And then I finally got an idea. Actually, I was planning to do this for the last 4 years – since the time I left Vizag and shifted to Hyderabad. But then I couldn’t do it for some reason or the other. Finally, I made it this time. Lemme not hold it anymore. The idea was simple – Why not go back to school and savor those good old moments? Fantastic right.. So this is how it happened.
I headed back to Vizag on the 14th evening. Reached Vizag early 15th at around 6:00 AM. All that I had in my mind was that I shouldn’t go home and start sleeping J .. else I am quite sure that I’ll miss it for the 4th consecutive time. As planned, I just passed time and asked my Dad to drop me at school so that I’ll be there on time. We usually have flag hoisting by a guest, an inspiring speech by the Principal, march past, few cultural activities etc. on this day. When I started, I figured out that the camera batteries aren’t fully charged. How stupid of mee. Then my dad took all the pains of stopping at each store on the way that was open early in the morning – spencers, more, reliance none of them had the required batteries. Finally I gave up hope about the photographs and with a dull mood, we started. This feeling didn’t last longer, once I had a glimpse of the school gate, all the sadness has gone and a smallll smile has come automatically.
Once I entered the school, after close to 12 years now, I realized that nothing has changed. It was all the same except that it was painted a little bit here and there. Library, laboratory, class rooms, the teachers, peon nothing has changed. I was there at the assembly area and I was a little disappointed that I missed the flag hoisting, but then, I just forgot about it and started enjoying the programs that started later. As the programs were going on my eyes started searching all around the ground for all the teachers whom I wanted to meet. As I could see one after the other, my happiness kept on increasing. Two teachers Ms. Josephine Clements and Joseph Sir recognized me, though not my name and there were no bounds to my happiness. For the rest, I had to introduce that I was their student and they taught me this subject. They felt very happy after knowing about my whereabouts. One teacher also showed me to her present students and said .. “Look children, Amruth is my student. He listened to me in 3rd standard and he flourished in life. Do you also want to become like this?” And that’s all .. no more words to express this feeling. I was glad to know that each of them had close to 25, 30 years of experience in the same school. There was one disappointment though -- A few teachers, especially my favorite teacher Ms. Daisy whom I thought I would meet, left the school. She was one person whom I thought would definitely recognize me even after these many years. She’s my Maths teacher.
As I was passing through all the corridors of the school, I could recollect some sweet and funny things during my childhood.
- This is my favorite one. My cousin and me, both good at maths used to count the number of “Good”’s Ms.Daisy used to write in our homework book. We used to count Good as 1, Very Good as 2 and so on. Whoever gets the maximum count would win at the end of the year.
- There used to be a teacher in our school. This gray haired lady used to SMOKE in the school. She’s an Anglo Indian. We small kids used to gossip a lottt abt her. Whenever one found her in the staff room smoking, he used to rush immediately to the class room and inform all of us – with a great sense of achievement. And all of us like big heroes used to pass the staff room or go in and ask some stupid doubt to another teacher so that no one would understand our intent. All this just to see how can she smoke.
- There were 4 houses in our school – Gandhi, Nehru, Shastri and Kennedy. I was in the Gandhi house. The captains and vice captains are chosen based on elections in which students from class 4 and above would participate. Until 6th I think, I just voted based on how good the name of the contestant was. In 9th I contested myself. In every election, the contestants used to distribute chocolates, note book stickers and used to ask for votes. But I thought that was incorrect and did not give any such stuff. I remember that I got around 5 votes in total. The school’s total strength was close to 2000 students I think. Of the 5, two votes were mine and my cousin’s. I am 100% sure. I just thought of who the other 3 were J
- I remember doing 2 projects at school “Volcanoes and Earthquakes” in Geography and “South Indian Temples” in History. For this, we struggled like anything. There was no Google at that time right.. so .. went to libraries and collected materials from news papers, searched news papers, brouchers and wat not, to make each of the projects 80 pages atleast. At the end, when we felt that we didn’t have enough number of photographs, we just used any picture – be it a small accident or a collapsed building – and wrote it to be because of some earthquake that happened in some year at some place. As it is the teacher wouldn’t definitely go through each and every page of all the 60+ students’ projects right J
- It was the first time in Fourth standard that we played Football in the PT(sports) period. The first time we had this, all of us counted the number of times we kicked the ball rather than the number of times we scored a goal. This used to be a lot fun. This continued for a few weeks also. J
- We had a Basket ball court as well in the school. More than basket ball, we used to play on the border lines that are drawn in that court. So, one can run only on those lines and chase any other guy. This was the game.
- In Ninth standard I think, dissections in Biology lab have started. That was the first time all the students(veggies, non veggies no one was spared) were given one fish and asked to cut it exactly the same way the teacher did. With that stinking smell and students shouting all the time, we finally did it.
- We used to speak a lot in Telugu in our school. To avoid that the teachers have come up with a card system. There used to be one card with “Do not speak in telugu” written on it. Whoever spoke in Telugu had it with them. Once he sees another guy speaking in telugu, he can pass it on to him. The person with whom it was at the end of the day will have to stay back till 6PM in the school or pay 5Rs. as fine. The rest should pay a fine of 50paise. We used to get dead scared once the card was with us. Luckily, I never had to stay late in the school.
- The second standard teacher, I still remember had a watch in her locket. She was the one who had actually taught me how to hold a pencil and have a good hand writing.
- The last hour every Friday was a CA(Cultural activities) class where everyone is supposed to do some activity or the other. I had a reasonably good fame as a singer at that age itself, I think.
I just hope that you would have already started thinking about your golden childhood days.
