. Post exams, I knew I was going to miss much.

Piddi, his twin brother Biddi, and Baljee Risla went home to Masalabazaar; Hangorak Tarik to Gandhi Nagar; Hawkish Sribathtub to Robert Lines; I headed home to Trishul Park, and P.S.V.V.S.T.U.V.W.X.Y.Z. Ramraj, his brother Luxmanraj to their home at Allwell. I never saw Nitasu, Lathasu or Dhanoj, Sheikh, or Heymunth ever again. All was lost, and when our final exams were over, everybody went their way; no one had anything to say.

Friendship was broken, abandoned, and not thought of at all, for it was not, I think, in anybody’s scheme of things. We never met again, and the sad part is, I never got a chance to meet our senior secondary teachers. I often reminisce on those days, thinking about my teachers and friends: I wonder how it’d be to meet them in person. It’s often said that “whatever happens, happens for the best.” That may be true, but they have always been in my thoughts ever since I left that school where I had a wonderful time. I’d be exaggerating a bit if I say that not a single day passes I don’t evoke memories of those two years, but the truth is I do. I most certainly do. I have loved those school days and always will.

And Our Friends Are Strangers Still

Good marks, often achieved by rote-ing or rote learning, or eyes sliding this way and that during exams, or other means (like taking a spoon of Ashwagandha milk at night before going to sleep or something!), catapulted them over moral high horses and gave them a yardstick to judge those with slightly less with ‘evil tongues’!

The Doofus Djinn Hawkish Sribathtub was one self-confessed Barracuda. He knew how to walk into anybody’s comfort zone of keeping to oneself and throw you off the track by conning you, leaving you high and dry with his subtly jealous animosity that acts up against you like a crafty old wicked Djinn’s malarkey you’d read in books or see it in scary movies about demonic devils from antiquity. For your defeat and overthrow, he was always at a ready with daggers of insinuation and self-appraisal drawn at you. He relished seeing you incapacitated with tension and fear. 

Hawkish Sribathtub was like that only - he is best described in most pedestrian language than otherwise required. Sribathtub is an embodiment of a fair-weather friend whose friendship you could not rely on in times of difficulty or otherwise. This hard-hearted hypocritical chap would coolly swap your friendship for the favour of others. Similar was the case with Hangorag Tarik and the crinkly-eyed Baljee Risla. Both of whom came across to me as automatic touch-me-not - prone to loads of ennui and presumptuousness that if you make the mistake of warming up to them expecting great friendship, be rest assured you are doomed to fail in your innocent pursuit, whatsoever. Better to stay far enough away from these high-strung, somewhat self-aggrandizing, 'politically correct' figures than making yourself miserable in their humdrum company.

I mean...Well, when I say some of my classmates (like the ones I have just mentioned above) were in the business of being friendly, but not genuinely friendly in the broader sense of the term, it wouldn't be wrong to say so. Their overall body language did imply exactly that sharp characteristic, plain and simple. However, I ended up unable to befriend these three gentlemen (perhaps, the feeling was mutual, who knows), tired that I was of the typical impassiveness of their highly restricted behaviour. What could you have done? No chance whatsoever. I'd still be unable to change their outlook towards the idea of continuing friendship with one another. Things were like that only!

Not all, but some of these fine folks had, unfortunately, and I am sorry to say this, prejudiced at times. I don’t know. I may have come across as unfriendly or inhibitive to them as they have to me. But of course, teenage minds can seem to be twirled in mood swings with fellow pupils, and one can persevere for the kind of positive vibes one hopes for while we attended classes, did science practicals, and played sports and games. That’s ordinary school life. Nothing out of ordinary. Out there, of course, such things are a daily norm, so what? Today someone is unfair to you; tomorrow, it will be fine. Soon, pretty soon, all that misunderstood ‘unfairness’ will turn out to be endearing for everybody in the classroom to learn from and move on.

Having said that, I think some of them were seeming to be of a complicated mindset and have repeatedly failed to correct their somewhat delinquent thinking process that affected our overall feeling of friendship and companionship to go astray, ruined beyond repair. I am not making this up; it is true! And how did I – the oh so sanctimonious me – fair in all this one-sided personal sense of, I admit, petty judgments: well, less said about it the better. I was doing well as a new joiner, could have rather fared much better than I was predisposed to, given the circumstances of my freshman experience coming from a missionary school to a central board. And I even had once or twice fared better in subjects like English, biology, and particularly in chemistry than each one of these rumbustiously ambitious classmates would give credit. Some of them fared much better than I could. There is no denying this fact. But if their indifference cooked up their collective friendship goose, then I suppose it did, fairly and squarely. At least, I was feeling fair and absolved compared to some of these fine folks I shared my school life with. Well, just so you know again, I came from a Christian-missionary Convent background plonked firmly down on CBSE’s dexterous art of education system. Yet, that’s how first-rate and impactful it could get for my young self to bear. Despite this sudden newness in the change of place and system, I must say I loved my experience at that little KV school located a great distance away from my place of residence. It was a one-of-a-kind experience that can never be consigned to oblivion or forgotten ever.

(You may read my earlier blog titled “Straight from the Heart” (<- click here) to know how flagrantly descriptive a former student like me could get writing about his school where he, a long time ago, studied for two years.)

Sadly, these young’uns considered themselves as really smart and clever for their good, and to this string of homilies I may add an oddity: “crafty Arrogant Lot,” – making it enough arduous for some of the raw teenagers from our class who were naturally not inclined to associate with the apparent imprudent behaviour of these baffling wisecracks to be left alone to their own devices and their kind of jingoistic happiness they thought will get them the success they want. Quite a sarcasm that!

Success is a sweet thing, but being pathologically obsessive about it is quite another matter of, I think, unfriendly, delinquent behaviour on the part of progressive, honey-sweet high schoolers like us.

If ‘success’ becomes the barometer for measuring your brand of friendship with your peers, then it is better off not having friends at all. ‘Success’, in whatever form or feeling, cannot come in between two varied individuals, old or young, male or female, wanting to be friends. I realized much earlier in my life that students or friends from school do not really stick around for you unless there is something to profit from. Is that the way it was all those years ago? I do not like to think so.

I know self-gratifying criticism such as this essay may sound futile to you because, admittedly, it often arouses unchecked resentment in one’s heart. But some hitherto indeterminate things needed explaining and, therefore, I write this account with a hand on my heart, as though giving my pint of blood to say it as it is. At times, I concede, I’ve been too critical or negative about you fine folks: my former classmates that is. I am writing this perhaps in a brusque way to say what I mean, but how emotionally worked up and terse the friendship landscape had been when our companionship started to peter out, well, it is better to leave that part out than go on and on about it needlessly. But after so many decades, I know it doesn't add up to much. After passing out from school, we have laid to rest our association, our whatever little friendship we have had during school hours by not calling on each other or meaning to keep in touch. Today alas, we have only memories to keep company, but starkly, no friendship worth its salt has come about.

All of this said, if you have moved around in life, you’ll surely know that it isn’t easy to make good friends anymore, but if you have one or two or more then you should keep it or even be bold enough to protect it from everything that seeks to tarnish it and from all that Buri Nazar! of the world. For others, be brave to smile and put a hand out first to seek friendship.

There are always other pebbles on the beach to pick. So what if our romantic relationship pebble seemed to be alien to the rest of the beach - an undisputed cliché but true. Life has its mysterious ways; it provides you the meaning of true friendship if you open your heart to it. So basically, if you fall for the idea of biding your time to see who sticks around or loosens away is entirely a wrong assessment. The promise that friendship can bring to your life is boundless. There might be other pebbles on the beach, fish in the sea, birds in the swamp, but, O dear old chaps from the distant past, you need to stick around long enough to make a friendship work. It’s true that, over time, our friendship had dissolved from your lives, faded, weakened, and we exited quietly without a word. I guess it’s a fact of life that everybody is busy and we can’t blame each other for having different priorities in our lives. School friendship often doesn't work out to life-long friendship, does it?

