Had a busy long weekend….for a change
Actually made an impulsive decision to come home to Kolkata. A meeting that was scheduled for 25th and 26th got cancelled at the last moment, so decided to check the air fares…I got something that I found viable enough to take the plunge…..and then asked boss…..(this is the most difficult and important part of a leave decision, however short!!!!), and he was OK !!!! So didn’t waste any more time and got the tickets. And here I am…..at home sweet home 
And then there were 2 occasions for family get-togethers, during the long weekend itself, one of my mother’s side and one of my father’s side…..2 traditional Bengali lunches, meeting lot of relatives, overall it was pretty good barring one persistent uncomfortable question which comes up oh-so-often in such gatherings for which unfortunately I do not have any answer 
So that’s about this weekend…………time to go back into flashback mode, unraveling the myriad colours of my past, my journey of life so far….. Last week, I was taking you through my years in a small town in the beautiful North Eastern State of Nagaland- named Dimapur. I will start precisely where I left you all last time, in the process of acquainting you with all my neighbours in the rented house where we used to stay in Dimapur (The 2nd one so far). So far you know 2 families residing there – the family of the landlord and the 2nd one who used to own a restaurant. There were two other families living there, single child families. One was a girl may be a year or couple of years younger to me…..she used to be one of my playmates….Not much memories…that’s about it…The other family had a little son….very cute. The most vivid memories I have of him is wiping his hands on the back of his shorts after eating …well whatever mom had made for breakfast/lunch/otherwise and putting his finger to his lips and telling mom to be silent ….not to tell his mom that he has been at our place and eating on top of that
Well, his mom as all young mothers, was anxious that he did not eat well at his place but gobbled up everything edible he saw at the neighbours place….She was kind of embarrassed at this behaviour of his and he was mortified of his mother finding out !!! So commonplace a scenario, but the image of the little boy remains etched as an integral part of memories in that place…. What about school….well I started school in Dimapur only. There weren’t many good English medium schools in Dimapur, u don’t anyway expect too many in a small place, more specifically in those days….. Today, however, the education scenario is completely different. We see “English Medium” schools mushrooming all across the cities and small towns. Any enterprising individual who has some sizable space and a will to make money seems to come up with a school as the fastest means to achieve his ends. And especially so in small cities where there are limited means to entrepreneurship. Oops, again I am getting diverted as always….Lets come back to the point
Coming back to Dimapur, the only 2 good options were Holy Cross School and another one (unfortunately the name of which I don’t recall any more – I will call it School-1 for the time being!!!). It seems those were really good old days, when children and parents did not have to go through the hassle of numerous admission tests and interviews…I was not sure I remembered if I had to go through any tests, so I checked with my parents, so basically this is was what I learnt from them
The admission process was limited to filling up some forms etc. So I joined School-1 first. But somehow I didn’t like the look of the school and didn’t want to continue there!!! So then off to Holy Cross. This was a missionary school which was literally HUGE, both in terms of the covered area as well as the sheer number of students that studied there. Each class had 4 sections, each section having strength of 60-70 pupils. I joined this school in LKG (Lower KG) class and continued till Class-2. What all do I remember about my first school…..not too much actually. I joined an orkut community for this school recently and was trying hard to remember the names of some of the classmates, but not much luck there
So not many names….some faces, some days, some scenes, all memories !!!!!!!!! 
No comments:
Post a Comment