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”
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:
…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.
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.