I couldn’t think of how to describe a perfectly beautiful childhood. we all were kids, we all were scolded and thrashed and the horrors of being a naughty kid was aplenty, but happy memories remain deep down in the corners of the mind... faint ... waiting to resurface.
Do you remember the time when you were not there? Of course how could you, you were not there. You were growing up in different circumstances, and with different friends around you...I was growing up too, but in a different way. My school was a co-ed school when I got admitted but by the time, I reached class 5, all the boys had left for a boys’ school in the neighbouring town. The story of my admission is extremely dicey too. My mother used to teach in the school, where once she had studied too. Now when I was a kid, merely 4 years and with extremely innovative tantrums right at the time when she had to get ready to go to school at 8 am, she would invariably indulge me and get late every single day. Sitting smug at this point in life I feel sorry for the fact that I was such a brat.
The principal, Sister Andrea loved her very much because she was one of those really nice girls in school who cared for everybody around her and loved her school and was ready to sacrifice all her time for the young kids. So Sister Andrea gave her an idea, she said, bring her to school with you so that she can’t be naughty anymore and let’s see how it goes. And so I used to go with her, and later when admission forms were out, she even handed my mother a set asking her to submit them. I was the youngest of the lot. 4 years, I mean who sits for a kindergarten interview at 4 years flat? I don’t really remember what happened at the interview, but based on the stories I heard from ma and baba, I gather that Sister Andrea along with Mrs Rita Ukil (my biology teacher in classes 9-10) and someone else who I don’t remember was there. The funniest memory I have is that of the rest of the other bawling kids around me, all screaming, or hyper active panicky, while I was sitting dangling my legs from a table top, gazing at the insanity setting in steadily more among the parents than among their kids.
Soon enough I realized I was in class KG.C with the most wonderful teacher Miss Nita Chowdhury. She was a darling, and specially loved me. (I mean everybody does, how can they not love someone as adorable as me J, eh?? ) I spent my days scraping my knees and playing with the boys, (there were absolutely no girls in this horrendously hooligan group, all ninnies i must say, all miss-goody-goody's!!) breaking windows with wild ball throwing and cricket, standing in the sun holding my ears, and losing my specs all the time, while I would see my mother walk back across the field with her colleagues, who would all smile and say – now what have you done, Oyndrila?? What an embarrassment! I remember going to the senior staffroom when ma called, to have curd, sitting on her table terribly scared to look at all those cross old teachers who looked so stern and grim. I remember waiting at lunch one day for ma, when I saw her scolding another tall girl in a green uniform, who was sobbing profusely and almost shaking... I remember being in awe of this woman then. To me, she was one who told me stories at night and woke me up in her arms every day. But at that moment she seemed a woman of power, a woman of command. I refused to go back to the staffroom ever again.
The afternoons were very boring. We had a horrible thing for 1 hour before 2 pm assembly – the sleeping period; where boys and girls in class would have to put their heads down and eyes shut and go to sleep! How perfectly dreadful! We sleep t home, why on earth should we sleep at school that too on a perfectly sunny day with the entire field just beckoning to us to come and play!!!
One day after school, when I was waiting for ma to come from the senior school, an idea struck my mind, and I re-entered the classroom with a piece of chalk in hand and started scribbling and pretending to shout at a room full of non-existent students! I also drew an elephant, a cat, copied numbers from my maths notebook, and in big bold letters with a smiling face at the end of the line, I had scrawled : “ABBA is my best friend” J Not my mistake really, I grew up listening to the LP gramophone records of old English albums at home, and I took care to even write the second “B” of ABBA’S as its mirror image exactly like I saw on the cover of the records. Invariably, when Miss Nita came back the next day, she called me and asked whose handicraft it was since I was the only one who used to wait after class hours. I smiled sheepishly and mumbled to her about the jumping song of a piper, russia’s love machine, a sad Fernando and his bright stars and the happy new year song... will you believe what she did, she gave me an éclairs J and I went skipping happily off to play J
Ma And Miss Nita Chowdhury
thumbs up!!
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