MY SCHOOL DAYS...(wrote this one in first yr..galat angrezi ke liye maafi chahunga...)

“Do you like your school days?”….if asked from a school going boy/gal, the answer to this question will be and should be “NO”.
But if you ask the same question from a college student like me what’ll be the answer??? No points for guessing guys, the obvious answer will be “YES, YUP, YEAH!!!” and why not, it is human tendency to value time and things when they are gone. So after getting in college I cherish and miss my school days and want the time to turn back…….
I completed the 15 years of my schooling in 5 different schools and the last 2 were my favorite. I did my nursery and kindergarten in a small school “St. Mamu Public School” which was near our house in Hisar….let me tell you one thing. Though I wasn’t able to crack IIT or even NIT, I dare say that I was a brilliant student in my school time. Above 95%, getting 1st or 2nd position in class and mostly my competitors used to be girls!! And we used to fight like anything!! Over even half marks. We shifted to Faridabad and I went to Gita Convent School where I did my 1st and 2nd. I don’t remember much about that time but I got my first academic scholarship there by scoring highest %age in all the 8 sections of 1st and 2nd and got Rs 600/- scholarship twice(though the greedy school authority didn’t give the 2nd one as I changed the school in 3rd std). …then I joined St. Albans Fbd. I spent 2yrs there and took part in various extra curricular activities also. My closest competitor was a Rajasthani girl and we used to hate each other and always wanted to dominate (I recon she was very pretty though…but this is the verdict of an 18yrs old guy and not a small kid of 3rd std). After that we came to Kurukshetra, where the best part of my schooling starts….
My house was in sector-7 and the nearby school was “Greenfield Public School”. It was a new a school as it was its 2nd year. Though now it is one of the best schools in the city, that time it was only up to class 7. I was admitted there in class 5 by a mock interview.
FIRST DAY IN NEW SCHOOL….
My school was at walking distance from my place and I remember my mother came along to drop me. It was a small class where hardly 10students could sit, and that’s because there were only 7 students in that class last year and I was the 8th one….5 boys and 3 girls. I used to laugh at this small strength as earlier I used to study in a class of 35-40 students but now I think it was due to this small strength that we enjoyed a lot there and teachers used to give special attention to each and every student…..coming back to the story….. I entered that small and empty classroom and put my bag on a desk when I was startled by a voice ”That row is for girls dude” I tried to hide my embarrassment and put my bag in the other row and turned back to meet my first friend in the new school-“Vipul”. He introduced me to rest of my 6 classmates- Ankur, Karan, Manmeet, Priyanka, Swati and Shrutika. The last two are still my classmates in UIET. We all gathered for the morning assembly. After prayers I was shocked to find that some roll no’s were being called on stage and mine was there too….I went on the stage with a trembling heart and found that all these students had to speak something on the mike. A 5th grade student came to know the real meaning of stage fear for the first time. I recited a poem on the microphone with a semi confident approach. But when I heard the applause from everyone including teachers and Principal, I felt relieved and my stage fear was gone forever. Later in 4 yrs till I stayed in that school, stage became a 2nd classroom for me….speaking daily news and thoughts, quizzes, debates, declamations and a lot more. I even conducted the stage for school’s annual function and that was a memorable experience. Coming back to academics, here also my competitors were girls (I think girls don’t have anything to do but study and study and create problems for ‘Abhinav’). So Priyanka, Swati and Shrutika all of them were fierce competitors and we always had a quarrel whenever the class tests or terminal answer sheets were distributed. We were more interested in deducting other person’s marks rather than looking into our own answer sheets. But that was fun and we have a great laugh whenever we remember that time. Smriti, Isha, Garima were the new names added to the list as we went to 6th,7th&8th std. me and other boys used to enjoy a lot in making fun of girls in class or during skating classes. We did participate in various cultural programs which were presented in the school functions and even in ‘Dronacharya’ stadium during 15th august and 26th January. I was a part of the ‘Jhanki’ competition on 26th January when our school won the consecutive 3yr running trophy. Coming to extra curricular activities like painting, craft, chart making, quizzes etc I won various prizes at school and district level.