Of course, friendship takes time, so the idea is to give yourself room to fuck up and forgive yourself for everything! (Sorry for the invective used). All that I need to know about this little but unmissable realism is how to look and where to look for good friends that last long, unlike the bunch of fellow students I came in contact with during the lovely two years of my school life at a far-off KV school, up north. Still, I'd say, those days have gone on to become a memorable chapter of our shared and common ancient history. Am I the only one who is foolishly nostalgic about it? I hope not, or I should be much ashamed knowing that you guys have gone so far ahead in the future that you no longer like to look back on those unforgettable school days. I don’t know about you people, but I continue to be immersed deep in nostalgia about the things I have gained and the things I have lost. Nostalgia is such a good friend of mine that I claim to know its profound landscape so well, like the back of my hand. Naturally, so long as nostalgia lives, I live.

Above all that I have felt able to share here in this rambling journal, I would say it is a gratifying feeling that deep down in my heart's most secret and innermost thoughts, I still miss those two formative years and all the people I got famously along. The magic of nostalgia never dies, and so I keep all the relics of the past like precious treasure lest it is lost forever in the wilderness of time. A deep sense of nostalgia is far more valuable than anything else about the lilting melody of my school days, which are gone a long time ago. A case in point is this memoir itself, which is about the vanished sweetheart of my youth, so to speak. Sweet school memories. Farewell. A fond farewell. 

Such is life, and life is such. C'est la vie. That, I suppose, says it all.

The End 

By Arindam Moulick

Dedication: 

I dedicate my memoir titled "A Beautiful Memory: Learning, Belonging and Other Musings" to Masush Renslaw (aka S. L.), without whose beautiful memory I could not have written it. I consider myself extremely fortunate to have had you as a friend during the wonderful two years of my high school life. I can't imagine what my life would have been like at that school without you and all my other friends and teachers.

Fortunately, I don't forget those times. I remember everything so vividly; no matter how many years have passed.

Disclaimer: This blog is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of my imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Such A Long Time Ago

A Beautiful Memory: Learning, Belonging and Other Musings

High School Reminiscences, part 15 of 16

Piddi and I once decided to have some fun: we decided to steal lunch! For straight two weeks, we ransacked lunch-boxes squirrelled from the schoolbags twice every week and chowed down ‘on the wild berries until the bush was bare.’ Gosh! To think that we were capable of doing such a thing is flabbergasting me by just thinking about it now.

Who said that there isn’t such thing as a free lunch. Ask us!

Peculiarly, at least twice a week, he and I bunked morning assembly prayers every alternate day to achieve our objective. That is, to help ourselves enjoy some varied food treats from the tiffin boxes without requesting permission, as I once put it to my classmate, my partner-in-crime Piddi, “coming from different kitchens these lunches are,” was egging us on to do it.

So, turbocharged into doing what we wanted to do, our tomfoolery lasted for only two weeks and afterward, thankfully, petered out from that point. Exactly why did we think of such a thing in the first place when we could do any number of things that could be fun doing? Well, first thing, pinching lunches from the tiffin boxes looked deceptively easy, but it was not so. Although it offered a challenge of its own, being told-off for indulging in something like stealing lunch, no teacher would encourage or even laugh at your antics, is something one would not bring oneself face to face! Not to mention the ever-present danger of being caught out in the act of stealing lunch from someone's tiffin box, and then you see him/her walking into the classroom! Likewise, hunger or being an optimistic food lover was no purpose behind our daring-do. It was that we wanted to see what happens when, admittedly, a fallacy like stealing lunch from your classmate's tiffin box was committed and never being found out as to who did it! To amuse ourselves to glory catching sight of our classmates pulling all kinds of faces before finding that the contents of their lunch boxes in their hands have strangely dwindled to quite an extent was something we looked forward to seeing. succeeding by funny responses like 'for what reason are my parathas all torn!,' 'I am certain my mamma made me an egg today, but it has vanished now!' and so on. (At any rate, those reactions are better than 'where are all my parathas gone?!')

We were acting as food tasters or samplers while the morning prayer session was on, and we were surprised to know how much tasteful goodness we were missing out on. Nevertheless, we took care not to polish everything off and leave nothing for our fellow kindred spirits from enjoying their grub when lunch-time came. Stealth eaters (or lunch thieves, if you like) like us were mercifully considerate about leaving a good portion in the tiffin boxes largely untouched and intact. Of course, we made sure not to leave any tell-tale evidence behind. Not even a drop of curry on the bench or some residual smell in the classroom lingered before concluding our lunch thieving activity successfully! To ward off food smells, we quickly opened the windows at the back and on the sidewalls of our classroom, hoping that no one would detect anything amiss about the two of us folding parathas eagerly into our mouths.

Often, there was a stack of neatly folded Parathas and Eggplant Curry. (I think it was Hangorag Tarik’s grub to see him through the long day ahead!) Piddi quickly opened it and remarked passionately: “HALLELUIAH!” Smacking his lips loudly with the box opened in his grasp, he tore off a paratha to put into his mouth and started chewing. Needless to say, he chuckled in such devilish pleasure as he munched on it to his great delight and satisfaction. “Whooo Hooo chuckling and Piddi-ling go hand in hand!” - said he between breaths.

No doubt, his schoolboy sense of humour getting the better of him. A mouth stuffed with stolen parathas and baigan masala can make you go down that familiar path where talking, a little eccentrically, becomes unavoidable and profoundly essential sometimes. I gazed up, nodded, and continued to wolf down the stolen foodstuff partaken from the other school bag lying robustly alongside Tarik’s. Friendship and a little mischief go hand in hand!

I would go so far as to say that according to Newton’s third law of motion, stolen lunch is not something to be parted away from thinking that it will come back to you later. It never does. Respects are due to Mr. Prasad alias ReferBooks (of Resonance District or Physics Lab), our Physics sir who liked teaching us the three laws while loosely arranging his four fingers of his right hand from index to little with the thumb jotting out outwardly and dragging them in several leisurely slow upward motion strokes starting from below his neck region up to his chin to scratch the ever-persistent crawling itching sensations that used to ...uffff... bother him no end!

(Whenever he stroked his staggeringly itchy skin under his jawline - it was possibly a solid instance of pruritus who knows - he would end up appearing primate-like scratching his tingles. The whole class would guffaw at that frank display of our good-looking Physics sir's funny habit! More often than not, Hangorag Tarik and Ramraj, as though on cue, would burst out laughing seeing our eczematic teacher scratching away under his chin with such gay relinquish!) 

Free lunch like stolen lunch has to be eaten (and greedily) then and there, without further ado! What do you do when you have good food in front of you, you eat it right? We understood that Newton's third law of motion was applicably true to motion, force, and inertia stuff, but to abstract things like love, affection, and free lunch, the same darn Newtonian law when formally stated - for every action (force) there is an equal and opposite reaction - was found wanting. Weird analogy? Yes, it could be. In our case, however, stealing lunch helped us learn Newton's third law, all right. Besides, one does not have to wait for someone of the calibre of Newton to deduce the law for abstract things: one of which is stolen lunch, which should be devoured, without thinking much about whether it is right or wrong to do so. Not getting caught is the key to taking up such an adventure! Beware! If you get caught while stealing someone's lunch in the classroom, you get Newton's third law applicable on you, the full effect of it! Stolen lunches were sweetest, supposed to be gobbled down whenever available wherever available! Period.

