Tag: College

  • Schooled for life

    One of the things I spend a lot of time reflecting on is my own OS or wiring, and its updates. In a recent conversation with D, courtesy a college reunion (25 years!) I realised that I have very, very few friends from school and college whom I stay in touch with. Why was that, I wondered.

    I don’t have many memories of my first school – Std 1 and 2. I remember the uniform vividly, and the prizes I won. I have forgotten what they were for though. I have a flood of memories about my second school – Std 3 to 7. Probably because I think they were my best days. I was almost always ranked first in class, I sang, recited poetry, was part of the quiz team, and even played hockey! What I remember most was how accommodating the teachers were when I had to miss classes for practice and competitions. Many of them actively encouraged me to pursue the things I showed some interest and talent in.

    And it went beyond that. There was something in the people I knew then. I remember how once, there was some competition in a different school, and G, my classmate and biggest competitor for the first rank in class, hadn’t advanced to the final round and yet stayed back so she could drop me at home. I shifted schools after 7th because we were moving to a different part of town. Immediately after my exams, I also had a minor surgery. R, my Hindi teacher, visited me in the hospital with her husband. What I remember most, thus, is the kindness.

    I have to admit that I don’t think I repaid it much. After I had shifted schools, I participated in some competition, now representing my new school. My old teachers were there too, and being the uber shy idiot I am, I didn’t even acknowledge them. How bad they must have felt!

    I didn’t like my new school at all. Somehow I just didn’t fit in. They prioritised academics at the cost of everything else, and there was very little space for the other things I enjoyed. While I made a few friends, the camaraderie I had in my other school just wasn’t there. On hindsight, maybe mom’s illness was also playing on my mind.

    I think it also had to do with the kind of neighbourhoods I lived in. Before we shifted, we lived in a university campus. Largely egalitarian – people working in the same place, living in similar quarters, earning within the same range, enjoying the same facilities and so on. When we moved to the city, the house itself was one of the smallest in the street, though I don’t think I paid it that much attention. The inequalities in general were bigger, something that reflected in the kids at school too. The in-groups were stronger, and I feel it to this day in WhatsApp groups.

    It wasn’t that there weren’t kind people there – I remember how M consoled me for hours after mom passed away. I went to ridiculous movies with R,A and S. I had a good friend V, who had a terrible accident and was in pain for months. I used to visit him in the hospital and his relatives used to make me sing. Yes, facepalm. I used to guiltily look at V even as I sang. At reunions (which I mostly avoid) and in the WhatsApp group, I see a totally different person. Someone I cannot relate to at all. Maybe his wiring changed after that accident, and the mental and physical anguish it caused. The change in me after 10th was quite drastic. Mom’s death pretty much unleashed a wicked sense of humour, which was my armour until recently.

    I think, after her death, and later, when my grandmother moved to my uncle’s place during my engineering days, my subconscious probably decided that relationships had a shelf life. That friends were that, only in a certain context. When it came down to it, I was the only person I could depend on. It took D and most of my life to get over that.

    Then again, as the joke goes

    Jesus miracle friends

  • Collage

    Not that I’m going to bore you with events from Y2K on, I have other stuff to do that with, but a decade can be a long time. And when there are events to add some perspective to that timeframe, it makes it even more poignant. That’s exactly what happened when, thanks to a get-together organised by batchmates, I realised that its been 10 years since we passed out of that place. (‘passed out at’ is equally applicable, thanks to a few classes!!) What makes it fun is that while I got myself a degree, and so did D, she claims that she lost whatever degree of sanity she had before she crossed paths with me. 😀

    So, the place where we became er, engineers. I’ve always wanted that – Er, for engineer. Like Dr for Doctor. Er.Manu. Er, ok, let’s move on. Like the place has. While not entirely unrecognisable, its changed considerably. New buildings, better access roads, well maintained gardens. And they actually have speakers starting from about 200 m from the college, that play music to de-stress students. Just a vowel movement from our times of distress!! Hmmph.

    The current batches were on vacation, which meant D and I could walk around and click away to our hearts content. We walked around the college campus with a few of our friends. Many of them are now responsible parents – mostly to toddlers. Kids who are too young for me to tell them that I have seen his/her father in the same state, if not age. Toddy tales for toddlers are perhaps not a great idea. So we talked about teachers and papers and cricket matches and strikes. Memories were rekindled, legs were pulled, tall claims made about the life and times from more than a decade back.