Now a Funny Incident
One day some girls told me that another girl of my class had a crush on me. I was very annoyed with her and felt a bit tensed and shameful that whole week (gosh!! How idiot I was that time…..but kids are kids, they always have problem with girls). I didn’t talk with that gal till they assured me that there is nothing like that in her mind now. (Gosh that gal is now in Jaipur and both of us haven’t talked about that incident since that day. There’s a saying that opportunities are never lost, someone else grabs them and I think she is quite happy with her mate now)Anyways life moves on…..till 8th std. my competitors did a hell lot of efforts to come 1st in class but it was always me who won the race. I remember how my mom used to take a box of sweets to school before even knowing the result…those 4yrs were the best of my school life.
As Gita Niketan was considered to be the best school for 9th onwards so I took admission there. And the first day in this school too was amazing. From a normal so called English medium school, I entered into a school of Indian culture. There was a ‘hawan’ for the new students after the assembly which had 2 ‘Sanskrit’ prayers. (For all international readers, hawan is a ritual in India where we sit around fire and pray while putting some holy material in the fire) And it took me some time to adjust with the language for e.g. - ‘Savdhan-Vishram’ instead of ‘Stand at ease-Attention’ and ‘Bhaiya-Bahen’ for ‘boys and gals’. But I was lucky to know more about Indian culture in last 4yrs of my schooling.
Man!!!!! Again I went off track…coming back to the 1st day….during ‘hawan’ I met several students who told me that all the top rankers are admitted in 9th c and as I got a major 98% in 8th std so I was sure to get ‘C’ section. But I found my name in section ‘B’ which was a hostler section and was reserved for boys as hostlers were considered as the most notorious students. Thus my academic competition with girls ended in 9th and continued till 12thstd. There were just 4 day scholars including me in that section. We were frightened as the hostlers were unfriendly in the starting. We gave an application to Principal for changing our sections but were told that they had equally divided the top rankers in all 4 sections. So we should try to adjust and thank god we didn’t change the section as after 2-3 days all the hostlers became my friends and we enjoyed a lot during 9th and 10th std.
Once me and my friend were caught making moustaches in a girl’s photograph published in school magazine during social studies period. We were taken to headmistress’s office and I tell you that was a horrible experience. It was a small room where hardly 3 persons could sit but as ‘apna to bad luck hi kharab hai’ (due to my bad luck) that day almost all the lady teachers were sitting there and giving nasty looks to two new and innocent students….one teacher had seen me conducting stage on annual function in previous school as the whole program was live telecasted on the local cable channel. She said ‘I didn’t expect such thing from you’…and tears ran from my eyes…
After that I didn’t get indulged in any such incident. But that doesn’t mean I stopped having fun…we used to eat our lunch sitting on the last bench just before the recess when our English teacher was teaching literature.
Achievement- I used to have extra classes in hostel for the HTSE exam, and that too was an interesting phase of my school life. We used to have classes till 7:30 in the evening during winters ant it was really dark when I reached home by 8. But all the hard work paid as I cleared HTSE and NTSE and now I am an NTSE scholar. (NTSE-National Talent Search Examination). I went to Chattisgarh for attending the national level vidya bharti quiz competition with my team after winning the state and north zone at Rohtak and New Delhi respectively. We had a great time there but unfortunately we lost and came 4th. Still we managed to sneak through the teachers and went for ‘Harry Potter and the goblet of fire’ without being noticed by teachers and girls. And our journey back to Kurukshetra too was amazing. ’36 hours in the general compartment of a train’. Man it was a horrible experience!!!! I got 93% and 88% marks in 10th and 12th board exams respectively……
There were several more interesting things in my school life but it’s not possible to pen down each and every incident of the 15 most important years of your life!!!! So I stop writing here…..
I hope I was able to take you back to your school days…..


Abhinav Vashisht