Piddi and I always used to take exceptional care to tear off a chunky bit of the Paratha. Scooping up the curry with it and putting it into our eager shameless mouths to chomp in delight was a rare pleasure! Afterward, conscientiousness stirred within us. We realized pretty quickly that our classmates whose tiffin boxes we kept stealing food from are going to be emotionally hurt unnecessarily. If they come to know that their lunch has been mysteriously depleting day after day because of Piddi and me, then the world as we know it will not remain the same again, Newton's third law notwithstanding! Therefore, it slowly dawned on us that our little thieving enterprise must shut shop and call it a day.

Naturally, Piddi and I never found the nerve to give away who the culprits were, the culprits being us, of course! Not until a couple of days before the school breaks for summer vacation! Stolen lunches taste awesome, if and only if you do not get caught in the act. Satisfied that there was a substantial portion still left in the box for Hangorag’s bulky self to lunch, we closed it shut and placed it where it belonged, back in his cavernous school sack. A while later, it was teeth hitting teeth and saliva squirting around in our mouths: Umm umm umm. Pure Misophonia.

Fortune favours the brave. The lunch containers of our class were full of promise for good taste and smell: sometimes it was Kissan Strawberry Jam, Sevaiyan Pulao, Rajma Chawal, Noodles, and at other times it was Lemon Rice, Upma, and Bread Sandwich. Even scrambled eggs make their presence felt. Hawkish Sribathtub was its consistent devourer, eaten with Chappatis. Baljee and Heymunth used to call it “Egg Bhurji,” evidently it was their No. 1 nibble for lunch.

P.S.V.V.S.T.U.V.W.X.Y.Z. Ramraj’s tiffin box was not exactly a party-goers delight, but, most of the time, it used to be seen filled up to the brim with his staple pearly Plain White Rice and richly spicy Vegetable Curry/Sambar with stalks of Drumsticks, tamata (tomatoes!), and beans tossed in. Sometimes a boiled egg used to be lodged deep inside cushioned among the rice, exactly, at the white-out centre of his round stainless-steel lunch box. The egg would not easily be viewable unless you made an effort to peer at it with as much concentration as it required for you to get unnecessarily accused of “nazar lagaoing” (evil eye) problem! Not that anybody blamed for it. Ramaraj’s and his brother Laxmanraj’s lunch, coming from the same home, were always found to be the same, obviously so.

I remember, once when I opened a stainless-steel lunch box, to my amusement, I found a small amount of veggie on one side and a nice little whitest white hardboiled egg on the other: the squarish tiffin box owner was neither Ramraj nor his sibling. I wondered with fascination that the boiled egg’s top half was flattened a little bit, presumably because of the top casing being firmly closed on it. This beautiful egg was well-ensconced in one of the compartments stuck among a bunch of Rotis and a few fried finger-rings to boot. I soon realized it was our classmate Nitasu’s tiffin box. Mama Mia! I thought she sure needed ample protein to endure our Physics teacher Mr. ReferBooks’ class coming up just after the lunch break, so it will be better to leave it untouched. However, Piddi looked at me expectantly if I would go at it, but I shook my head to say “No” and closed the box and slid it into the bag, reluctantly moving on to raid someone else’s tiffin box. During those two weeks of our lunch-box thievery, Piddi and I concurred that no lunch was ever gross to eat; everything was quite as delectable as were intended to be. As long as you have an appetite and a sense of fun and adventure, you’ll eat and eat with gratitude! Thank God, nobody thought of inventing anti-theft lunch bags then!

Good sense prevailed at long last. Afraid that we might get reprimanded for indulging in as silly a pursuit as robbing other people's lunches, we brought our juggernaut of fun to a grinding halt. It was good while it lasted. Our day-to-day novel ‘experiment of eating’ from the variety of plastic and steel tiffin boxes of our classmates was quite amazing to experience, for both of us carried on bunking morning prayers and stealing lunches for straight two weeks unhindered.

Admittedly, it was becoming an escapade so queer that our daily raids on tiffin boxes had ended rather abruptly. We found to our surprise that we were not the only ones doing it; others too from other classes did indulge in such acts of thievery pretty often. However, we slowly were beginning to feel the boredom of it, and sooner than later, we quit pursuing such games for the sake of having some "fun" at others' expense. Piddi and I suddenly lost interest in it: Jams and curries were not tempting us anymore. However, it was fun while it lasted because, after all, we had the chance to wolf down some of the best home-cooked packaged lunches safely snuggled inside everybody’s school bags! Like all good things must come to an end, ours too did.

Playing games on the playground was one thing, but raiding others’ lunches was quite another. If free periods were supposed to be for “constructive” or “useful” work as our Mathematics teacher Mr. Paudwal sir (name changed) used to affirm, then so be it. So Piddi and I, along with his twin brother Biddi, Hawkish Sribathtub, Baljee Risla, Heymunth, Dhanoj, Sheik, and Hangorag Tarik took to football, cricket, and my personal favourite Baseball to help ourselves stay away from the constant din of didactic voices. In this way, our days of stealing lunches had come to an end. Piddi and I never indulged in it again. Aaj bhi yaad hain wo sab din. Koi louta de mujhe beete huye din…

What will be will be

School memories always make you happy. Regardless of how cool your college life was, you will miss your good old school days; I still do, so much.

The thing is the school memories shape us into what we are today. College years also play their part. Memories, whether good or bad, are never forgotten completely. They stay with you right till your old age; maybe a lot of it recedes, while others tend to be there as long as you hold them dear to you. One understands that all your school friends will go their separate ways, and chances are you will lose contact with either all or some of them.

As I endeavour to recall my school memories peopled with quite a few characters, it was during Class 12th that I realized that some of these were just... how do I put it, a formalistic bunch of personalities who had a thing or two about ‘acting friendly.’ They come to school daily and take a seat beside you, learn and play during free periods but remained uninterested and generally unwilling to become friendly with you as a co-student in the class. Unmistakable feelings like that don’t lie to the heart, do they?

(I confess that I am overly critical of some of my dear classmates here. That is because I am emotionally burnt-out to be too goody-goody and nice with my character sketches about them. Pity, they are not here to tell their side of the story, ‘if’ at all, they have anything to say that is. Being perspective-driven, not perspective-limited, is my idea of being fair and just with the lot.)

Let the truth be told: they were in the act of ‘acting friendly.’ This little nagging feeling was of so grave a consequence that I began doubting my sense of place, time, and friendship with them. Learning lessons with these what appeared to me as ‘high-handed’ chaps in class after class did become an encumbrance of the sort you don’t complain about. I felt I am the only one who could be made responsible for finding an amicable teenage-style resolution for the problem at hand for ‘new joiners’ like me, Hawkish Sribathtub, and Hangorag Tarik. There was no ragging (not even a hint of it), but it was something of a, more or less, self-inflicted botheration that I think other students in the class wouldn’t try and understand or would show any inclination to do so. The onus was set on me entirely as to how to make myself comfortable despite the imagined odds (again, maybe self-inflicted) I had to endure for some time. (About which I have written about in my previous essays). Sure enough, as a tentative first step, I began to learn how to be unmindful of seemingly, after all, a patronizing feeling of encumbrances and get into the groove of things all our class fellows liked to be in, going forward. Being unmindful worked beautifully well, I admit.

