School Friendship? It’s a Relic

A Beautiful Memory: Learning, Belonging and Other Musings

High School Reminiscences, part 7 of 16

Continuing from where I left off in my last post ("Friendship and Other Maladies", 1st March 2020) where I have plumped the shallows of somewhat no-holds-barred account of the Plus-2 years spent at a faraway school – consigned to a distant memory that despite everything still manages to press an elegant dagger into my heart, here is the penultimate chapter from my ‘High School Reminiscences’ series.

Bittersweet memories of my senior secondary school days are flooding back and I am being quietly seized with an acute sense of nostalgia for the God-given wonderful days of my student life. Those times are long gone – put in the past, drawn a veil over, bygone, ancient history.

But isn’t it a wonder how we hold on to the pieces of our past, or often take a trip down memory lane, or look back on the good old days that are filled with golden memories and laughs? Just like any school student, however, I too had been blessed to have lived some of the best days of my life when I was younger – with little to zero possibility of long-lasting school friendship notwithstanding. That’s how it was then: those two years in that school were generally bounded by the cold bittersweet embrace of friendlessness. But still, I’d want a one-way ticket back to the 1980s/90s, please.

‘How often have I lain beneath rain on a strange roof, thinking of home.’― William Faulkner

Silly poke of a joke!

The silly poke of the joke – “I’ll become an Astronaut someday” – that I played in the class had hit the bull’s eye! Bingo! It was pretty well-timed.

Although it was not too funny, not even excessively clever, barely was it, yet it had managed to put some of our class fellows (‘Arrogant Lot’, AL) in their place; at least that was part of my original plan – Let’s see how they react to it when I pull a fast one on them. Obviously, they didn't care for it the slightest bit. No one got my joke. Others, not from the AL group, grinned and said something amusing and hooted convivially. It was anything but a proper joke I admit, but it was not a flinch-inducing pun either that could cause my classmates to cringe with derision, which was actually what they did incidentally. They frowned.

From the beehive of unsmiling faces in front of me, it seemed to me that they were kind of ‘shell-shocked’, that they couldn’t move a muscle, went blank in the faces, even forgot to think. It was not really the sort of response one would anticipate from ‘friends’ of your own class. Surely then, bursting out in laughter could have made the AL a good sport of themselves that one would have appreciated immensely. The sad thing is that they didn’t laugh at my joke because they didn’t expect anybody should be so wittier than themselves! But one understands that if the joke is really funny then even the most serious of individuals cannot keep their faces straight before their smile breaks into a peal of laughter.

As it turned out, my innocent pun didn’t go down well with the classmates I fraternized with. Without taking umbrage, I just stayed put awaiting that perhaps someone would say something funnier than I could manage. However, none came. The magic, I fortunately realized, was in letting go of things you can’t handle and I continued trusting that things will be okay between the so-called ‘Arrogant Lot’ and ‘Humble Lot’ sooner than later. For the first time in my two years of attending that charming school nestled in the deep, enchanted evergreens of the Indian Air Force’s (IAF) wind-swept Base, I found myself looking straight in the eye of nothing short of, I’d say, a twister-slash-storm – meaning the AL people’s continuous needle-nudge of baffling aloofness from everything that was not up to their express wish and will. Well, it doesn’t imply that this group of 4 to 5 fellas was of out-and-out villainous disposition, positively not, god forbid; they were gauche no doubt but were at the same time blissfully oblivious to accede any kind of appreciation for your talent that they thought didn’t exist apart from their own. They were the uncrowned level-headed aficionados who don’t mind being scathing, searing, clear-cut, and whimsically straightforward with everyone in the class. They were difficult to converse with, difficult to play with, difficult to function as a team, and so on and so forth. Methinks, their primary agenda was: Just Be Difficult.

Poor little fellas couldn’t even at least laugh out loud at the cock-and-bull story I was concocting. It should have been great fun had they laughed. Tell me, where was the harm in saying something you don’t truly mean? What do you call a joke then? Nazi propaganda? Cuban Missile Crisis? Or is it a Charlie Chaplinesque kind of LOL fun? 'It's elementary, my dear Watson'.

Becoming an Astronaut or something like it, is not my idea of making a career choice; as though to become such a bleeding-edge Space professional is a smooth cakewalk (in the Space?) doesn’t take much of a brain; as though I am up to speed in tolerating such a dreadfully impossible challenge to become one. Whatever. On the off chance that my classmates had the presence of mind to laugh or had traded something funny for my joke, I think the general state of our somewhat touchy-feely acquaintance with one another as classmates would have progressed in quite a significant manner and it would have been a great method to find its way into our book of great school recollections. But pity, that was never to be. The joke fell flat. Disappointingly, the AL was not inclined to look at the developing scenario the way a few of us, the HL, colleagues did; I guess, we the Humble Lot, HL were a little too enthusiastic in our black boots than would normally be appropriate to make amends with the Arrogant Lot, AL. We wanted to set a precedent I guess; by being a little more ethically upright than they are known for. I figured a good laugh or two would possibly cut down the lofty Berlin Wall-like wariness and misplaced scepticism towards one another that occasionally make their unwelcome presence felt amongst school-going students without any warning, however, it was not to be. The Berlin Wall-like hindrance has consistently been a permanent fixture between us and them, the AL and the HL, all through the two years of our bittersweet association. To be honest, the overall situation was quite puzzling for me to get a hang of it.

