Skip to main content

The End of School Life

 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.

 


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Pets

 I think almost everyone has had pets in their entire life at least once. It is 2012, I am six years old. We saw a lone parrot outside near our house, looking nervous and afraid. We were afraid a cat may attack him, since there was an abundance of them in the area we lived in. Naturally, we decided to adopt him. He was fully grown, and it was obvious that someone else had previously owned him, since he frequently said "roti de do" meaning " give me roti." We bought a cage that was big enough for him, and even let him out once in a while. We called him Mithhu Miya. He used to start squaking at around 9 am in the morning, much to our annoyance. He later passed away.  It is 2017. An elderly lady we know just called my mother requesting us to adopt two bunnies. We did some research about them, and decided to adopt them too. She told us that they were female. Uh, well, turns out, one of them was a male. The female, named Innie, later gave birth to five bunnies. There was...

I look back to when I was eight

I look back and I go to when I was eight I used to look up to my seniors and think they were great They were so hard working, had it all figured out But now I'm that age and I'm just filled with doubt When I was younger everything used to be black and white But now everything is jut hues of grey Everyone seems to think that my future is bright And I don't know what to say I finally understand how quickly time flies I feel so lost, don't know what to do in life Everyone else seems to have it all figured out And I am the only one who is left out But I realized now that it is not all bad In the end, everything is gonna be all right As long as I stay happy and keep working hard What everyone else thinks will lose its might And I will only live for myself Be content with what I have After all, when everyone else has left I will be all that I have

Babaji

 In this post I'm going to recount a few fond memories with my paternal grandfather, Babaji. Most of these are of the time when he used to pick me up from school for a few months in fourth grade. He used to pick me up from the front field of our school and we walked back to the car, often holding hands. I often found a small stone to kick along the way. In the car, there would be always waiting for me a pillow and a bottle of cold water. It felt no less than luxury. He asked me eagerly what I learned in school. I remember one time I told him I had learned a new word- unique. He asked me what it's meaning was and I said different. But that's not an exact synonym, and he explained the nuance in the different meaning of the two words. I remember, earlier he had explained to me the same way how the Hindi words बाल and केश differed from each other. Since he used to pick me up from the field, where a lot of my classmates were waiting to be picked up too, I often asked them how ol...