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Beautiful Memory: Learning, Belonging and Other Musings
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
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.
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.