This is the second installment of the Trip Down Memory Lane series, and dates back to April 16 2001. This was the day I transferred from my old school to my new school. The reason for the shift was that we had changed houses just the previous year, and it was a lot of trouble covering the large distance between my school and our house. I kept going through a lot of benefactors for one year, but that is a story for another post, which hopefully will come today itself.
It was the day after Vishu or the next day. My mother accompanied me to the school. She knew the Principal, it seems, but that wasn't going to change anything. The class was just filling up, so I went and thanks to some girls I found out an empty seat and settled down. My mother sat there and chatted with the students there for some time, when the bell rung for assembly. Everyone seemed to know what to do, and where to go. Everyone, that is, except me. I kept trying to follow someone I had seen earlier, sometimes running to keep up with them. As I stood in the scorching hot sun, and looked around the stage, barely taking anything in, the only thing I could think of was that I was abandoned. Imagine a tiny little puppy wrenched from its mommy, and left to fend for itself in a hostile, dog-eat-dog world, that was me, that was all I could think of.
One phrase from one of my father's friends, who happened to be a teacher at the school, comes to my mind now. "This school is not like your old school. There is less control here, you won't feel that strangled and bound up here." That automatically implied less discipline, and more rowdy behaviour, and less intervention from the teachers. That was the opposite of what I was used to. I thrived in ordered situations where authority was always around to enforce order. So this was going to be more tough than I imagined. And I quickly realised that. Where back at my old school, there was rarely a sound during free periods, here the noise was deafening. I could not bear it, and I often used to go out to the corridors, looking outside at the entrance. And if someone asked me what I was doing outside, I would shamelessly reply I was missing my old school. Here there was no control over the class by teachers and the noise level was intense. But looking back, it was one of those decisions that made me who I am now, made me a better human being, and taught me a lot about how life actually is. I never said this to my parents, but that decision taught me a lot, so thank you for that.
It took me a long time to get used to the school, but it was a better teacher than any for me, a teacher of life.
One phrase from one of my father's friends, who happened to be a teacher at the school, comes to my mind now. "This school is not like your old school. There is less control here, you won't feel that strangled and bound up here." That automatically implied less discipline, and more rowdy behaviour, and less intervention from the teachers. That was the opposite of what I was used to. I thrived in ordered situations where authority was always around to enforce order. So this was going to be more tough than I imagined. And I quickly realised that. Where back at my old school, there was rarely a sound during free periods, here the noise was deafening. I could not bear it, and I often used to go out to the corridors, looking outside at the entrance. And if someone asked me what I was doing outside, I would shamelessly reply I was missing my old school. Here there was no control over the class by teachers and the noise level was intense. But looking back, it was one of those decisions that made me who I am now, made me a better human being, and taught me a lot about how life actually is. I never said this to my parents, but that decision taught me a lot, so thank you for that.
It took me a long time to get used to the school, but it was a better teacher than any for me, a teacher of life.