Either they are too smart for their pants or too much boring for their shorts, or I am trying to be a Jonnie-come-lately in their one-upmanship games they liked to play frequently, and worse if I had not been half as attentive as I had been in the class then all this would have cooked my goose! Somehow I knew if this ‘new reality’ is consigning me between a rock and a hard place, then I’ll be the only one left to worry about my trifles while others will pass me by without giving me as much as a fair glance. Ouch! Hard realities such as the ones I just mentioned above took a slightly heavy toll on me than was necessary! But in the end, all things fell into the right place. If you think high school education is easy, think again!

It took a lot of time and burning up of mental energy to realize that some of my class fellows are perfectly (emotionally, mentally, even physically if you like!) capable to completely blank over about you after leaving school. History is witness to that. They wouldn’t think twice to put you out of their mind. Once they step into that demanding future that they were so looking forward to, you are a nobody. Hard to believe that days spent in a classroom, going to the library, playing on the grassy ground, doing science practicals in laboratories didn’t mean anything for any of these folks. It seems that all those days have been gotten over with, forever. Whatever little friendship we might have had was just a means to an end, or if the end justifying the means, then what they did was quite commendable. Whichever you look at it, it was not something I couldn’t possibly relate to in any way. Not in my book, never.

Tell me, how do you react when you are face-to-face with such mean-spirited circumstances your life turns you in? Your first reaction is: you don’t react to everything you find as stressful; instead, you try and learn to make a conscious effort to let it pass; excuse them their inexcusable travesty and, if possible, forgive and forget them, slowly and persuasively. Soon you’ll get the closure you need.

It’s fine with me if they don’t happen to remember me anymore, but I keep remembering them all the time, keep the olden days feeling alive, and refuse to let go of them. I have got a nostalgic museum in my heart that provides sanctuary to everything my life holds dear. Life is weird sometimes; it’s more to do with reality than romance, no doubt about that. Strangers become friends, and friends become strangers all the time, and, at a certain point, when Fate begins to dictate, destiny catches up with us sooner than we prefer to realize. And then all of us go away in different directions for different things in life. Life indeed goes on like a proceeding. Catch ya on the flip side!

Ultimately, that’s the way life is, that’s the way it goes; the cookie crumbles, the ball bounces, the world wags, the mop flops, tough, powerful, stubborn-looking sh*t, and all that jazz. Such is life; who would argue with it? Delicious or not, the cookie just crumbles away with the first bite. Point well taken.

Thanks for all the good memories, laughs, and giggles, and of course, free lunches! 

(To be continued…)

By Arindam Moulick

Disclaimer: This blog is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of my imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

The Warmth of Memories

A Beautiful Memory: Learning, Belonging and Other Musings

High School Reminiscences, part 14 of 16

Three decades into the present, I am still none the wiser why didn’t we keep in touch with each other? What turned out badly? Is there no fun catching up with former high school classmates? The same questions pop up once in a while in my mind even though I know a lot of water had gone down the bridge, and I should let go.

Still, a little walk down memory lane helps me stay convinced that life is all about memories, and the older they are, the better and charming they seem to become as you go forward in your life. That’s the reason why memories have become my heart’s core demographic if you know what I mean.

So what happened?

Today when I analyze this from a distance of 30 years, I still am unable to accommodate the reality as to why no Humpty Dumpty could step out of their ‘comfort zone’ of their careers and personal attainments to know what happened to our former Class Twelfth classmates. All these years of rather indifferent ‘social distancing’ from one another must have ruined their curiosity or instinct about friendship. They sure rose to their better selves in their quest for life and its gifts but preferred to brush aside our once so amenable high school relationship. How have we been in an inexorably frenzied world, nobody tried to bother nor have come to have a look. Except about themselves, they know nothing. To know who amongst us is living or who kicked the bucket will certainly not plague your sense of conscience, will it? Weren’t we all, as is fashionably spoken these days, a call away from each other? Maybe not anymore.

Whatever it is, for our generation, friendship was not easy to keep it going; we had failed in such so basic a test! What matters is maybe our school days didn’t make us feel enough bonded and trusting of one another. Even before we prepared ourselves to leave school, our friendship was, as though, slowly beginning to slump away like soft mud and falling into the flooded riverbanks of indifference and detachment, including the old sparks and flames that have made us what we are today, strangers. However, it doesn’t matter anymore, how you guys plan to draw up conclusions when you come to think hard about it. Likewise, it is also true that some of you folks, whom I had known personally so well, may have already ceased to believe in the idea of friendship that is one of long-standing, a long time ago. That whatever of it remained must have taken the metaphorical hammer hits of indifference to quell. Lastly, some thanks are in order for your choicest inward-looking reservations that had been noodling in your minds round and round like uncoiled serpents, quite unable to free itself out.

Unfortunately, it was drudgery for them. But I, for one, will avoid having any axe to grind with that disdainful reality we let ourselves get adjusted with, since the time we stepped into adulthood, renouncing the adolescent days to the past the whole kit and caboodle. Whatever happens, good luck to you if the lady luck still smiles on you to have a good friendship-slice-relationship going if not here, maybe elsewhere then what could be so better an outcome than that. The world with people in it is known to be a selfish type, always was, always is.

Yet, my dumbass self feels old stories should make way for new ones, just as old friendships should make way for new friendships, all the same. I only hope our old friendship with one another hangs on.

The cookie crumbles

At the day’s end, Fate/Karma/Kismet/Destiny or with whatever you’d label such a thing will have its way. Not that it won’t because it is preordained, and it will. Consequently, the final position of any issue, circumstance, or condition will have a predetermined outcome, royally chaperoned by your ever-present destiny. You can’t wrest control from it, can’t escape it, and how will you; you are born with it. It’s like a good thing if it goes our way, bad luck if it doesn’t. Real men make their destiny. Yeah, I’ve heard that rallying cry before! It’s a good grunt. Go, suit yourself then.

Even after we graduated high school, we kept on wheeling our old stones, having, I feel, neither love nor affection to reach out to anyone, not even for old time’s sake. The choice to continue to be friends was open in front of us like playing cards if you will; lamentably, every single one of us chose one to his/her liking and chickened out of the so-called school friendship, becoming permanently unreachable. No phone calls, no stopover, no company, were ever to be expected. The truth is we have belittled ourselves to the degree that now we cannot even salvage what we have started to lose since our last day at school - before the final day of our board exam, that is. I never chanced upon anybody after that day. Pity is not even the word that comes close to justify such sacrilege. Today, if you are trying to figure out what you have foolishly disregarded all these years, then the words ‘shared educational heritage’ should ring a bell or illumine a bulb in your forgetful head - to know what we have missed. Put on our thinking caps, people, and ponder upon these words so that we can atone this fault line of our younger years, else, as our beloved chemistry mam likes to state: Class! Write these words 100 times and show me tomorrow! If you do not do as she says, then your goose is cooked!

Bitter is the truth that - once upon a long time ago - we all were innocent ‘friends’ studying at a beautiful school nestled in the deep salubrious countryside in the north. But look at what we have ended up as. We ended up as: Strangers; so full up to the neck with pretentious success, money, and fame – thrown far and wide apart from one another by the unsurpassable maze of years upon years upon years of acute cynicism, possibly ennui and complete mass neglect of our once-relatable school-time friendship. That’s how the cookie crumbled. No hard feelings, mate.

People change in the course of our lives. That’s inevitable. However, for a group of high school classmates, it just didn’t make any flattering sense to do something as simple as an act of remembering those golden years: anguishing memories of yesteryears. No, thank you! I am sure they forgot everything. Ask them what do they remember. They remember everything about their marks-sheets, school leaving/transfer certificate (TC), sports certificates, mementos… but nothing about co-students. While some Humpty Dumpties are hard to believe, others stay darn ignorant throughout their lives. They prefer instead to remain obstinate and indifferent to the tug and pull of nostalgic reminiscences that their world-weary paranoid hearts fail to recollect.

