21. An ode to School days - 1

“School days were so much fun, I wish I could go back in time” – how many times have I heard this, from the people around me and myself as well. ‘School time’ memories do have some kinda zing, some magic associated with ‘em.

It was so easy to top the class back in school. Hardly any of us gave a damn about studies in the first place, school was meant for masti, total fundoo innocent fun. Exam time, just mug up some stuff on the last day and voila, end up getting first. Things were so simple back then, I agree that there was a certain sense of competition among a few of us to get the first rank, but even if one didn’t, it was no big deal, life just went on, there was always the next test to try for the first place. There was just this one guy whose mom and dad would refuse to come collect his grade sheet if he ever got a second or third rank.


Over here in college, amidst hungry ‘text book knowledge-mongers’, I find myself at the lower end of the pack. Have no qualms about it anyway, have been bindaas about grades all my life, that aint gonna change no matter what. But the point is, with people who have just ‘text books’ and class notes for all three meals of the day, writing the same exams as you are and relative grading being employed, is there any chance of not getting ‘screwed’ !!

Back in school, I was the only guy in the top 5 who used to share all the home work assignments with others, the others dint because they had a valid reason not to. The punishment for sharing a HomeWork used to be quite severe, but I liked playing risky, the usual me ;) . Not that I never got caught, there was this one time, when I had done mistakes in my Math HW , which showed in almost half the class’s notebooks because all of ‘em had copied my stuff. The prof was distributing the books back to the students, but just about half the students got back their books. Then he announced “Those who haven’t got their books will get it tomorrow, I haven’t given them today because the cane stick I had ordered for these people hasn’t arrived as yet.”. Turned out, he had spotted the mistakes in all the books! Looking at me, he said “Now tell me who showed his book to others.” Don’t know why but I got up on my own, can never forget the thrashing that I got that day, but that didn’t stop me from sharing my home works in future. Only thing being that I spent more time doing my homework correctly, so that I never would get caught :P


Over here, it is I who is the copier, there hasn’t been a single assignment which I can say I have done totally on my own. The irony is, I haven’t been caught here till date, TouchWood!

It was so easy to get girls to notice you. The whole class could be called a microcosm in its own right, with girls’ interests the ranging from being Harry Potter fans to Bharatnatyam professionals to Missionary helpers(really respected these girls for their commitment to social work). As for the guys, it was cricket, all kinds of gully sports, junk food, video games, home food………… All one had to do was, just be good at whatever he was, he was sure to get noticed, by the right people more importantly. I used to give my own labellings to all the drawings in my text books, for instance, each organ of a cow’s body was labeled as one of the characters of ‘The Simpsons’. Mahatma Gandhi always had a lush blue wig filled with curly hair, one black eye like a pirate, with a parrot on his shoulder while Adolf Hitler had to be content with a shaved look, a G-string and a feeding bottle in his mouth. Somehow, this did strike a funny chord or two with the girls, and they promptly let me know of it too !

Now if I do something similar in college, I’ll probably get myself a ‘label’ as ‘WEIRDO’ I guess…… As it is, there are hardly any Venusians here(literally, the number is so so less) and even among them, there is hardly any femme who’d get out of her world of “books” and notice, leave alone appreciate. Moving from school to college was like moving from the lush gardens of France to the Kalahari desert in Africa. The draught, the dearth is so so acute, believe me !

I realized one post is too small for this, there’s more to come…..To be contd in the next post……