Remebering those ol' skool days

How quickly time has passed by. When you were in school you would always want to get out and graduate soon. But now sitting back in college I think, “…Hmm…wish I was in school…”

From the eighth standard I really began enjoying school. Memories rush in as I think about these days. The in thing at that time was Pokémon cards. They would sell like hotcakes. K.C., Ross and I had a group of our own in collecting these cards. The funda behind these cards was to trade it with your friends who were really stupid and get the most out of your trade. Everyday we made it sure to get at least a couple of new cards. Ross was the rich guy…on whose pockets K.C. depended (chillin…). Keaton (K.C.) was just the trader with sweet enticing but not so convincing words. The worst part  was after making a good collection some crazy guy would find the right opportunity in school and flick it away from us. Mainly it happened when the cards were with me. But never give up and you will succeed…From the kids in the lower classes to the 10^th standard-ers everyone had a craze for these cards. Then came the rules from the school to which no one gave any heed but took the greatest of the precautions in hiding them. For e.g. my friend once came to know that his class was going to be checked for these cards. Immediately he put his cards into his tiffin box and luckily that day he got saved from the teacher. Phew...the cards were partly mine too.But all that ended in a misery when after continuous flicking of our cards our final collection got lost after Ross realized that his bag was torn on his way back from tuition. Who can forget the 4 musketeers who were always out of the class with a 'science project' bahana. K.C., Ross, Marlon and myself were working on a project for a forthcoming science exhibition. Before making the final one we had to submit to our class teacher a summary and a small model of our project. On submission the comments we received from them were...'kaccha..kaccha'...'very poorly built'. As compared to the other students who had brought in a working model ours was some kind of a tattered toy. Still impressed by our idea, they selected ours for the final day. From that day for a month, we used to bunk at least 4 lectures (chosen carefully) in order that we complete our project.Though it was just 10% work and 89% time pass....it was the most fun time we had out there. Also the sports day and other events clubbed together helped us bunk more...hee..hee...As time passed we had to hurry up with the project as the date for submission approached. Though the event insisted on working models, we just stuck some motors here and there....voila...the project's done....imagine if we actually had put on some cool working model, we would have been called 'Newton' or what? Even during the exhibition, Pokémon would never leave us. Till one day, Ross got fired black and blue by a female volunteer from that school for getting these cards. That was the eighth standard.

Ninth standard was a call to captaincy. Appointed along with some of our friends including Marlon, Joel as vice-captain of our respective houses. Our role??...well to mind other people's business....you know the secret pleasure in doing so... Principal had asked us to detain all those who came late for school and bring them to his office. we were so cruel...even a minute late and we would shut the door. During rainy season, anyone coming with colored floaters other than the regular black color were caught. That was our job and we were excellent in it. Our captains were the laziest, at least mine. He would ask me to do almost everything and happily watch along doing nothing. During the sports day, we were supposed to take care of our houses and select proper players out of the whole class who would run out on hearing that there were selections going to be held that day.A lot of bunking, followed by sitting on the grounds doing nothing or sometimes 'illegally' play football with our friends on the ground.Talking about football, that was the first time (as I suppose) we had an inter house football tournament. Though our house landed up coming third (second last!!!), my friend and I got a reward for the best goalkeeper and player respectively. Shocking isn't it? But our honor was a small finger sized trophy which had to be returned in a week's time.....sheesh...so disgusting. Well that was the time I was encouraged to play football and joined the school's football team....Nicknames were a hit during that time and all thanks to Joel. As the rumour goes (its true??!!!), during religion class, Joel was asked to pray. He landed up praying "Give us our daily pears and apples" instead of "Give us our daily bread". So What? That wasn't funny...But from that day onwards we started calling him apple and pear to the extent that the whole class became popular with the nickname and ragged the poor fellow. Best part was that his aunt was our class teacher and out of curiosity joined in sometimes. Taking revenge, he nicknamed me "Krabby" dedicated to 'SpongeBob Squarepants' and Rhys as "Bhakra" of whom we drew crazy pictures. Also Marlon as "Hairy legs" as the reason is so obvious. Eighth standard also witnessed the rise of a cool athlete, Marlon. Eighth and Ninth were also an artistic era. Sketches of Dragon Ball Z was a must on the last page of every book.

Tenth standard was never a that big tension for me in the sense of studies. Had to join classes for the first time. In school our class landed up getting the strictest of all the teacher as our class teacher. She was almost as short as Mustafa(the shortest guy in our class). Yet she didn't allow her stature to take advantage of her but she bullied the whole class. Pramila teacher's (our English teacher) favourite pick was Joel....thanks to his brilliant long English essays(and the aunt influence??) that year, unfortunately they didn't appoint me as the captain of my house realizing that I was bunking a lot?....hahaha...Football was a secondary goal too. Months of intense practice during the summer vacations, practices at school as early as 6:30am....though it lasted only for one hour during the school days....it was fun and kind of a good experience. But during the league I could hardly get a good chance to play...thanks to my brilliant eyesight....you know spectacles aren't allowed. During school days we would report to class only after he first lecture because our book was never complete. The best player in our group was Anukool. He rocked in football and was also a champ in hockey and athletics. Well he was the perfect sports guy in our school and a brainy fellow too. He got 89% in his boards. "Quest que cest?..." "Bonjour"....that's the memories that quickly pass by as I think about the French lecs. Probably she was the sweetest and most nicest prof around. THe coolest prof around was Yadav Sir....the teacher from 'U.P.' I think that he's done a master's in Bihari English and a bachelor's in Mumbai Hindi. "Calendar give you...", "last second boy...", "get you up...".....never before you would have heard such professional English. Well he teaches us Hindi not surprisingly. One incident that happened in our class....a boy one day brought a roll of string and passed it all around the class making a webtrap. Poor Yadav...he walked straight into it and got himself entangled. Yeah not forgetting, he will never leave the class without those "accidental" chalk stokes on his 60's black pants. Another day someone placed an onion on his chair and not forgetting the chewing gum. The picnics too were cool. Got permission from my parents to go for the picnic at Water Kingdom after a gap of two years. Luckily that year I didn't loose my spectacles. Preliminaries came and went still not much improvement on the report card. Going for the board exams for the first day, I reached late. Among our friends, there was this guy who wore the same T-shirt all the 15 days of the exams. Was it a lucky T-shirt or what? Our school was the most happy when the results came. After I don't know how many years, our school got 100% pass percentage. Teachers were so excited...an extra day off from work. The farewell party was somewhat an organized flop show...!! After the party we as a group went to bandstand for some quality time of timepass. Lot, lot more to write but I don't think you would continue reading further.....that was the tenth standard...an experience always to remember