Hell, it was just a petty joke, nothing else; intended to be laughed at or flayed as though it’s a thing of no significance whatsoever. But do it, for God’s sake.

The fact of the matter is that I was not in the least bit like someone who gets a mighty ego-boost from showing my classmates’ potential in a bad light by saying that I was going to become “an Astronaut” and get to mount on a moral high horse at the same time. I contended that if you like my joke, laugh at it or just reject it if you must: anyway, that was exactly what I was expecting from them. But do something for God’s sake; chuckle the way you like it, twist it, and turn it nobody’s preventing you from doing as such. After all, it was a fun session and should be taken lightly, no? Well, if you can’t make anything of the purported joke, then it’s supposed to mean that you are being simply … DIMWIT.

Yes, my little ‘joke’ smacked of a daring hypothetical assertion of some sort that, god forbid, a freshman like me could marshal the fortitude to state something like how I did in a class full of incompatible students, mostly overambitious than necessary was like pulling off a miracle of some sort and surviving to tell a banal tale like this one. No, thank you. But eventually, I couldn’t help but jolly well think that I pulled a fast one on them and they didn’t even see it coming. Gotcha! Score: Me – 1 (One), You guys – 0 (Zero, śūn'ya, Nil, Naught, Duck, Nada, Null). So much for your boasting, kiddies!

No one from our class could come up with something as gobsmacking as saying ‘an Astronaut,’ of all other things that could be said. How preposterous is it going to sound when we, feeling perky, make fun by saying something that nobody typically says? Never really much. Fun often doesn’t mean much. Say something clever and you can’t catch, that has to be a fundamental PROBLEM with a big ‘P’ out front to deal with – not mathematical, but societal and cultural problems that need urgent looking-into. When it is someone’s turn to poke fun or pull somebody's leg for a bit you don’t shy away from it, you share the fun; it’s just another version of your “game of one-upmanship” (played during a free period) that you AL people are already a great exponent of, so where was the hitch? Letting everyone score some brownie points or get offered a chance to meaningfully show-off in front of everyone as to how funnier can you get in the classroom tricks everyone into participating in a leisurely activity wherein you just don’t have the option of getting away from. That is also one of the ways how you make remarkable memories at your school.

‘Friends were the family one chose.’
– Salman Rushdie

You can go ahead and become ‘an Astronaut’ or ‘a Cosmonaut’ or ‘a Psychonaut’ or ‘an Engineer’ for all you like, or simply prefer to take it easy by becoming your locality’s, your neighbourhood’s, your colony’s, your village’s strings-fingering ‘Guitar Rajoo’, a musically-declined escapist guitarist! It’s your personal choice. Some new-age rishi muni (sage) has said something invaluable thus: Nothing else matters so much as long as you are a good person who has left a little corner of the world in slightly better shape as a result of his soul-warming integrity and strength of character. Hmmm. Hmmm. Stay true to yourself, forever and a day.

To say something ‘of great magnitude’ or essentially high-sounding career choice that no one can imagine saying, expect me to come up with something dramatic of sorts. No one in our class could come up with a wittier repartee than mine. I said “an Astronaut”, they said “Engineering”. I agree it was not that wittier as I wanted it to sound, it was thoughtless of me to say “as Astronaut” as if to become ‘an Astronaut’ one need not do an Engineering degree, yet it was slightly better than their jingoistic avowals of orthodoxy that makes them choose Engineering for further studies. Hahaha.

They could only rehash, ad infinitum, what they want to take up as a career: Engineering! As if nothing else is there in the whole wide world of letters to choose from; so you settle on doing what is quickly available, within your reach, accessible, feasible, and reasonable. Come hell or high water, it’s always going to be a writ of the safe-bet Engineering qualification.

Medicine, however, was not easily said because comparatively speaking it’s far too easier and simpler to be an Engineer (Oh, the solid sound of it!) than find oneself tangle with its heavy-duty counterpart Medicine. Doing Medicine is not any unmitigated, sold-out Engineer’s dispensation. Medicine is a serious ballgame that everyone in my class had insisted on conveniently overlooking. What could other areas be of interest for any student who could take up for further studies, aside from engineering and medicine that are already there rotting away like choicest pieces of an Old Rectory or a Museum and are in various forms of … decomposition? Oceanographer? Climatologist? Marine Biologist? Or a plain English Teacher? Not a chance? Doesn’t quite match up to your standards? I suspected as much! For almost all of my classmates, to turn into an Engineer was such a big deal.

