I was recently added to my batch’s closed facebook group “SVCS 2005″ by Satya. Usually, I un-join groups as soon as I am added to them because of all the clutter and awkward social interaction but I think I got biased by papa’s excitement about the fb group of his b-tech batch this time.

In a particular thread my friends teased Vicky Barik of being a “HOLY CHILD”. Well this has nothing to do with his religion / beliefs. Its the name of the school he went to before joining St. Vincent’s. I was also a student of HOLY CHILD. It was a small school with very few students in a class. I could then count the ones in my class on fingers.

I remember waking up really early and getting ready for school. I had absolutely no sense of time then (or now ;-)). Although I had learnt most of it, most of the times mumma would end up brushing my teeth or combing my hair, polishing my shoes or dressing me up. Laces were just damn difficult! I was fascinated and intimidated by them.

Then I remember Ansari, our rickshaw waala bhaiya. He was one smelly guy! I wonder if the present me would smell/stink more than him… He was a very happy person. He would talk to us about his life, race other rickshaw waalas on the way and crack all sorts of jokes with us. Those rides were perhaps one of the most fun times of my daily routine. I have not heard from him in years. IIRC he promoted himself to become a trolley waala soon after we left the school.

We used to wear red pull overs to school and I loved pulling out the sweater pills. In almost all winter classes when the teacher would be busy teaching, I would be busy pulling out little strands or pills from the sweater. Perhaps I always had my own little world in my mind in which everything had a completely different priority order from the real world which changed very frequently. As Sir Ken Robinson puts it “I think now they’d say its ADHD…” “but ADHD hadn’t been invented. It wasn’t in an available condition. People weren’t aware they could have that”

I remember a test in which we had to write some of the alphabets. I could not figure out that Q was the letter after P. I think I wrote i as Piyush definitely has an i after the P. Perhaps I wasn’t even aware of the existence of an alphabetical order, let alone the possibility of one alphabet preceding another…

I faced my first bully, Sonali Khatua in HOLY CHILD too. What’s worse is that she was my next door neighbor and was the grand daughter of the house owner (we lived in a rented house). Her mother perhaps deserves a separate post for herself. On one occasion, Sona(as we affectionately called her) had scratched my cheeks in school and I could not do enough damage (yeah I am a wuss from birth). When I reached home, my cheeks were bleeding and her mother was on our doorstep howling on me and my mum accusing me of having beaten her up. I would go as far as calling this as a perfect mini-preview of Indian mother child relation ;-). Mumma was perhaps the reason I never actually learned fighting (read: became a wuss). She’d always stop me and discourage fighting. But on this occasion it was too much for her too. Like a typical hindi movie hero, she was swayed by the blood and fought with her mother for me. That was perhaps one of the first times I remember having felt proud and protected.

I think the last clear memory I have from HOLY CHILD is of the day we passed out. I had somehow managed to stand second in class. I had no idea what being second in a class or what competition meant. I hadn’t actually realized anything worth noticing had happened on that date till I saw my mumma.
I gave the thing wrapped in a yellow paper to her. It was my prize(a katori, lol). That was the first time I remember realizing that she could bring up an emotion other than the frown on her face for me. I had no idea if it was good or bad. I could barely make sense of facial emotions other than those of anger (which were pretty obvious because of the accompanied beating or yelling).
That little katori had caused a smile on her face. It took me a few more years to understand that it was me who had done the magic…
Looking back I think it was one of the most beautiful times of my childhood with her. That is what you get when you go to a low-competition few-students school ;-)