The Best of School Days – Part III

Hmm so we went into our XIIth. Our classes started about 2 weeks earlier than the others. It was supposed to be some bridge course type of thing. What I do remember is that, we were in the 10^th std wing. Most of the times; the teachers didn’t come. Some of us spent the time reading the books and making notes. The others had a good time catching up with what was done in the holidays. I must say that those days I was more of a bookworm and couldn’t relate that much with others. It was just study hard, play harder. The times I spent in the playground were to me – a great pressure release mechanism. The games didn’t change much. It was the same old football, volleyball and at times cricket.

Somewhere as we were approaching our quarterly, we faced a mini crisis like scenario. Our Jaggu sir had left. One compsci teacher had left. We didn’t have any Part B teacher. Mohana mam had left too. So that left us with Malathi mam, Naseem mam and matilda mam. We were stretched thin. Somehow the management could get Jaggu sir to have post school classes for us. Pakki was my partner in dreams. The dream of somehow trying to get as close to 500 as possible. Around that time, the Sydney Olympics happened. Marion Jones was vying was 5 Golds. She was my role model then.

Major events that I remember are – our Culturals (we had it this time in TNagar), our sports games and the times spent trying to write some programs or the other. It was while writing programs that I got a first hand experience of witnessing the most brilliant guy in our batch – Mbalaji. In fact I guess most would agree that in our batch he was the whiz kid. And our CSC lab was a second home for him. There were few more geniuses in our midst. A lazy genius who was Sona. A very helpful and modest one who was Rbalaji and an eccentric one who was Santosh Yadav. The breaks were spent with Vaishali and the lunch hour was spent with our luncheon gang – Kalaiarasi, Abi, Deepa, Anandi, Vidhyashankar, Buddi, Vyas and Bhandari. Fri, Sat and Sunday were the days of IIT coaching class. Boring..but had to be tolerated. Midway through I stopped going to those classes.

Somewhere around Dusshera, Sushma came home to spend a month with us. It was one fun filled month. Both of us used to wake up at 4am, make tea and try to study. By 4.30 (having drunk the tea) both of us would be snoring again only to woken up by appa around 6.30. She used to accompany me at times to Jaggu sir’s class and to Sugandha mam’s class. She was a favorite of thaatha and amma.

Quarterly became Half-yearly. Then we had our pre-board stuff and finally we had our study leave just before our Boards. Exams went on decently, though not as good as I would have wanted to. Marion atleast won 3 golds. I couldn’t get even one. The exam that will be etched in my memory is Chemistry. The only reason is because the day before the exam (Or 2 days before – not sure) was the day that VVS and Dravid had that epic day in Kolkata. Buddi and myself were supposed to be studying at that time. Supposed to be!!!

Hmm, so the Korattur gang finished our Boards in various schools. And then we wrote our TNPCEE. That evening when we finished those exams, it happened. Almost as if everyone of us were connecting telepathically. We all with a call or a nod or a shout, congregated near Tony’s house. And played cricket through the evening. It was the first time the entire Korattur gang played cricket after our Xth. Post this till our counseling was over, it was writing one exam after the other (for most of the junta) and visiting one friend’s home after the other (for the others like us). And so, the most important year of our life was over. Some of us went on to study engineering, some to BSC, BCom & CA and some to become Doctors. It was a motley bunch – our batch, spanning right from my 2^nd to our XIIth. A wonderful part of my life it was.