MY SCHOOL DAYS

Most of us would have bitter sweet memories of our school days! I don’t know about others, but for me, inside the classroom was mostly bitter and outside was sweet. An average student at best, most of the subjects bored me and I usually amused myself by chatting with my bench-mates… and this never failed to annoy the teachers. They tried changing my seat but it didn’t work. Then they tried all sorts of punishments – stand up on the bench, stand outside the class, write imposition, march me off to the principal’s room, but none of these had any effect on me. I belonged to this group of middle benchers.. not studious enough to be sitting in the front rows and not tall enough to be relegated to the back benches. A handful of us middle benchers bonded well and stuck together throughout our school days! In fact, I am still in touch with a few of these guys. Our school had a large playground (sad to see it has since disappeared and annexe buildings have been constructed) and my happiest moments were spent there. playing hand cricket, chasing dragonflies, sneaking out of the main gate with friends to buy eatables from the vendors who set up shop every school day. One particular vendor had a variety of stuff. Indian plum (“kool” in Bangla and “Elanda pazham” in Tamil) was my favourite. He used to sprinkle various types of masala – each of a different colour – on the kool and give in a small “tonga” (paper packet). One small tonga of kool costed 10 paise!! He also had amongst his wares – hajmi (digestive golis), mango jelly, sweet and sour candies and a variety of other stuff. Undoubtedly he was my most favourite person in the entire school. Cash, even loose change, was very hard to come by those days, but we somehow managed to have 10 or 20 paise in our pockets. We considered ourself rich if we had 50 paise with us! Such was the value of money then. (To give a perspective, in the year 1980 when I was in my 8th standard, USD1 = INR 8.00 – I Googled for this) We had to be extremely cautious with the eatables that we bought by sneaking out of school, as the school durwan (gatekeeper) could suddenly materialise out of nowhere, snatch it and march us off… and we couldn’t do a thing… complaining to the teachers was totally out of question – as we ourselves had sneaked out surreptitiously! Till this day it’s a mystery to me – what he did with the things that he snatched from the kids!!

Another thing that filled my heart with joy was a “free period”!! All hell used to break loose during a free period… Pure mayhem! There would be a half-hearted attempt to control the class by sending an unrelated teacher – art & crafts sir, or PT sir who would try their best to keep us engaged, but almost half the class used to sneak out to the playground… These are undoubtedly some of the happiest moments of my school life. I really cherish these fond memories! Inside the classroom was a different story altogether. Maths period was a nightmare… half the things never went inside my head. I would simply sit and stare blankly or draw doodles in the last page of my “rough note”! Other periods were little more tolerable. The most favourite period was English as somehow I could grasp the lessons easily and always got my spelling right.. remember there was no spell check or auto-correct then! Those days, going for private tuition was looked down upon. Only the very weak students would go for private tuition and fortunately, I was not that bad… Which only means I somehow got pass marks (34%) in each subject and managed to scrape through! There was never any attempt to score high… getting pass marks was an achievement by itself. Today, I see many students crestfallen if they score anything below 90% It is good to see that the standards have risen. Or have they? Well it’s a topic for another day.

About the author:

KG Narayanan sees himself as someone who likes to spread smiles and cheer all around, and firmly believe that happiness is one of the key ingredients for good health. A vegetarian selling seafood all over the world for a living, he also volunteers for community work and whenever he gets time, love to read and watch movies. He likes to scribble his thoughts down and put them in a blog every now and then. Those who are interested can find his blogs on narakg.blogspot.com. He serves as a Trustee in LCCT.