My high school
I went to a Catholic school as a kid. It was a sprawling campus: tall white buildings housing classrooms from grades 6–12, with a statue of St. Francis of Assisi, forever blessing us on the top floor, and an open area that served as the meeting point for assemblies in the morning. Walk a few steps to the right of the open area, and you would be standing on the huge playground that pleased both cricket and football players alike.
In one corner of the playground, there was a basketball court with two nets. In the 90s and early 2000s, with the nation in a frenzy of cricket, basketball seemed to be an alien sport. Sure, there were the occasional basketball games that teachers played with students, but we mostly used the basketball court to sit and watch the cricket matches. The sun would be beating down on the court, and we would be consumed with the excitement of the ongoing matches. The playground itself wasn’t anything extraordinary: two goalposts-one at each end of the playground, with clumps of grasses and vegetation growing at the edge, and a 22-yard cricket pitch right in the middle of the ground. Where the playground ended, there were huge red stairs that served as the sitting area when inter-school cricket matches were in progress. I have mixed memories of the playground. While I was in Standard 10, we defeated Standard 12 in the cricket finals. I remember the day fondly: it had started out as a cloudy day, and we had batted first, setting a competitive total. Their chase had started out well, floundered in the middle overs, and we had a thrilling finish that we won after a stumping on the final delivery. It had been the first time that a junior grade had defeated a senior grade. As we celebrated in the humid weather, our shirts soaked, we felt like we had achieved the world, and that nothing could stop us.
Only a couple of years before, I had been on the losing side, and people had blamed me for the loss, since I had wasted a lot of deliveries, without scoring a run. In their eyes, it had been deliberate on my part, somehow. I remember walking into the class the next day, and my teammates booing me. It was my first encounter with shame. It was a visceral experience in that I felt I had shrunk in size, somehow. Incidents like those stay with you, and you carry them with you wherever you go.
Not all of it involved shame though. When I was in 10th grade, I represented my school at the first International Young Mathematicians Convention(IYMC) held in Lucknow, India. We were a group of 3 students chosen from the batch of 100, and we were up against the best math students in the world. We fared pretty well — ended up winning gold and silver medals. But what sticks out in my memory to this day is this: The three of us had a love for math, and we did the best we could, in the process, enjoying as much as we could. When we returned to our schools, the principal of our school honored us at the morning assembly. It felt special.
A typical day at the school began with an assembly in the morning. The assembly involved students of all grades gathering in the area in front of the dais on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Students of each class stood in a perfect queue. If one took an aerial view of the standing students, they would look like a perfect matrix. Once everyone had taken their positions on the ground, the morning prayer would begin. The prayer choir consisted of female students who had a penchant for singing. I often wondered why there was not a single male in the choir group. With all the students singing in unison, it felt like we were praying for the well-being of the entire city. For each assembly, the different classes took turns conducting it. There was room for creativity, albeit more often than not, the assemblies followed a similar pattern: Prayer, followed by news stories of the country and the world, followed by a quick update on the happenings in and around school, which was then followed by the Principal of the school addressing the students. The assembly concluded with someone reading the pledge of the nation, and the students repeating the pledge after him or her. Back then, it just seemed like an everyday affair. It’s been years since I attended the last assembly at the school, and now I yearn to be a part of one of those. Time has a funny way of coloring things. I wish I understood this then and appreciated it much more than I did.
The teachers are an integral part of the school, and I was fortunate to have met some of the best teachers, who not only taught us the subjects that they were supposed to but also imparted life-learnings to us at a delicate age. The Principal, or Father as we used to call him, taught us drama. Approaching Julius Caesar seemed daunting, but with his gesticulation and sterling vocabulary, I could easily lose myself in the streets of Rome. I now realize that it was back then that the seeds of my appreciation for literature had been sown. It took me some time to warm up to poetry and prose, but once I had warmed up to them, I let my imagination run wild. I would question everything that I read, not only in the classes but also while writing exams. Geography, History, Maths, Hindi, Sanskrit — all the classes had an element of wonder to them, that kept the curiosity alive.
While I am forever indebted to most of my teachers at the school, I had quite a few unpleasant experiences with a few teachers as well. One such incident sticks out in memory. I was in the 5th grade, standing and reading from a book, as was customary for a 5th grader back then. The teacher suddenly spotted someone talking, and in a fit of rage, slapped the student multiple times. I was taken aback by what had just transpired, and hence I stopped reading to take stock of what had happened. Enraged further by my pause, the teacher walked up to me and slapped me multiple times as well. Tears started flowing down my face, and I sat down, crying. Why would a teacher hit a student ever escapes me, and to this day, I have no respect for that teacher. Teachers can be firm at times, I understand. But no teacher should ever hit a student, however hideous their behavior is.
High school was a time when I learned a lot — discipline, saying yes to things, saying no to things, teamwork — besides just what was in the textbooks. I was fortunate to have received the best education that I could get. The few friends that I made, were for life. We still talk at times and reminisce about the days gone by, and for a fleeting moment(and sometimes more), everything seems to come alive. We are back to it all began.
