Wednesday, April 11, 2012

I never believed that school was something special..until..it was Over.

While reading a paragraph about Deforestation and Climate Change which mentioned again and again the cutting of trees to make wood and rubber etc, mainly the word wood again and again i recalled school days, somehow. Then i recalled the occasional basketball (rubber) i played in school on the free days we were given in 10th when the BOARDS were approaching. Ideally we were supposed to sit at home and study, but I think we had studied enough, my sister and I, or so our teachers said. We went to school on those free days and just played, especially if that day had a PT period.

That took me back to one particular year where, in 9th or 10th, the girls of our class got an absurd idea to play Football, now our school used to make us learn the basics of every sport, being an army school and all, but to carry it forward is totally your initiative because it didn't have many teams for many sports. So the girls of our class decided to play Football, strangely those were the monsoon days! Now some people take me to be very ordered and *sophisticated* (yes someone used this word!) but let me tell you, playing football without any rules in monsoon was neither ordered nor sophisticated, i mean we got all our white skirts brown and soaked and our white socks and shoes too. But one thing it definitely was, it was real fun!
Oh! i remember, we started playing football because we couldn't play Tennis anymore 'cause the court was all wet and the ball wouldn't bounce and all. Yea! It was a nice change to play football. And trust me it's coming from a girl who is zero percent 'sporty'!

This also takes me back to or should i say farther to days when i used to doze off in class. Two things can never be as much fun in college as they were in school:
1. Bunking.
2. Sleeping in class.
In college, everyone bunks and it's like you're allowed to do it, hence it loses all its charm. Not to mention there is no assembly you can bunk. And sleeping in class, well that's an activity and don't really remember how to do because if am sleepy i'd rather just miss the class and be in bed and live in my dreams rather than attending class and wandering off to a dreamy woodland, a woodland not a forest but the amazing warm wooden desk that my college lacks.

First you try to stay awake, then you try to keep your eyes open as long as you possibly can, then you just cup your hands and put your chin in and pray that the teacher doesn't make eye contact, then when everything fails you put your head down on that desk which initially has a different temperature than yours but soon becomes cosy. At first you listen to the weird sounds that come through it and imagine your ear on a railway track hearing a train approaching but slowly and gradually that train of thought leads you to a wonderland where you can just relax, the weather becomes just fine, the noises shut off and if you are lucky you step into an amazing world of beautiful dreams. 

This happened to me all the time in Mogambo's (our Physic's teacher) class, until ofcourse i started bunking on the false pretext of Farewell Preparation, though i was kind of involved in it... Anyway, the beautiful slumber that you enjoy in Mogambo's class is one of it's kind. With his strong baritone working as a gentle lullaby and the *weather* coming and touching your exposed cheek as the other heats up next to the warm wooden bench..awesome.

Oh and the most amazing thing was to run each day after school was over and before the buses took off to get that one bar of lick-lolly when you knew that by that time in those summer days no-one would have any water left in their bottles, if they carried one that is.
Monsoon and winters in school were again a story by themselves. Stay tuned for them, they might be Coming Soon.. :)

PS. Mogambo Sir used to call the AIR, weather hence the above usage.