    And just so that I can come back here and revisit the road once traveled, here are a few snapshots.Walk with me 🙂

    DSC02367 Since there are no shortcuts to success, there is no lift, and we used to have many classes scheduled right on the top floor. It also meant that teachers took longer to reach the class, and students got themselves an excuse to loiter. And so it was, that when a teacher was spotted beginning the long climb, an announcement was made by whoever happened to be surveying the scene. Usually the teacher’s nickname was used. 😀

    Surveying. Right at the basement was our department’s preferred source of dehydration. So more people passed out than passed thanks to the heat. During exams, we were tested by being asked to find the distance between two inaccessible points. Since in reality, they were accessible, kids figured ways to actually measure the distances so that they knew the answer. That made it even more difficult, since many had no idea how to arrive at that answer on paper. 😀

    DSC02375Workshop. One of the 2 papers in 4 years that made me re-appear for an exam.  For D, the only one. I liked metal, but the damn thing refused to be filed away. I appeared the next year with a wooden smile. I got a block of wood this time. Everything dove tailed into place.

    Learned of love and ABC’s,

    DSC02372It wasn’t really all work. Our sports ground. Weekends were the main periods of activity, and since I used to hop on to a Cochin bus every Friday evening, I seldom played. The building on the left was my hostel in the third year, and the one on the right in the final year. We got single rooms in the final year. I still remember the ‘Sifar’ (Lucky Ali) poster on my door, with the picture of an open palm. Ironically, I was an SFI member (student wing of the Communists), as opposed to the KSU (the Congress’ student wing, sharing its symbol)

    skinned our hearts and skinned our knees.


    DSC02385

    The corridor that has heard my voice many many times. Shouting slogans. Trying to out-shout my counterpart in the opposing party. And the singing, since the auditorium was here too. Two worlds, two voices, both sound asleep now. 🙂

    DSC02389And thanks to the first set of activities, I was called to this room occasionally. The principal’s. At one time, we had the entire batch sitting in front of his room because he wouldn’t let us go to Goa for our study tour. He also happened to be a schoolmate’s father, which made me feel rather guilty whenever I cracked jokes/made slogans at his expense. 😀

    And every time that I was down


    DSC02348

    Another place of great intrigue. I have only gone beyond this gate once. Into the building that is, not the other way. This is the LH – Ladies Hostel. The one time I went in was during the election campaign. And I was made to sing. Who suffered more, is just a matter of perspective. 😀

    Apparently other souls used to surf around much more frequently. Once someone climbed on to this building’s terrace and dumped washing powder into their huge water tank. Since the water was also used for cooking, the tank had to be emptied and cleaned, so the entire batch got a few days of leave.DSC02388

    And when I was not making a fool of myself singing, I was playing Dumb C. This is the place where we won a Dumb C competition at the college for the first time. We even cracked the Dumb Dumb C round, which was still a novelty then. 🙂

    DSC02383And when I wasn’t busy with all the other stuff, this is where I could be found, in the classroom. We couldn’t go in this time, the room was locked. But thankfully, so are the memories.

    I wish that we could both be there.

    We had joy, we had fun, we had seasons in the sun.
    But the hills that we climbed
    were just seasons out of time

    They said D and I hadn’t changed much. Oh, but we have, I wanted to say. But I smiled, because I was still wondering how, when, and why. The college still poses difficult questions, but there’s a degree of comfort in knowing that life and I can move on, sometimes even without answers. 🙂

    until next time, snap out 🙂

  • Collage

    After a really long time, I chanced to see some college kids in action. Some, would be an understatement since it involved half a dozen colleges and a few hundred students. As part of the program, I got to see them in their natural environment, their college. Did that make them sound like animals? Okay, it wasn’t supposed to. It made me think about youth. Not mine, since my memory isn’t too good these days, but the usage of that word to represent the collective.And i realised it doesn’t really do them justice.

    For I saw dreamers, the silent types who sat in the corners of the college quad with either eyes glued firmly to a book, or absorbing the world around in general, sometimes with an amused smile.

    I saw the show-offs, displaying everything from the latest in gadgets and fashion, to the latest in body art, and equating that in some way with what and who they are.

    I saw the absolute rascals, whose single focus was the other gender, and their attention. From what i saw, I thought it was more hormones than nobler intentions of love.

    I saw escapists, who learned very early, that it doesnt matter if the grass is green on the other side, or any damn side, you still gotta have it, the grass that is.

    I saw those who were full of life, participating in all the contests that were happening, eager to prove, not to anyone else, but to themselves, that they had what it took to excel.

    I saw some who had perhaps given up on all that happened around them, some of them with a quizzical expression and some of them trying hard to populate vacant smiles.

    I saw those whose looks had more than a trace of rancour, was it against what they were surrounded by, who they were surrounded by or was it against those who were happy in these surroundings?

    Youth, the collective term for a population that consists of individuals who are perhaps still trying to find out who and what they are.

    And as i sat watching them,  I saw some of them stare back at me, as though asking me how life goes, years after you’ve left college? Whether the world you are part of now, resembles the world you used to occupy then. And I would’ve liked to tell them that the world outside does change, but for better or worse, the world within can stay exactly the way it is, if you’d let it. And that perhaps is why some of us never grow up, and some of us feel that we grew up a long time back. And both of these have nothing to do with our age.

    until next time, growing up…