An ‘Open House’ was where you say out loud what you aspire to become in life, so what was halting you, fine fellows, from being somewhat more imaginative in tossing some ideas and thoughts on the table and see what happens? Oh! Darlings, if you want to become a Space Cowboy at ISRO or NASA or a National Geographic voyager or simply need to have an orangey Jolly Rancher lollypop and take it easy, then say it as if you damn well mean it! It’s was only a fun game – an activity-based pageant if you like where your creative blurbs about your vocation decisions could bring about the necessary spirited energy to assail us with some joie de vivre in the process while you are at it. All that you were required to do is mentally float into the specific direction of the rollicking groove of your classmates or just go with the flow to effect an atmosphere of bonhomie and fun learning. If you all chaps have known about bunking classes, doubtlessly then you’d have known about brain-storming sessions to generate new ideas, wouldn’t you? Harmless fun, that’s more like it, and that is all there was to it.

Gone Kaput!

Poor little kids, they wouldn’t want to forego their engineering dream. Why’d anyone expect them to do something out of ordinary? Needless to say, most often we end up having a one-track mind, an overly fixated point of view; we simply follow what others have safely done before us and look, at least outwardly, quite comfortable with the choice they made. We herd ourselves in that specific direction that the others went and blindly ape it, more often than not to our peril.

The moment I quipped: ‘an Astronaut’ they quit hollering almost instantaneously… as though some hell broke loose on them or some horrible crap hit the fan around them they appeared as if they’ve been unfairly knocked out of some imaginary competition by the impact of what I said.

You should have seen their countenances. Poor fellows. Where have all your braveness gone now, folks? Gone Kaput? So easily? Good grief. For mercy’s sake, it was a fun session we had in the class, there’s nothing much to be read into it. Being capable or able to become an Astronaut was not the issue, it was rather being able to have fun by saying something overbearing or grandiloquent was the name of the game. According to my understanding, saying ‘Engineering’ could best be avoided in the class on the grounds that everybody already knows that everybody is going to be eventually affected by the dreaded Engineering bug after all.

The ‘situation’ – and they were a smart bunch of situation artists – or the ‘game of one-upmanship’ was solely their creation; I was not a part of it. Coming up with something astonishing to say or seemingly unachievable or perhaps as fashionable as announcing ‘an Astronaut’ to the whole class, I assume, was not beyond their abilities, but my classmates were typically thinking clichéd/conventional “Engineering” to prove some such oft-repeated, overdone, old-fashioned point that doesn’t cut any ice. Does that really mean they just expect themselves to sit and write entrance exams and get attuned to some such outdated novelties that come along with it? I hoped they were better than that. Whatever, it’s their wish and will.

To cut a long story short, I wanted to say something to tick them off a tad, and putting it gently: to pay back in their coin; couldn’t check the temptation you see. I guess I just wanted to see what their response (their ‘reaction’) would be to something which can though jokingly be said but is quite frightfully difficult or better still impossible to achieve. To become an Astronaut or a Cosmonaut is not easy; it’s a pure and unending sense of sacrifice and heightened study of an exceptional branch of science that can bring you closure to success. All that I am saying is that: don’t stop at becoming just an Engineer (“injineer”) and do a “job” somewhere after you’ve become one: Go a little further in your career aspirations and work for the larger interest of humanity if you can. That’s the need of the hour. I don’t mean to lecture, but when you want to become something in life, think about Mother Earth too. What’s more, if you have what it takes, it will go on to prove your true mettle. Let’s not make Engineering just another indispensable degree to be had at any cost. There are other pebbles on the beach. Do I sound a little cranky when I say that? I am certain I do. In any case, that’s the truth and it comes into the know with one’s – I am telling you this straight from the shoulder – personal experience.

Likewise, I don’t parade around or talk about something until I have successfully done it. Having said that, I never planned on becoming ‘an Astronaut’ in the first place because I am well aware of my limitations and that Sacrifice thing I was talking about earlier is certainly not my cup of tea either and is way above my scale. Instead, I’ve become a software engineer err… professional. Certainly not anywhere near becoming an Astronaut but a ‘Softonaut’, as it were. Perhaps it was my calling and I am into it full time.

Now and again, I love viewing through a telescope and look at stars and other celestial bodies in the night sky and that’s as far as I could get to become a certain sort of Astronaut! No wonder, that day in school I could pull a fast one on them, albeit a little foolishly I admit, snug in the belief that I had the last laugh!

Post that infamous little ‘situation’ of our own making, all our shouting matches in the class had come to a grinding halt, stopped shut lock stock and barrel, as we one by one settled down noiselessly on our bench and opened our textbooks to prepare for the next period because up next was the iron-willed, strict more than strict could ever be, Chemistry mam’s (Ms. Titrimetric Analysis) class. Good grief!

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.