Daddy's school life

It was one of those days when one decides to do something different. And the 'great idea' struck me towards the end of my morning walk. I decided to invite my elder son to join me for my final lap of the day. In fact, let me put it this way ... among the multiple reach-out-to-engage-him activities I have been having with him, to get ready for his fast approaching teenage years, and of course instigated (rather, instructed) by Missus to do so, spiced up with statements like "If you don't 'connect' with him now, what will happen during his teenage?", I asked him if he would like to join me for one round around the apartment. Even if he hesitatingly agreed to join me, we had a brief stroll of say 30 minutes. Among other things, we ended up going down my memory lane where I gave him a glimpse of my schooling journey of 15 years.

 

Photo by Markus Spiske from Pexels

Since my father worked his entire professional life in a transferable job, it was imperative that my count of cities and schools would not be limited to a small, single-digit number like many of the privileged folks around me have had. As a matter of fact, my schooling life took me to 5 cities, 6 transfers and 10 schools.

Here are some more fun facts about my schooling days:

• My stays at a single school have ranged from just about 5 months (yes, unbelievable to a few folks I have told about it) to a maximum of 3 years.
• There was a particular span when I attended 3 different schools in 3 different cities over a period of 10 months.
• The classes I have been a part of ranged from a size of 2 students to 60 students.
• My schools have been housed in a first-floor flat of 600 sq. ft. area to a 49 acres campus.
• I have studied in a school which was established in the year 1892, and was also a part of the founding batch of a school established in the year 1981.
• I have attended a school which had the word "mandir" in its name, and at least a couple of schools having a church on campus.
• The modes of transport I used throughout my schooling life include my own cycle, the maid's husband's cycle (with me sitting on the horizontal rod in front, and my sister sitting as pillion), a horse-drawn tonga, my dad's scooter, school bus and of course all the way on foot.

While I have continued to share many anecdotes of my schooling life with him, a few specifics of a particular school that stand out (and instigated an are-you-kidding-me reaction from him) merit a special mention here just because the two years I spent in that school will always remain etched in my memory.

Photo by Dids from Pexels

• The school was 1 of the only English 2 medium schools in the district head-quarters we were staying in. The other school didn't cover education for my class.
• The school had 2 buildings - 1 for classes from Nursery to 3rd / 4th Standard, and the other, around a km down, where remaining classes were conducted in a 3-room flat.
• Other 'facilities' in the second building included a TV Training Institute on the same floor, and a Government office on the ground floor.
• I was 1 of the only 2 students in my class, and hence we shared the 'classroom' with another class across the partition, and an office table for the administrator.
• My 'class' was a Maruti Van seat, with the teacher sitting right across the long desk, just about 15 inches away from us, and of course no black-board.
• We were upset that our class strength went down by 33%, from 3 to 2, in the middle of the academic year, and then were delighted that it increased by 100% the following year.
• When all 4 of us used to be present on the same day, it used to be a logistical nightmare - most of those days, we got a "self-study", which we used to convert into "group-study", spent sprawled across the slides in the adjacent public park.
• The commendable part of the school was that our previous batch, having 5 students in Standard 8th, had as many as 3 merit holders at the state level.

P.S: To bloat the number of schools, I have taken the liberty of counting 1 school twice where I joined back after a gap of seven years. And have also counted another school twice which actually went through a name-change and an address-change while I was still a student. Mercifully, the school which changed its board affiliation from state board to C.B.S.E while I was a student has been counted just once 😈. The number also excludes the "engineering school" and the "business school" I attended. The other exclusion - When I was pursuing my engineering studies and later on my management studies, my father added 2 more new cities, with 3 more transfers in the list.