Or – correct me if I am wrong because these days one could be readily misunderstood or taken wrongly – is it still about the ‘diplomatic behaviour,’ or ‘secret reservations,’ or ‘personal politics cum equation’ that during those old days it often got the better of you people? Maybe so. I am aware I can never be sure about what I have just verbalized above is factual or complete nonsense. But understand that I am not, never could’ve been, in touch with any of the school colleagues to validate this account, which rejects the idea that it could be a figment of my imagination! Hey hey! Oo la la! Sure, this is a one-sided story, and such stories often don’t suggest to be entirely fair in their interpretation to all parties concerned. I’ve not, to be frank, the least bit of clue if any of my classmates have indeed returned like prodigal protégées to that memorable senior secondary school where we had studied English, Mathematics, Physics, Biology, and Chemistry curricula for two years. If they did, nothing could be more appreciative than that. Returning to the school where you have studied many, many years ago, is above all an intensely emotional experience you look forward to having. I wish they remember everything about our days there as students. I had to try and get this nagging weight off my conscience, without being uselessly paranoid about the whole, not ‘issue’ but ‘non-issue’ that I am discussing here in this longer-than-necessary essay. You ask why a ‘non-issue’? Well, this is something so old a topic of discussion that it had already lost its relevance in the present time. Probably a long time ago, it lost its emotional maudlin appeal or significance that any of us, apart from this nostalgic ‘memory keeper’, could not be expected to reminisce about those old school days. A lot of water has flowed under the bridge since the day we left school.

Airy hopes

Post the summer of 1990, meeting up with any of the classmates was wishful thinking, airy hope, eggs in moonshine, utopia, gone case. I thought: Whatever it is, just forget it; it’s never gonna happen. Except, of course, meeting with Ramraj and his own younger brother and classmate Laxmanraj at their house, which was not very far from my own, nothing was certain. So as far as furthering the noble idea of friendship post our passing out of school was concerned, nobody came forward, and perhaps it was better for them for having not pursued it at all. Ramraj and I were the only ones who have decidedly preserved the link to the beautiful memory of our good old high school days. And thanks to that old link, our friendship days went on to last for many years since. Cannot say that for all other Humpty Dumpties from the final-year Class Twelfth of 1989-‘90 who had been conspicuously absent, they decamped forthwith, from putting together a wonderful thing called Friendship.

Between an old memory and me 

I have no qualms admitting that it took me nearly twenty-five long years to make a trip out there. Hold me as guilty as I have charged you Humpty Dumpties in my turn here, but at least I have been able to fulfil an old dream of mine, though very lately; and I am so glad about it, for I still hold dear to my heart that old school of my two most impressionable years. Even today, I remember so much of those days is because of my close intimacy with Masush Renslaw. She’s made all the difference. I still hear, feel, and see so much of those years. Thanks to her heart’s generosity of a smile and her loving words, I partook them all to broaden my horizons in a way I viewed my life from a vulnerable teenager’s viewpoint to an enhanced practitioner of confidence and workable ideas. She touched my heart in more ways than one, much the same as an adorable teacher but of a different kind. She was a soul provider.

Sometimes when I feel the need to be alone, I see her in my mind, as if she is still near me. We don’t say anything; words don’t matter; still being in love is all is. Oh, the wonder of it all. My heart quivers as it still remembers all the latent ache of its old long lost love.

Had it not been for her, I wouldn’t have found my mojo or warmed to the task of composing these essays by ploughing through my share of reminiscences. Or tell a tale of a divinely special place with a heart and soul all its own. I shudder to think that things would have been to a great extent boring, unexciting, and dreary if a person like her hadn’t been there sparkling like a bright star amid all the sudden unexpected changes I was experiencing then. All that happiness, love, grace, and gratitude I have been discussing here in this and in my previous essays primarily flows from the fountain springs of her luminous, warm, oval-faced, ever-smiling, peach bloom persona, born on the 11th of December. The rest I will owe it to my destiny as a student of science stream and my teachers’ graceful teaching at that faraway school. A word of thanks to other great friends and our hair-pulling, ear-twisting, punishment-giving adorable teachers who are all aptly epitomized in that sacred portal of my teenage years. (Oh! Cross out the italicized words from the preceding sentence; I am merely jesting!)

“Main teri mohabbat mein paagal ho jaaunga
mujhe aisa lagta hai tujhe kaisa lagta hai”

Old memories die hard

…especially in a heart like mine.

I wish if we could at least once return to the place where we studied once, then, I think, we should be able to prevent those memories from completely getting scarred by the ultimate irreverence of Time, Distance, and Tide. I am sure it is going to be emotionally trying for everyone to take it all in our hearts after we go there and find the lush green leafy campus lying abandoned. Presumably, sometime after we left school, it fell on difficult times to continue its management there. Goodness, it is no longer the same place we left all those years ago. 

Writing about memories makes me cry out in emotional distress, to say the least of all my woes. My heart within me seems desolate, yet it aches and emotes whenever memories come flooding back. It’s a little bit like tomfoolery I apply myself to with past times; stuff that I am smitten by and happy to haul it as emotional baggage everywhere. Who knows where and when inspiration strikes. Yeah, that’s how seriously fucked I am! (Just kidding). 

To even think about going there, let alone being there even for as little as a second, I know, is going to be one hell of an emotionally sapping situation that I would barely be able to check. So I bided my time patiently for twenty-five years until the opportunity came to make up my mind for a visit there. Unfortunately, those years of our shared educational heritage we enjoyed at our enchanting school campus nestled in the lovely woodlands of an impressionable time and era, where a few of us, like me, for instance, have studied for just two brief years while others may have continued from previous years, seems to have been conveniently forgotten many years prior. I can see in my mind's eye how the vagaries of time and resistance of distance of all these years have unobtrusively turned our beloved old school - our temple of learning and belonging - into a long-vanished world of busy corridors, noisy classrooms, and the salubrious playgrounds. That is one profoundly extraordinary memory I have of that time. Sadly, it is now so desolate a place where it seems as though time has stopped forever.

All the familiar dirt paths leading to the classrooms, the library located all by itself a little away at a fair distance, laboratories in a row alongside a long corridor: first Biology Lab (Mrs. Chlorophyll mam’s dissecting dominion), then Physics Lab (Mr. ReferBooks sir’s resonance district) and finally Chemistry Lab (Mrs. Write100Times/Pipette/ Titrimetric Analysis mam’s chemical station), knoll like playgrounds, teachers’ commune, and other cute little single-storied buildings for primary schoolers - have all passed into a timeless abode of tranquillity and quiet, unlike the wonderfully noisy days, we loved so much as school students there.

For the love and respect that I have for all my teachers, even after the passing of thirty-plus years, I still miss them. Their keen, teacher-ly, ‘to-the-point’ gentle-but-strict voices still ring in my ears (or whatever remains of the pair!!!).

Postscript

A few years ago, while I was looking up our school on Google Maps, with the whole area of my school on my screen, I realized, not surprisingly though, how all those memories begin to tumble down on you and stealthily find their way right into your heart. Knowing that colouring my old memories with new technological know-how is something that does not enthuse me, I did not amplify the map to put it all up close and personal right in front of my eyes on my computer. It would be too much for me to grapple with, so I closed the browser tab. But catching a few furtive glances here and there did make me go weak in the aching remembrance of my KV school years. Goes without saying, I still miss those happiest days of my life. I am not: stuck in the past, but I always think about them.

