Well, of course it’s a real common practice to term those dreadful days as ‘the best days of your lives’ by nearly everyone… but the truth lying skin-deep of the matter is that if you are someone who genuinely enjoyed school and is proud to proclaim so is either one of those annoying jocks that didn’t get the ‘Shut up, you suck!’ looks of the ‘normal people’, or you were one of those ‘famous cheerleader’ thingies ‘which’ hang around in groups pretending the rest of the school was invisible! Well, it could happen that you were one of the ‘dreamers’ or the ‘happy-go-lucky’ types who didn’t really care about ‘anything’. The classes were a portal for you to drift into your ‘Mills & Boons’, ‘Middle Earth’ or ‘Fifth Dimension’ elseworlds and it is therefore no surprise you find those carefree days the ‘best ones’ of your lives.
But you see, for the rest of us, those of us who like to term ourselves ‘normal’… but probably aren’t… NEVER enjoyed school! Well, maybe ‘never’ is too harsh a word but fact is, when we look back at those days, there is this feeling of ‘Oh! Those were some days…’ but would we give anything to return to those good ol’ days? Oh no! Hell no!Getting up at a particular time of the day, brushing your teeth, going to the toilet (what about those constipated days? Won’t the guys and girls laugh if I spend a little extra time in the school toilet?), have breakfast (should I eat light? I so like that girl in my class… Wonder if she even notices me! She won’t till I lose some weight!), brushing the hair (Mom put so much oil in my hair last night… I simply can’t straighten it! My friends will laugh…), dressing for school: even when those are simple school uniforms, like in our part of the globe, you gotta take care of those dirty shoes which could land yourself in detention in no time; or that stupid tie that refuses to look like the one in that cool ad with that guy-in-the-suit and his blond bimbo! Life is so complicated…
And one of the most complicated parts of this immensely complicated life is the ‘friends’. Now, the definition of ‘friends’ change as we grow, but back in school, friend is anything you sit with, chat with, share your tiffin with, exchange notes with, gossip with, crack lewd jokes with… which basically constitutes more than half the class. And these ‘friends’ are what makes you feel so ‘incomplete’ and ‘weird’ day in and day out! Like that one time when I was 14 or something, I had been reading a comic book in class and one guy came up to me and said, ‘Dude, you ‘still’ read comics? Get a LIFE!’ I was too embarrassed to point out to the guy that ‘I haven’t taken up smoking like you have! The first thing I notice about a girl is NOT her boobs; and just for the record, I don’t get grades as low as yours!’ But then, in the hierarchical chain of things, he was somewhat (way) above me and that meant it was mandatory for him to demean the likes of ‘us’ once in a while!
But yeah sure, ALL the friends weren’t like that! And we do carry those ‘not-like-that friends’ forward later into our lives… resulting in that clichéd, partially true expression, ‘Friends in school are made for life…’ or was that expression for colleges… maybe for old-age homes… sorry, bad memory! Thing is, those ‘friends for lives’ are very few indeed, when you tally that figure with the number of ‘friends’ you had in school!
Tyrannical teachers… critical classmates… fickle friends… engulfing egos… I can’t deny the list becomes way longer as you grow up and leave school, but then you start to detach yourselves from those ‘things that don’t matter’ and concentrate primarily on matters considered more ‘pressing’. Like seriously, who gives a damn if the cutest girl in class ignores you in college? You go for other classes, other departments, hell even other colleges! But while in school, it’s like if ‘so-and-so’ doesn’t fall for me, I’m gonna die for sure!
Anyways, I think I have digressed long enough, now let’s return to my dream! To tell you the truth, this dream was pretty dull actually! It had me talking to some friends… attending some classes perhaps… nothing extraordinary or something that I should remember! I don’t even know why I called it a ‘bad dream’ in the first place coz I didn’t see any ghosts, scary teachers or ex-… oh well, maybe I did see an ‘unlit old flame’ or two! But in any case, it may not have been noteworthy, but it wasn’t a bad dream either… and the feeling I had the next morning was not one of regret or bitter taste that generally those K-serials have the knack of leaving. It was somewhat nostalgic! And for an hour or so, I was regretting going to college and wished I could dress up in that stupid (uniforms are basically stupid) maroon and weird-cream uniform, board a trademark hand-rickshaw and slowly make my way past the serene sights of Golf Gardens to my old school.
Yes, I am glad school life’s over… I like to move on in life. I know for a fact that I’ll be the least perturbed when my classmates in college indulge in bidding a tearful adieu a few months hence… even though I’m loving nearly every second of college life. But when we look back at it all, even with all the ups and downs, it’s probably better to remember the good things school brought. Those nice teachers, so different from the grumpy ones… those little games of ‘hangman’ (it’s a word-game, don’t get the wrong idea) or carom that we used to play bunking classes (I wasn’t much of a bunker… but you don’t need to know that!)… discussing about ‘women’ (yup, I shamelessly sugarcoated it!)… getting into friendly feuds… (sometimes) standing up for the ‘real’ friends… school taught us a lot!
But back to school??
Well, I won’t mind having that dream (nightmare) one more time!
But ONLY if it ends in the morning!
Signing Off,
Nostalgic, you say??
-Jagannath (Jesse)
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