I finally got done with school. It was the end of the fourteen years of my life- all spent in the same school. It was supposed to be bittersweet, nostalgic, melancholic and emotional, at least, that's what all media taught me.
It wasn't. I loved that it was finally ending. Perhaps it was the lack of vacations for years in a row, the lack of deep friendships, my dip in academic performance, or it could have been the fact that it did not feel like the same school anymore. In 14 years, the school had not only managed to completely change its buildings, but the prayers said in the assembly, its teaching style, its uniform, its colour scheme, the house names, the children's park, its symbol, the copy and book covers, almost everything.
Imagine the classroom walls, chairs, tables, staircases, corridors looking almost completely different from your first memories of the school. Don't get me wrong, I am grateful for the wider staircases, the ACs, and the washrooms being miles better, but an entire overhaul of everything can certainly cause an emotional disconnection. I mean, the school began construction when I was in third grade and it only ended in the last few months or the last year.
Don't get me started on the Aurobindo imposition that slowly overtook the school. Is it necessary that just because the founder is an avid devotee, he must be imposed on everyone in the school? Images in every room of the school as is he is Kim Jong Un and this is North Korea. We were shown a film showing his contribution in independence and then we had to attend a seminar by the school's chairperson about him. Earlier there used to be quotes from Mahatma Gandhi and Swami Vivekananda, but now it was as if there was nobody as wise as Aurobindo in the whole world.
I will miss the many good teachers and the library though.
All in all, school felt like a long, boring and seemingly never-ending page of life that I am glad to turn. I am now eager to read the new one.
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