At the point, where I saw that the whole area appeared to be covered in lush greenery and ancient-looking trees - giving it a park-like brilliance in the open-air daylight, I smiled. It gladdened my heart thinking that though the school campus abandoned a long time ago, it still is intact and managing to be so naturally beautiful and untouched by the polluting hands of new money, post the so-called 1990s economic liberalization in our country. I located a few buildings and the large playground towards the north side of the huge campus - you cannot miss that, which is still so luxuriant in its green grassy verdure. That is all I could see from the entrance gate, for the security warden wouldn't let me enter the abandoned school campus, and overcome with emotions I turn away; it broke my heart.

Even today, my heart begins to beat fast, my pulse race, and tears from somewhere within finding a way into my eyes when I get miserably nostalgic or try to reminisce about the distant years of my life. Many years earlier, however, once when I set out with a heavy heart throbbing in my ribcage to go and see my old school in the deep north, I became quite heartbroken and overwhelmed with longing for those innocent days of early childhood. Alas, I was too late… too late.

By Arindam Moulick

Song courtesy:

“Main Teri Mohabbat Mein” - a song from the film Tridev (1989)

Disclaimer: This blog is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of my imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Inevitable Destiny

A Beautiful Memory: Learning, Belonging and Other Musings

High School Reminiscences, part 13 of 16

Good heavens, there’s no point huffing about how to cope with the issue of lost friendship with high school chums. And by the way, lest it appears that I am flogging a long-dead horse, or trying to make a mountain out of a molehill, it is better to be quite willing to make peace with the ebb and flow of what is now known as the ‘Friendship Curve.’

Well, ‘Friendship Curve’ is one way of putting it, but I’d like to term it as ‘Inevitable Destiny.’ Both are not the same; different viewpoints but. However, it is a fact of life I know well enough now.

But then, old habits die hard. And likewise, old memories never fade, they recur. Every so often, when the memories of my schooldays tug at my heart, I go seek the eager pages of my late-night, under-the-covers diary to make yummy notes: Recounting the days spent with school friends whom, since the time we left school, sadly, no one continued to be in touch with one another. There was simply no means of doing so and, therefore, comes into existence this essay lamenting: why didn’t we keep in touch, what went wrong, and things like that. I hope I am not on a fool's errand here. LOL.

Date with destiny

Those good old days will never come back. I habitually keep repeating that phrase in my mind ad infinitum; I find I don’t get tired of it. I think what keeps me rooted and real is that good old feeling as it warmly reminds me of the distant past, which has always been an unforgettable part of my life.

With me, the past has become a dogged obsession haunting me night and day. But knowing that the temptation of romanticizing the days of yore has no meaningful remedy yet, I go seeking solace in guilty pleasures like writing, reading, and penning down my thoughts in my diary while cultivating my utopia to find peace within. And that’s one of the reasons why this self-examining essay is coursing through these pages like a memory river in spate helping me fathom every last bit of it slick and shipshape.

But still, the past is worth being remembered. If I could go back in time, I’d change nothing but re-experience those days of 1988-90 as if like new. That’s some wild fantasy!

Thirty years down the road of life - that comprised, I am certain, the transitions, big and small, trials and tribulations and all that necessary jazz - it must have been quite a journey for most of us former school mates: ever since we left school to emerge into the world of grown-ups, maturity, and adulthood - leaving behind what I’d like to believe a wonderful legacy of familiar faces, scenes, and memories our hearts will never quit thinking. In that sense, of course, each one of us has indeed come a long way: we are all adults now. But, sadly, our friendship didn’t come along with us, as it were. So far away into the future now, recognizing one another would hardly be easy for most of us. Because, ultimately, what exists between us is a vast chasm of days, months, years, and decades that has lapsed into forgotten history no one can ever be expected to surpass it and be a hero (or heroine!) or something of that stuff. Not even Gods can find fault in us for not knowing one another any longer because it doesn’t matter anymore if we did, and just who do we think we are in this world? Practically nothing! Just mortal coils of entrails looped around the flesh and bones we define as the human body rounded up with a scandalized head that couldn’t be hollow without a brain full of grey ghosts of the distant past looking for more of their ilk to join together and hitch a ride into the future. Well, have a great one!

Perhaps there is no strong reason left for us to help renew old bonds of friendship or give ourselves a high-five chance to foster new ties or become more acquainted with the individuals who have been in our lives all over again. Who would come forward? No one. No annual alumni meet, no podium, no corner to hang out, and no flagship alumni association are in existence for old students and teachers to bring us together again. No chance, whatsoever, to relive the nostalgic school days with our alma mater. That little window of opportunity, if at any time there was one existing for us to make up for lost time together, has been quite a while back relinquished. In any case, sound judgment encourages us to think that it’s time we let bygones be bygones: Let the past stay in the past. But I ask you: Can we afford to do that? Is it the right thing to do? I don’t think in that way, and that’s why I have memories for company, a great many of them of all those golden days, in my heart’s care!

Figure what you will of this, we have grown up not to be friends but strangers to one another, done being friends. If this is not pitiful, then what could be more troubled than this little mystery we responded to with such peremptory haste to push it under the carpet, wash our hands off it, as if nothing to make a big deal. I suppose: that’s destiny - an inevitable and inescapable fact of our lives. Destiny/Karma has it that we don’t meet ever again. Whether one likes it or not, this debate of friendship not happening between us has a long time ago been won by Destiny, hands down. The book of destiny had it written down that, in the long run, our friendship was not to go anywhere past the school ramparts.

‘Memory keeping’

All those earlier days of friendship we cherished at school; all that old familiarity; all those boisterous days, are gone now, quite possibly beyond salvation.

This realization is something we can never come to terms with, can we? I can’t. No matter how hard I try to suppress our common heritage of school memories, I fall back right into the warm embrace of my old days at the KV school. Every time my heart wanders back in time trying to reminisce about the younger days there studying as a teenager uniformed in robin-blue pants and classic white shirts, a flashback of memories takes me over. Memories last a lifetime.

It’s so much more difficult for me, even now, to keep myself separated from my high school memories and move on as though nothing could be better than setting them aside or lock them all up in some memory box and discard the key. I don’t know, to the outside world, I might appear as though stuck between two different worlds: Old and New. On the one hand, I need my lovely memories to stir me up emotionally. On the other, I want them to connect me to the present without missing a tiny bit of my memories. However, I feel that all other members of my class of 1989-’90 seem to have closed that chapter sometime in the past, all forgotten and happy; and then they just drifted away unmindful of…everything. They put everything behind and moved on without as much as giving a backward glance. But I couldn’t be capable of doing that; I couldn’t rather, for the life of me, ever forsake those two significant years I have spent studying there. I, therefore, carry within me - like an autobiographical memory man, so to speak - my precious treasure trove of school recollections everywhere and wherever I went. Some people excel in the art of “beekeeping” or “bookkeeping,” I excel in the art of, well, “memory keeping”- the art of remembering everything one couldn’t quit thinking. Memory keeping becomes my forte. I have treasured recollections from as far back as my time in school and found much use of them lately. The way I see it, our friendship isn’t over yet, and chances are we can drift back together again.

Though we invested great amounts of time studying, learning, experimenting, and playing together, we have only ended up, post-school, as 'casual strangers,' failing to become close friends. What our respected teachers have, back then, taught us or tried to mould us into is beside the point. Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall and had a great fall. Only there was but a classroom full of Humpty Dumpties!

By Arindam Moulick

Disclaimer: This blog is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of my imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Beyond Salvation

A Beautiful Memory: Learning, Belonging and Other Musings

High School Reminiscences, part 12 of 16

“Lord, keep my memories green”.
- William Shakespeare, Hamlet

One afternoon, not long after my Class Twelfth board exams had come to an end, I found myself warming to a strange little sensation taking shape in my mind. A rough sketch-work of some sort that didn’t imply anything at first, but I gradually came under its spell sensing the embrace of a new me, warts and all. Up ahead was a deep bend, turning which a new lease of life was waiting for me.

