The best of School Days – Part II

So I decided to be in the same school for my 11^th and 12^th.Why? More out of laziness (the school was hardly a minute walk from my house) and the comfort level I had with my friends and teachers.

The first day in school (regardless of which std you are in) is always a nice ‘butterfly in the stomach’ kind of thing. Coming to know who all are there in your class, who is your assigned teacher, what is your timetable – it is a nice feeling. Our XIth was even more special, because you knew 2 things were bound to happen – an influx of new students…and seeing the old guards once again. It was the ‘getting to know who amongst the old guards are still there’ part which was most exciting. Looking back at my school days – my XIth and XIIth brought me closer to some guys and gals with whom I had hardly had a working relation before. I am thankful for that experience.

Ok, so who all did I find?

Old Guards – Shreenath, Vidhyashankar, MBalaji, RBalaji, Prasanna, Kishore, Bhandari, Kalaiarasi, Deepa, Anandhi, Leela, Saraswati, Pratap, KP Vikram, Naresh, Buddi, Sowmya, Srividhya, Rajalakshmi, Vijayalakshmi, VimalaDevi, Subhashree, Ashish.

New Entries – Deepak Paul, Vyas, Rahul, Abirami, Sameer (he left in a yr), Johnny, Sushil, Sushindro, Pratik, Pranita, Sona, Bhagat, Anand Rao, Siddarth, Kishen, Anil, Santosh, Suresh, Benzin, Amin.

I will add on others as I remember them (am getting old you see)

Our class teacher was Latha ma’m. English – Sarah and Matilda mam. Math – Premlatha, Malathi, Arul Selvam. Chem – Jagganathan, Phy – Naseem, Bio – Mohana mam. CSc – Vijayalakshmi mam. There were few more teachers – some who came..saw our pack and left the school too.

The maths thing had a fixed and a variable component to it. A part A which was common to all. And a part B & C which was an option. I chose for part B. There were few more of us – Mbalaji, Santosh, Bhagat, Sona and Benzin.

Maybe it was because of reduced numbers – but we got along well with everybody, both out of necessity and out of our own volition.

While in our 11^th – our 12^th bunch was a fun gang to be with. In fact through out my school life I have had it easier with my seniors than my juniors.

There was Meks and by association with her – Srilatha, Vinitha, Angeline, Jayanti, Meenakshi, Sujatha, Sowmya, Ashwini and Josephita. Then there were Sabitri, Shraddha, Shailaja, Sunita and Sudha. Then came our Prakash, Vasu, Soma, Eeku, Adarsh, Ganesh and co. And then our masti gang – Suresh, Bipen, Rajesh, Nabin, Nischal, Sumit, Rishi, Jogendro, Jenon, Ajay, Santosh, Biswas (he was my saviour whenever I tore my pants), Brajendra, Neeraj, Biman and others.

We use to go to school in the near abouts of 8am and loiter around our class and the 12^th one chit chatting with people. 8.20 we went down for our prayers and came back by 9. at 10.20 I used to go to our 12^th to have a chat with them (incidentally I never used to speak with Meks in school. If at all I spoke, only to pull her legs). Key events in our 11^th were – Our culturals, our project (2 dramas to boot and an ignominious tamil speakings), a founders day drama on Buddha for which in the last week I fell ill, our sports day – in the run up to our sports day, we had hello of a fun in our volleyball matches and yes….our TNCA cricket match in which we fared better than our 9^th std attempt.

Most of the times in our 11^th, we didn’t have classes since either the teachers weren’t there or plainly we didn’t want to have a class. So we use to tell Chari ma’m and then go to Games room to take up volleyball and go to play. There was one instance during the board exams of our 12^th batch. They made us sit in the reading room besides the library and asked us to keep quiet since the practical was goin on and the external examiners were there. Quietness and our batch is something of an oxymoron. So then they made us walk down and sit in the stage (supposed to be a punishment). But our enjoyment in the stage resulted in more noise than it was in the reading room. I guess, then we were given a mega dosing down. But what the heck…fun it was.

Around that time, I guess HDDCS movie hit the screen. I loved whistling the title song while I was climbing up the stairs of our school. We formed a dumb charades team – Adarsh, Jogin and myself. 1^st two competitions we went, we flopped big time. Then we formulated our own ways and voila..we started (well..not winning)…making it to the stage level of the contest J. DAV Culturals and PSBB culfest used to be our main hunting grounds for enjoyment. If you were in BVS 11^th, you HAD to go there.

Evening times at school was spent playing volleyball with our hostel guys. Rishi, Khambu and Ajay were the masters of spiking. Amin was a expert booster. Naresh as always was the all-in-all. However in my opinion, the best I have seen in volleyball amongst our guys must be – Bijesh Sah and Bijay Mahato (thank you Ananth for helping me remember their names). They were such a cool customers; Bijesh moved so effortlessly, you would always be thinking there is no way he would get to the ball and still he used to do it. Bijay Mahato was a class. There used to be a radius around him which none in his team cared to enter, coz Bijay was prowling there and it was literally impossible that he miss any ball in his territory.

While in our 11^th, we had this match with our 9^th guys. We outplayed them completely that we didn’t deem it fit that we play the remaining matches (it was best of 3).

Though I want to say, it was not all about play in 11^th; truth is..it was. Of course there was this IIT coaching which we went to – Vidhya, Srini, Buddi, myself, SBalaji, MBalaji, Srik, Marla and co to SBOA school. What I remember most about those classes are; our times spent in nearby restaurant on Sundays and the vaer-kadalai shop near the bus stop in Anna Nagar. So much for our ‘IIT Coaching’

We gave our 12^th guys a good farewell. Johnny enthralled the audience with a very rubbery dance. We went about our studies and then entered our XIIth, which we heard everyone say is the most important year of our lives.