Alma Mater

7years ago I joined a school on a fresh spring morning. My whole family came to drop me, and I was simply ecstatic to join the picturesque residential school located on the Brahmaputra valley. My illusion of being in a Hogwarts like school were instantly discarded when I realized it was squeaky clean and new, I almost pinched myself back to reality to witness the real world rather than waste time looking around for any déjà vu.

Friends introduced themselves, juniors came up to me. Some juniors went around the hostel just before bedtime wishing goodnight to all. Or to some of us who were new. I was enjoying my new life. I realized the school paid attention to each and everyone. Suddenly somebody like me who prefer being camouflaged with the background started to get noticed. It was like everybody knew me. I found the new attention strangely alluring at the same time scary. Before I could realize I wasn’t that shy anymore, I could face the microphone, I could fight with anyone except teachers and seniors of course. Shortly thereafter I enrolled myself for horse-riding classes, elocution classes, sitar classes and so on. How much I did with sincerity was you know...well.. anyway I had different experiences and that was great. Then I realized my flair for English was above average and the opposite was for Maths and Hindi.

All hell broke loose I started panicking for the former the most that I couldn’t concentrate anywhere, Maths was haunting me and that was when I started crying and begging my parents to take me back home and let me join a school in Manipur where they could hire a private tutor for me. I was crying every Sunday whenever their phone call arrived. Alas! One fine day my dad simply said “Ok I’ll come to pick you up”. I refused. Reason: till then I was getting to know my friends and it is magical how friendships form in these schools, it is like a therapy I must say. They helped me a lot and I found a few of them who were as bad as I was to keep me company. We shared almost every tit bits happening to our lives, who was the bitch, who was going around with whom, which teacher we hated the most, mimicking funny accents of the teachers, discussing the meals we longed for. Reminiscing the “oh so perfect days” of being a day scholar and being a pre-teen and the ‘perfect’ life we led with our parents. And then never leaving each other, accompanying each other even while going to the washrooms was very common to the extent that some of us even took bath together. With all the great time with friends I had to struggle with maths excessively. I never understood these things and my tiny bird brain had a hard time comprehending and not to mention I still have a hard time purchasing things. I struggled with it till my tenth pre-boards. And my poor maths teacher found all the time in his life to teach us maths and make us pass. It was only because of his hard work that none of us had to cry after the D-day. An amazing man who didn’t care where he was, sitting in the field or library or classroom if he saw us, maths book conjured from nowhere and he would start off. Coincidentally his son was born when we were in 10^th and we even suggested names for his son and he liked one of them and named him after our suggestion “Aryan”.

Its been four and half years since I left the school yet nostalgia haunts me as my friends Shivani, Swati, Juhi, Poonam, Annalia, Divyalina and Bhavna made my life there an unforgettable phase.

As I look back and remember the times I spent with them and flip my slam where they scribbled before I embarked on a journey beyond the seven sisters I can't help regretting not being able to complete my schooling there.