Once when I woke up to this beautiful morning light and smelled the coffee powering the brain and lo and behold! college life comes knocking at my door with prospects I didn’t imagine existed. Even that old familiar tug in the chest was beginning to grow fainter and fainter.

Becoming ‘unreachable’

Towards the end of my two paradisiacal years at the KV school, like any other student, I too was facing a few daunting questions compelling me to think hard and long analysing about the direction to take with my career: “Where I belong”, “What do I do now” and “How to make a difference in the things I wish to do” were just a few pain points which were at issue that I had to find relatable answers to in order to march confidently ahead in my life. Leaving school looks easy, but it isn’t remotely as easy as it is made out to be. Such events, believe it or not, have in their mysterious power to deeply engage your mind into the miasma of your own thoughts, and it’s a good thing to have happened the way it did. 

Fair enough. In a young student’s mind, such inquiries are a part of their internal rumination process that desire for clear, discretionary answers, which are, for most times, hard to come easily by. Yet, something unresolved from my senior high school years had me cuffed emotionally and I did what was reasonably feasible for me to do: I did a reality check and the result came in as negative! First, I realized to my surprise that my friendship with my co-students was more or less a gone case. Second, though it was hard to come to terms with the indifferent absentee school companions, I bided time, avoided overgeneralizing it, and didn’t quite jump to conclusions to shape a fair opinion about their understanding of the subject of friendship. Third, I responded to my poor beating heart with the coolness of patience and perseverance overseeing me during those two years of my school life.

The point is one must always favour friendship, it makes life worth living. From the younger days of childhood to the ripe old age of adulthood let friendship be your ultimate reward in your life.

Nonetheless, I went ahead and found myself looking forward to some kind of friendly bonding with one classmate P.S.V.V.S.T.U.V.W.X.Y.Z. Ramraj, – I had always marvelled at his generously long name. His name was, as if, literally guarded by a long ‘ration-shop’ queue of footsteps of formidable sentries (probably of ‘Kondapalli Toys’ fame) as initials in the front, trumpeting and even bolstering his long-gone ancestry, family genealogy, and other heroic odds and ends of unsung heritage all the same! – and that was all there is to it, nothing else matters when his name comes around in spectacular display everywhere: on classwork, homework, attendance registers, textbooks, test papers, lab notes, and the whole nine yards! 

Not even my classmate Hawkish Sribathtub’s squeamish act (of tucking his tail firmly between his legs and scampering away into the wasteland of Oblivion, Antagonism, Jealousy, Tempest, Sadism, Sarcasm, and Skullduggery; he's lost to the fanatical world of begrudging envy.) could make a dent in my expectation of unconditional friendship with the gentleman Ramraj. After leaving school, Ramraj continued to be friends with me; but his younger sibling and our classmate Laxmanraj had however remained a skittish and unaccustomed person throughout the days of my friendship with his elder brother. With the exception of Ramraj all other dreamers, escape artists and lost souls of our last class of 1989-’90 started unfriending one another; they broke apart like shattered glass, gone separate ways, stamped out the shared history, and took off to seek their destinies in the outside world – at least it was better than their dumb ‘acting friendly’ ways. Tata bye-bye.

It’s unusually pathetic nobody I knew has ever returned to our old school; perhaps, not even Ramraj - not until 1996-'97 did he feel able to pay a visit. (His brother Laxmanraj kept mostly to himself, staying incommunicado throughout my friendship with his senior sibling. Even to just speak with him was highly unlikely an occurrence and it was best to postpone it indefinitely). We held on high the torch of friendship, as it were, high up in the firmament for absentee others to get the drift that, after all, old bonds of friendship do not have to wither away or until it is beyond salvage; just that the plain old-fashioned friendship goes a long way to making long-lasting bonds that the trail of time or distance can do nothing to discontinue it from going forward. Fortunately, our friendship was strengthened by the temperance of this innate understanding between us; it shined on proudly amongst all the failing others. 

For seven to eight odd years that we kept in touch, Ramraj never once mentioned if he had visited our old school after passing out from there, and since I had felt that our friendship was not as easy-going as we suspected it might have been, freeness wasn’t really one of the strong-points just yet, I seldom raised the topic that used to trouble me no end during those salad days of my life. Post-school, our friendship was forged, understandably, for formality’s sake, never reaching the heights it merited. In spite of the fact that we met pretty often in each other’s homes and used our time to discuss academic studies, share news and anecdotes, exchange uncommon forbidden English words, let slip personal predilections, make puns, and crack jokes of all kinds, I think something was palpably missing from our connection as good friends that we couldn’t quite put a finger on what could that be. Yet, during those seven to eight years of constructive friendship, we have developed did mean a lot to both of us, our friendship had been lost to the caprices of a fast-changing, evolving world. Pity, it didn’t keep going.

Movies too were on our bucket list. If my memory serves me right, I think we only ever saw two movies: Maine Pyar Kiya and Dil at a nearby cinema hall. We liked…no…loved the 1990 blockbuster Maine Pyar Kiya so much we went again in the following week in the same hall. No wonder we were moved by the film’s simple story about falling in love, family, and coming of age of the lead-pair; the songs were eminently hummable, unbelievably melodic, and instantly catchy. Especially, “Mere rang mein rangne wali”, “Dil deewana” and the introductory song “Aate jaate haste gaate” were so dreamily romantic to listen to that I used to play them endlessly on the tape player during those early years. Likewise, the film Dil too was hugely entertaining; Oh boy! We loved watching the fun and prank of it. “Mujhe neendh na aye”, “Khambe jaisi khari hai”, “Humne ghar chora hai”, and “O priya priya” are a nice collection of evergreen romantic songs, truly unforgettable.

Once friends, now strangers

Although I know I am just taking a wild guess here, a few things, in my view, were far from being agreeable. Because after passing out from school if any of my classmates had indeed paid a visit to our school, then what was stopping them to reach out to former classmates? Nothing of anybody’s concern, I presume! Or is it that the old offhand tricks such as “personal reservations”, “internal politics”, and so forth and so on were still impacting your senses that may have stopped you from connecting with others? Yeah right, I know, I know, being ‘friends’ in school is a different ballgame than expecting anyone to continue ‘friendship’ after passing out from school. Is that what you are trying to say? Exactly what my point is this: If studying together for two long years couldn’t guarantee ourselves enduring friendship, then what could? It’s such a shame, to say the least. We senior secondary students could’ve done better than that.

Honestly, I think expecting anyone of my former classmate from Class Twelfth to drop by was foolish. All things considered, people’s capacity for playing “politics” remains intact; even after passing out of school, it doesn’t go. Although it was encouraging to know that Laxmanraj was still in contact with Dhanoj and the Piddi-Biddi duo, I just don’t think Hangorak Tarik, Baljee Risla, and Hawkish Sribathtub were fraternizing with them or among themselves. I believe Ramraj was not in contact with any of these former class fellows. It seems to me that majority of these folks rejected friendship as if it were a disease. Formal greetings are damned, even to make a phone call (to those of us who had telephones) to exchange ‘hey-how-are-yous’ was anathema! Expecting anyone of these folks to come to see a former classmate sounded preposterous an expectation for the kind of misguided youth we have gone ourselves to be.

Friendship was not a need for anybody of us. As a consequence of that, a few of us have permanently hoisted ourselves up onto some kind of egoistical moral high-horse to deliberately let one another down; that’s precisely one of the reasons why we haven’t been in contact all these decades, and never will be.

