Friday, January 22, 2010

Down memory lane- back to school



I am writing this blog after a big gap. I used to think standing at this vantage point that when I go down memory lane and talk of the past it would mean Allahabad untill yesterday when I got a call from an old school friend from Picket days, A,C, Rajeev, who was now a Group captain (Retd).( I am still not able to remember his face). They were having an Alumi Association and some of the old friends had met at his place. I was amazed at how he had been able to get my number and address and contact me. Names change, face change and so do memories after a long gap and in this case it was after thirty nine years that I was talking to some one from my class. Though I was down with fever, Rajeev had rekindled my memories enough for me to dig into my old photographs and scan them and put them in this blog with the hope that may be I will find more friends from this distant past. It was today that I discovered that I was in calss XB and so may be not there in Rajeev's class photo for he may have been in class XA. In my class were NSN Murthy, Jayant, Rajeshwari, Vijaylakshmi and Balbir. Among the other boys were Sridhar, Satyabrata, Skandmuni,Thomas, Sandip, Punkaj, Prasad,Hiren ,Suresh, Kanak Raj, Guru Raj, Anand, Pattabhi and many more.

My best friends were Anita and Pushpa. I met Pushpa again in Manauri, Allahabad but I could never trace Anita.One does have a happy memory of those days. I had come from an all girls school in 9th and the first month was a little intimidating with the boys who were a boisterous lot and would want to pair up with a girl not to talk of the other section boys. Soon we became good friends and when we three friends decided to go for a photograph( those days digitsl cameras were still not there and we had to go to a studio) I still remember the boys in our class get us many issues of Femina to decide on the pose we were to strike. It was here when we gave a farewell to the eleventh class that we wore a saree for the first time and we got so engrossed in the way we wre loking that none was ready to do any work and Mrs. rama Srinivas told us that she will not alow the girls to wear a saree next time for the farewell. It was here that i started participating in man debates and essay writing competitions and won many prizes for the school.

One memory is still fresh in my mind. We used to have some subject called social utility or some such thing. Now I forget what, The boys had to do interesting stuff like reparing an iron, a switch etc. and we had to do series of needle work. I found this very humiliating for we were competing with the boys and also beating them in many areas but why was this difference in this subject. i collected all the girls and went to the principal and asked him that we wanted to do the same ubject as the boys and he said that he cannot give us permission for he will have to ask the secondary Board in Delhi. We thought that we had made a request and stopped attending our needlework class and kept roaming outside the class in this period much to the angetr of our needlework teacher who told us we will all fail. This was an exam in 10th class. We did not learn any needle work in class and refused to attend this and finally after a year we got a reply from th eboard that we had to do only needlework. With asmall face we now entered class and the needlework teacher gave us left and right and told us that she will see to it how we pass the exam with out learning any thing. She kept repeating I know Rekha is your leader, at least you all should have sense for this is a question of your future> In the exam we just did some needle work and we had to do a piece of crotia . One of our friends whom we called Dabba had done this very efficiently and we just forced her to cut this into five pieces with a scissors and pasted it in our exam papers. The teacher called us after she corrected the papers and told us that we were definitely going to fail but we could save our selves if we told her the truth. We told her we will discuss this and come back. Now there was a heated discussion among the friends almost leading to a war and finally we all went and told the teacher we were sorry and we had not done this by our selves. I am not sure hat went through the teachers mind but when we got the results, we had all passed. I think it was from the beginning that an unjust division of work and labout put me off completely. I was very happy when some eight nine years ago i was invited as aChief Guest in the annual Function of a Government school in Chanda Nagar and taken around the calss rooms and I could see boys also learing to stich a button and hem a cloth. I wish this change would have come in out times when we were students and today i would not be scard of reparing an iron or a switch. My mother kept pestering me to learn stiching but as a sign of protest I learnt the Guitar, painting and what not but never stiching.