Tuesday, June 28, 2011

A Pink Pinafore….


I turned 20!! Let’s say I live upto around 60 (if no one kills me by then) then I have now completed exactly one third of my life. That’s like a really really long time. Gosh!! So I thought this birthday I’ll write a blog about my life or rather my educational life which obviously implies my favourite subject ‘friends and relationships’ (and I promise I’ll drag in my feministic views somewhere :P).

So it all started with a bright pink pinafore. Well… actually my first schooling was at some playschool which my chechi calls “ammamma veedu” and where apparently I was miserable. But since I don’t remember anything about it I guess I’ll start with LKG. Now these memories are also very vague and the only thing I really remember clearly is my uniform.. a bright pink pinafore. Now a pinafore is kinda like a dress but with box pleats and a white flap like piece near the neck and it’s definitely not fond memories that I shared in that attire. Like a majority of children I hated school. As I said I don’t remember much about this age but I can still feel the relief I felt when I returned home from school. I would rush inside the house and demand a glass of milk. Yuck!! I hate milk now but those days the thought of that milk helped me sit all day in class. 

Then from 1st standard onwards I remember better. Then our uniform was a light blue pinafore. My 1st and 2nd I hated school. I was a sweet girl (I repeat “was”) and everyone took advantage of me. I never fought or shouted or even talked much. I just had one best friend and I talked only to her I think coz I don’t remember anyone else. One incident I clearly remember was being elected as class leader. Now being a leader was a dream for everyone those days coz we can rub the blackboard and take the chalk. This was something very special. But unfortunately since I was so “sweet” even as a leader I had no power. All the other leaders dominated me and those 3months I never touched the blackboard….

In 3rd I magically changed.. atleast I felt so. I started talking to more people and making more friends. 3rd and 4th were happy days. The best part I remember from those days are the games we played. In class with the guys I used to play hand cricket which I hated but for some weird reason I was good at (I never got out) and among gals gosh! There were such a lot of games…salolaole… superkironi…charliechaplin.. hehe!! Then in the evening I had a special group of friends. We met only in the evening and we used to play such weird games. Hide and seek was our favourite but after a while we got sick of that and started inventing all sorts of crazy things.. dabdoobali… detectives… and some games I can’t even remember the names we gave for them. And in fourth I was again a class leader and by then I was quite bold and had ‘board control’.
 
By fifth all the guys were thrown out of school and it was a purely girls only zone. I made my first speech in fifth. Aquaguard (the company that makes water purifiers :P) was doing a talk in our class to promote their product and I had to give the welcome speech. Now this is a really stupid event (infact u can’t even call it an event) but still I was so proud to be selected as the “welcome speech giver”. That was the first time I held a mic I think. I loved it and from then on went for every speech competition I could go.

 6th and 7th were dark times for me mainly coz I was constantly fighting with my best friend. Now it all seems so silly but that time it was like a heart breaking situation. If I talked to someone else more she would get angry and vice versa. We were worse than a bunch of possessive lovers. We used to walk hand in hand around the whole campus and share all our deepest secrets (which was actually nothing). Anyway that sort of bonding happens only at that age I think (now we would be called lesbians if we did that :P).  

Then high school started. That was the time for gangs… everyone had a gang. It was a real cool term!! Ours was called ‘The harmful insects’ and now you can guess how crazy we were. There were ten of us and we had seats together in class. We have laughed so much together… cried so much together… 8th was one of my best times in school. I went for almost every weird activity that year. There was a dance event were I had to wear a bright yellow dress and my partner didn’t turn up and I had to dance alone. Then there was a song competition where we dressed up as cowgirls and won the first prize. Since I can’t sing now I think we won it coz of our costume :D Then I remember a debate competition where we started arguing so spiritedly that we forgot it was a competition. The things we said were nonsense I guess but we won a prize purely for our energy. There was also this weird phenomenon: I used to cry every Friday. Now I can’t explain why it’s like that…. Some silly thing will happen every Friday and I will cry and then later make up and everything would be great again. 

9th I was elected as the head girl and it was a damn crazy year. It was the 125th anniversary of our school that year and we had some dumb event every single week. I did so many welcome and thank you speeches that I got absolutely sick of talking. The weird part was that no one had any idea about who the chief guests were. I had to say paragraphs of praises about someone I had never even heard of till that day. Then the worst part of being the school leader was that if anything went wrong it was blamed on me. If the chief guest arrived late and the students got fidgety even that was my fault though I don’t know how I could have prevented that. Also I got so little time to spend with my friends that year. 

10th new leaders were selected and I became the ‘Ex- head girl’, this was so much better. You still have all responsibilities but the new leaders will get all the scolding. 10th was indeed an excellent year. It was our last year in that school and so got damn nostalgic during our farewell. That was also the first time I wore a saree (and I looked ridiculous). With our eyes full of tears I bid farewell to the place I had spend 12 years of my life.
11th and 12th I did in a co-ed. 1st year was so crazy. Everything was new to me. Apart from the fact that there were strange beings in class (boys :P) it was a totally different atmosphere. I found everyone to be more harsh… less sentimental.. less attached… maybe we were growing up… I assumed I would never love this place but as usual I was wrong. When the two years ended I was even more tearful than in 10th. I made a bunch of friends I can never forget in my life and realized so many things about life. It was the time I started writing my blog. Those two years I did nothing exceptional… I was never popular… infact I know very few people apart from those in my class. But still these two years changed my life so much. 

Then college started…. it began with so many mixed feelings… fear for the seniors… excitement of staying away from home which at times turned into home sickness… and a thirst to enjoy maximum coz we all had this preconceived notion “college life is the most rocking part of our life so get maximum out of it”. I remember the first time we all went out together. It was for our classmate’s sister’s wedding and then later went to hill palace. We hardly knew each other but was determined that we should go mainly I think coz it was our first chance. It was the best of all the “hang outs” we had in college obviously coz it was our first :D I think the least time I took to become friendly with everyone was in college. Now emotions were different….. more complicated… the topics we discuss are also weirder…it was not that we grew up (we still throw chalk at each other and shout and scream like children) but we became kinda stranger in our thoughts..or so I felt… 

20 years seems like a really long time…. So many memories… when I take my old diaries and read through them at times my eyes fill up with tears… at times I burst our laughing… I haven’t achieved even 1/4th of what I dreamt to achieve but still I think my life is fulfilling so far… though my name hasn’t appeared in Wikipedia (one my friend’s greatest dreams :P) I think the fact that I can look back and feel happiness… feel sadness… feel regret…feel proud… feel embarresed…feel almost every emotion possible shows that I have experienced everything or atleast I am capable of experiencing everything…. Like my friend said last night “there will always be someone who envies your life and someone’s life you envy so be happy about what you are”(this was not his exact words.. I made it more attractive :P). Anyway I’m twenty and thanx to everyone who helped me have a great terrific twenty years… Zindagi rocks!!!


PS: I want to dedicate this blog to some special people.. I have no idea if they will even read this blog…these are the people I lost contact with… My best friend from 5th to 10th…. The group of friends I used to hang out in the evening during my school days…the harmful insects… and all my 12th friends whom I’m no longer in touch with….


Gosh! This is indeed a looooong and boring blog. A sorry to those who actually read the whole thing :P