These days I just let the drift take its course. Moaning and groaning are of no use, therefore, allowing friendships to take their natural course is better than blaming anybody about which isn’t working. I’ve worked myself out of this, letting go cannot be that difficult. That’s enough preaching I’ve done! I’ve come to the end; I rest my pen.

(To be continued)

By Arindam Moulick

Disclaimer: This blog is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of my imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

A Heart Full of Memories

A Beautiful Memory: Learning, Belonging and Other Musings

High School Reminiscences, part 11 of 16

Back in the other life and somewhere far away in the past, my poor heart (if I must own it) had been aching with a feeling of loss.

I well remember the stir of a strange forlorn feeling somewhere inside me, overcome that I was by a feeling of something widening across my chest; maybe, a random hurt that never healed or maybe something else entirely – when I took my TC (transfer certificate) from my school’s admin office and found myself walking sombrely down the cool, shaded pathway canopied with the familiar lush green peepul, Ashoka and neem trees running along each side and heaven’s deep blue further above them, towards the outer boroughs of our charming school campus, to the bus stand to catch a bus home.

That day was the last I ever saw of my beautiful old school and the melancholy memory of painful parting is still so vividly etched in my mind as I write this from the standpoint of my adulthood.

Memories come in waves when I’m alone and soon I get nostalgic in an intimate haze of unexpected recollections. Memories often take me under like they used to and I embrace the intimate alliance of life’s well-earned compensation and respite from the impersonal, insensitive Present. Thinking of my old memories has always been a sort of great self-indulgence (guilty pleasure if you like) for me to not just connect to but relive the past. As I recollect them, I am offered to see familiar faces, handwritten notes, letters, book covers, snippets of games we used to play, and I even hear their voices distinctly, nothing seems to go amiss from the vaunted portals of my Hippocampus! I am unable to live without the kind of memories my heart can recollect and now and then it likes to take a solitary stroll down the melancholy memory lane looking for lost time and things past; I can say with great sureness my heart can even now remember everything from such a long time ago surprising little subtleties that bring back the soul of the good ol’ days.

I keep coming back to those old thoughts of my youth off and on, or whenever the opportunity arises I go seek my corner to evoke remembrances of every delicious bit of them that I have unfailingly retained over the years deep within myself, and honestly, I’ve never been at a remove from such a, I should say, touching effect of melancholic indulgence I have such an obvious fond feeling of. I’m especially grateful for the sweet ache of my charming secondary school years that I cherish today; I trust providence will keep it coming my way. Even after the long silence of three full decades the morning prayers which were conducted daily at the school assembly still ring in my ears loud and clear:

“asato mā sadgamaya
tamasomā jyotir gamaya
mrityormāamritam gamaya”

Time has just flown! Old scenes come up so vividly in my mind; old sights and sounds still linger around, they echo even; old friendships have gone forever; fondest teachers and school mates withdrew into solitude, or domestic spaces, or into their ivory towers, or an inner exile perhaps vowing to lead an ignominious way of life no one would ever know. I still see their faces in my mind’s eye ad infinitum, how can I ever forget that fabled school of my childhood days? Those Plus 2 years were a true paradise of luxury, to say the least, and yet all get well and truly over when you’re into Class 12th and know that you’d soon step out of the portals you hold so dear into a new world with a new horizon – meaning the end of your school days. Those two years have passed like days in the school of heaven. As I jot this down in my journal, the vivid pictures of my school years are flashing through my mind. Memories of the past are so powerful that it’s nothing but being so fortunate to recall them.

Leaving school

Leaving school meant a significant break in my boyhood experiences and that no longer will I be able to see my dear teachers and schoolmates again was nothing less than a puzzling reality to deal with. It also meant, however, that I’d be leaving the verdant school surroundings, losing touch with a lot of friends and leaving heart-throbbing memories of a special someone behind and heading off to join, almost unquestionably, the “real world” outside of the wholesome school experience that had up till then been my daily gospel of learning and belonging.

There’s a sort of ring to it that although I learned the meaning of friendship, I was not so much ready to acknowledge that the time has come for me to face the real world and, therefore, leaving school had likewise meant never returning or implying staying away forever.

Speaking for myself, I loved my school very much as did, I am certain, others of my class, and so leaving the familiar to go off into the unknown or take up, as is commonly said, the challenges of all the new possibilities out there were quite daunting to contend with from the outset. Despite the fact that my reasonably utilitarian marks and necessary certificates bore witness to my accreditations to anticipate a good college education, I still thought my life from now on and into the foreseeable future – will have to abide by the forced newness and novelty that a college essentially brings – will change, radically and fundamentally: The kind of change such as which one can never know beforehand during school life.

Yet, confusing as it sounds, I was rather feeling happy because knowing that the transition to a new life in college will be cool to welcome and rejoice. The fact that all the comforting familiarity I knew up till then will have taken a new turn as my cozy school life slowly transitions to the “real world” – for the better, I hope, as my mind apprised me so with bedrock conviction, somehow. I patted my back for maintaining an optimistic note on that count. As things progressed, the school had slowly receded into poignant memory; college showed up head-on straight after.

Loss of ‘friends’ from that old KV school was just one tiny ditty of my sense of melancholy and loss that came in tidal waves as it were which never ebbed – to this day, I might add for posterity’s sake here. I intuitively knew that when you are in the final stretch of senior secondary school, 12th grade that is, things will soon begin to take apace: Board exams will come, entrance exam forms need to be sourced, filled out and sent across for consideration, and above all, the need to buckle down and start preparing for the theory exams before the dates for science practicals are announced. Goodness gracious me!

Sooner we all retreated into our study cocoons to prepare for the exams: work on our lessons, burn the midnight oil, and cramp up as much as we can and regurgitate it out on the answer sheets the next day in the exam hall.

However, all this while, deep within my heart, I kept thinking about her and what will become of our relationship. It was a scary subject to raise. We knew the kind of hurt it could cause to both of us, particularly when we are amid theory and practical exams, not to speak of an entire world of expectations from everywhere that had already begun making its presence felt like a foreboding sense of loss that’ll perhaps never ease us from its clutches the slightest bit. At that point, I speared a hole through my heart to save us from brutal warnings and unpleasant circumstances that are doubtlessly going to come after us with a vengeance. I hated it, but the only way out was to smile at the thrill of what my heart desired, without being even the least bit bitter with anyone in the whole wide world. Surely I have loved enough to let her go: I repeated this in my mind numerous times for quite a while to reassure its true meaning, realizing that lifelong grief is the price we have to pay for love and she will go on living in my broken heart until the end of time. Love always wins, but sometimes happy endings are not always possible to achieve.

“I don’t think of all the misery, but of all the beauty that remains.”
– Anne Frank

Knowing that relationships progress at different speeds, our relationship had ended rather, unfortunately. Like Socrates, I concentrated my “mind upon a serene disillusionment”. In any case, we’d like to believe that it had matured up to a different level altogether that has to be beyond any reach of any detriment or any external stressors like people’s passing out wanton judgements needlessly or even forceful family obligations originating from one’s friends and family that we have to act upon and pay the ultimate price for having one’s existence in an atrocious world we know.

So now listen to this, World: We have not lost any relationship between us because real relationships once formed can never be lost nor easily forgotten. We may have gone our different ways in different directions, but were not lost to one another's enduring, eternal love binding us forever together.

Upon my person, I found an old love letter briefly stating thus: Come what may, my heart will never recover from the immortal affliction of your love. This has been my story all through and, dear love, let it be told now.

(To be continued…)

By Arindam Moulick