By Ananya S Guha
I can think of many things of the past, but what remains etched is the school.
The school was something in which there were the cross currents of life. There was friendship, there was love- hate, there were the teachers’ favoritism, there were squabbles, there were teachers I disliked, there were teachers I loved and revered. There were bullies, there were the docile guys. There were garrulous chaps, there were some who seemed to revel in silence. There were the heroes and sportsmen; there were the actors and the singers.
I was very weak in Maths and this weakness was rubbed in by some. Maths became a phobia, literature a friend. But there were the play fields a metaphor crowded with boys and memories. Three of them: Seniors, Middles and Juniors.
Close by was the hand ball court. The school corridor enlivened life during the rainy season, as the hills of Shillong, rain washed took time to revert to the brilliant sunshine. The rains made play fields a quagmire, marshy wet, where kicking the football or wielding the hockey stick was burdensome. But then there were movies on Wednesdays, where we sitting in rows capitulated to dreams and laughter.
The school was a home, which housed our grimy thoughts, and pranks. We shared chocolates and secrets, took part on Sports Day with untrammeled pride, and sang the School Anthem with gusto. The day of the Annual Concert came. If sports was not the forte of some, histrionics was! The Thespians acted their guts out.
And many years later this same school that I studied in, produced the likes of an actor such as Victor Banerjee. The school hall was the centre of uproarious activity: table tennis, recitation, movies and the annual concert, preceded by months of intense practice.
I surrender to these dreams of the past – which are now remnants of an arcane past, which can only surface in wish fulfillment, if it comes back after all? Then, how would I capture it? The dreadful Alsatian who ruined our happiness also erupts into such wishful thinking. I wish now, that she were alive!