Remember those days when everyday - getting to school was an ordeal of the highest order with sweltering heat, overcrowded buses that plied at 75 degrees from the road, the road side Romeos that waited to shove you around, and a big load behind your back in the form of books. Then it was cycling times. It was a good 4 mile ride each way. By the time I reached school, I would be dripping wet with sweat, the shirt and the pinafore sticking to my body, the 15 minute assembly through the humid morning – the kneel down or the sit-ups that ensued whenever I forgot something in my uniform attire.. it was still memorable days..

A gang of activity-challenged students (like me) would huddle together and plan how we could escape from the PT period. We liked to sit and gossip about everything under the sun but refused to move the bums around. We were early teenagers and there was so many curious questions that were best answered by the peer group and PT period were precious time to catch up on it. Now I wonder what all those chit-chat no-nonsense tales were all about. – class 7 through 10.

There was a girl in my class who received a love letter that looked like it was written in blood. Rumors filled the room. There were unanswered questions about if the Ghost really existed; and someone would spring a spicy story of how she witnessed one last night in the bathroom, about life after death and once again you will find someone with a tale of her long-gone grand pa appearing every Diwali to the village that no one ever heard of. For some strange reason, whatever your friends say would be believed and whatever your parents said would be mocked at!!!! May be, it was just the hormones.. – class 9

One of our classmates left home when she was 10 disappointed with her scores in quarterly exam. Luckily, she had only gone to her grand ma’s place in some remote location in Madras. And already there were tales about how ghost must have picked her and how she would be in Heaven enjoying in utopian comforts. It was the time when we had Fools Paradise in English Non-Detail. – class 5

You would be showered with praise and honor on your birthday. I am not sure if its because your friends want to share some of the limelight or is it because she wanted an extra piece of candy! I can’t recollect any instance when anyone was ever involved in any conflict on her birthday. I still wonder if this was just the girls’ school or was it with the boys too. – class 4 through 9

There was this practice of minding-people. Do you recollect the term? One of you is selected to ‘mind’ the class. Now this guy was like a super power. He could go around bullying you and get away with it. If the class-leader (who often ‘minds’) was a nicer guy, the class would collapse into many factions each party pretending to extend support to the class-leader and be in his good books - typical politics that’s today played on the bigger arena. The class was always in gangs. You have to belong to one or the other, else you belong nowhere and no one might help you with notes if you go on leave!!!! - class 4 through 8

Exams and tests were more important than they were in your engineering/medical College. An extra mark here and there was more valuable than anything else. Beg, borrow or steal your extra one mark so that you are one up than your buddy. Class 6 through 9

What you bring for lunch determines how sought after you are! Finishing the lunch during the break and munching on ‘chaat’ for lunch was fashionable.– class 4 through 6

Who brings your lunch makes a statement about character. If you bring it yourself, you are not as lucky as your blessed friends. If your father brings it, your mom does not care about you and if your mom brought, you are the luckiest soul! – class 1 through 3


In spite of all those ill-attitudes, weird behavior, hormonal imbalance, childish pranks we were all innocent children at heart and we were friends. Each one of us has gone in search of different aspirations and desires in different directions and we are probably spread all over the globe and I have lost touch with almost every one of them. But someday I hope we would just run into each other, vaguely recognize and beam a smile at that instant reliving those childhood times.