Aha...Those Sensational Days

I am a total believer in following lines of a great song..

आने वाला कल एक सपना है
गुजरा हुआ कल बस अपना है
हम इस गुजरे पल में रहते हैं…..

Which literally means that I believe in yesterday…who has seen tomorrow, which may not be acceptable to many. So decided to give you glimpse of my school life ,hoping even if one of my readers is able to recollect those golden days, the purpose is solved.

Nidhi and the Day of photography

Year: 1991
Month: September
Class: 4th “B”

I was having lunch with my best friend…...in fact I used to eat everything which she brought and gave her my half empty lunch box! Her name was Nidhi and still her gorgeous smile is as fresh as a daisy in my mind. She was slightly taller than me with a lovely little face ...her medium length hairs remind me of a waterfall duiring night. Her bright black eyes compensated for two slightly protruded teeth. She used to have trouble in solving math sums and was a champion artist. I was a dumbo in drawing so our combination was perfect. I used to solve her questions sometimes and she did a lot of drawing assignments for me.

Everyday, when I returned back to home, mostly Nidhi used to be in my chats with buaji with whom I was staying. Today Nidhi did this and I made her fall by pushing…..I ate all her lunch and didn’t give anything….She laughed on my torn button of shirt…..I made fun of her long hairs….I gave her a comics to read which she didn’t liked….she got highest in drawing etc used to be a daily evening report... And when buaji asked provocatively

“Shastry, Tum bade ho ke shaadi kisese karoge”? whom will you marry once you grow up
“Nidhi se” And that was it…….I was bullied by many of my relatives for several years for this answer…..

“Tomorrow photographer will come and we all will have group photograph” announced my class teacher. We both were very happy as those day, photographs were a rarity…and photography day used to be some kind of festival in our school.

Buaji combed my hairs and cautioned not to play outside..
“Photo khichne se pahle dhoop mein mat jaana,kale ho jaaoge aur photo kharaab ho jaayegi” Don’t go outside before photograph is taken otherwise you will turn black!

The photographer came with a tripod and a big camera….session started from nursery kids….finally it was announced

“Class 4th B, please make a queue and come here”

I was really excited because it was my first photo with Nidhi standing besides me…and then class teacher yelled

“All tall children would be standing and rest will sit down. Saurabh, come and sit here” echoed teacher

It was sad end of high hopes as Nidhi was standing while me sitting near my class teacher. Photographer asked everybody to smile and I tried hard to do that….Even today ,whenever I take a look at that classic photo, I feel….if Nidhi were there sitting besides me.

After class 4th we never met as her father got transferred in another city.



A typical Sunday


Year:1996
Month: March
My Sundays in those days started at 5:30 the morning with solving few chapters of RS Aggarwal’s math book for an oncoming district level math contest. Aim was to solve them quickly as “Rangoli” will start from 7:15 .

“Aaj sab log apna room saaf karenge” everybody will clean his/her room, ordered mom.
I offered a bribe of two candies to my younger sister….
she used to clean my room whereas I enjoyed watching songs Rangoli

After Rangoli ,“Chandrakanta” was next big attraction. Every family member used to watch it because of “Naugarh” and “VijayGarh”…these two “Estates” are very close to our village and the author Babu Devakinandan Khatri was actually an employee of King of Varanasi.I often used to wonder whatever miracles they showed in serial, how I can perform. Even reading some books on magic tricks were of not much help, though I learnt few tricks. From 10:00AM, it used to be Disney world and my favourite cartoon characters were all over the place.

Once this gets over, it used to be fight time….with younger sister on reasons as big as “My new pen is better than yours”
“The notebook I have is thicker than yours”
“My Goofy stickers are better than your He-Man”
Younger brother played the role of reporter and Mummy used to come yelling…..without her interruption, it was really difficult to stop the ongoing fight

At around 3:30, the colony cricket team arrived and then 1 and half hours of unlimited fun starts…few times, we used to break a window of my poor Bengali neighbour...to stop the game….

After reaching home I used to find that the Sunday movie has already half way through but still I could understand it with the help of my sister so that the next day in school,I can take part in lunch time discussion

“Arre kya laat ghuma ke maara tha Dharmedra ne Takle Shetty ko”
“Rajnikant bidi goli maar ke jala diya”
“Anil Kapoor ka kidney fail ho jaata hai”
“Arre Aakhir mein Amitabh Bachchan ko goli lag jaati hai,fir bhi bach jaata hai”

At 6:30 when movie ends, it’s time to finish home work and wait for dad to arrive with some eatables begins. The day ends at 10:00PM after “Surabhi” is finished with a “Namaskar” from Siddharth Kak and Renuka Shahane’s voice which was like sound of bangles clinking together….Wasn’t it,readers?


Because....I hate to loose

Year: 1997
Month: January
Class: 9th “A”

Being the topper of school had many advantages…every teacher knows you and admires….almost every student is familiar with your face and is always ready to help a topper. I had lots of friends but three of them were really peculiar. They were quite notorious for beating anybody …in other words, they were “Dons”. When your good friends are like that, you are bound to get influenced.

We four..Me,Goswami,Tripathy and Rajeev were very good players of hand-cricket, A cricket which involved only ball, with bat being your hand. At that time we were World Champions in our own terms.

A new talented entrant to our school Prateek started to thwart our autonomy in hand-cricket. He was a very good player and his team played well under him. We lost quite a few matches and were getting frustrated.

One day after loosing 5 matches in a row and on being taunted ... I lost it…..and smacked straight in the face of Prateek. His spectacles were on the ground and he was bamboozled……I knew that I have won it because in all the fights, who-so-ever strikes first takes the lead….and I had the guts to give the first blow….now Tripathy and Rajeev came in action….Prateek fell down and he was being beaten badly from all four of us…..boom-boom-bang-bang. Sad part was all of his friends were just watching the show…and this is real dumbness.Poor guy couldn’t do a thing apart from lodging a complain to my class teacher…And my teacher refused to believe that I was involved in such incident, though rest three were given punishment, but they never uttered that I was involved….

From that day till today, though I hate to loose,I have lost many times at many fronts….
And controlling the temper have been tough but somehow I have done this…I still feel sorry for that incident


Written for those who traveled backwards in time while reading this........