My Beautiful School days: a Nostalgia

Nostalgia is the most powerful and a beautiful feeling that can be used to while away or kill your time when you have got absolutely nothing to do in the office. When you don’t have a VPN connection and when you have read through all the online news magazines for almost the entire day and when your brain gets fatigued staring at the screen it voluntarily seeks for your good old memories and cherishes it to keep you active and happy.

Down the memory lane I have had beautiful friends around me who were solely responsible for the eidetic memory I have been having these days. The memories have been shedding gladness over the past.  I thought I would recollect my beautiful pass times during my school days so that you people can match it with all those you had in your lives.

Fluorescent Sketch Pen:

Many would say “Once choosing color of a sketch pen was a tough process” I would rather say it was easy for me. It was the fluorescent color all the way for me. Fluorescent was always the first sketch pen that I used to pull out from the pack followed by blue. Fluorescent color had always been an eye catchy color for me and it will always be the first color to get over during my childhood, was it the same for you guys too?

Window seat at the bus/Train:

My travel has always been incomplete without the window seat either in the bus or the train. Like most of your parents, my parents sacrifice for me ever since I had developed an immortal memory should have started from when I was given their window seats. Yes, a window seat has always been an additional reason other than the travel fascination, for me to be all smiles during the first few minutes of travel. Though, Aisle seats can never be anyone’s preference even now at first.

My First Cycle:

Once owning a bicycle meant conquering the whole world to me. I would have easily been the happiest kid in the vicinity or say in the whole world when my dad had bought me my first bicycle. My first cycle was a small black Bazooka. I was so hard hearted, that I asked my dad and mom to push me as I sat over the cycle from my grandfather’s home to my home (Some 9  kms easily), because  I was some 5 years old and I didn’t know to ride a cycle at that time.  You won’t believe, as a kid I was never crazy about a gear cycle, because my cousin had a top gear and I have seen him struggle and fight with his cycle chain many a times. So I was content enough to buy a red Hercules AXN for the second time. 

                                                       

I still remember it was exactly 1750 INR including the main stand at the “Gnyanam Cycles” Vanuvampet, Chennai. Thanks to my late grandmother who sponsored for it. The most painful thing during my childhood was not when I fell down and injured my knees rather it was those first scratches in my cycle that had brought those excruciating agony in me.

Lock and Key/Hide and Seek:

I would rather say I was gifted to have got very good friends at my neighborhood with whom I had played lock and key/Hide and seek for days and evenings together. Apparently I wonder whether the kids these days would know about these two games. Ideally they would be visualizing it as a real lock and a key/hide and seek biscuit to be frank. 

                                

                                          

Most of my evenings would be incomplete without hide and seek say between my 6^th grades to 8^th grade from 7pm to 9 pm after playing cricket till our stomach starts cribbing for food. “All Safe” was the one word that we all would be waiting to hear while we were hiding somewhere in the apartments. Thanks to all those water tanks and terrace which didn’t reveal our presence to the catcher.

Big fun loved Cricket and so did I:

                                                   

So I among with my other school friends and neighboring friends were crazy for the cricket cards that we used to get as free for the big fun bubble gum. You won’t believe if I tell you that I had more than 1000 cards and some 800+ non repeating cards. 

                         

We didn’t have Cricinfo/Cricbuzz those days, all we had were those cards with the player statistics. I would right away tell you the player statistics that I had in those 800+ cards even if you wake me up and ask me during the midnight. Not to forget that the 3 big fun covers would fetch you one big card. Saba karim was the player whom I got most of the times when it came to the big cards.

We even played games with those cricket cards that we had, you will win your turn hands down when you had cards of players like Aquib Javed, Saeed Anwar, Michael Bevan. You will eventually become a hero and talk of the class when you have a rare card in your hand and when you take it to school and show it to your friends.

Wrestling deck of Cards/UNO Cards:

Phew… Undertaker and Kane…. “Clash” the one who says clash first would win it eventually. Do we even have those cards now? How many of you have ever experienced the joy of preserving the Hulkhogan card so as to use it at the end? Your childhood would have been awesome even if you had had the Hulkhogan/Mark Henry card at least once while you played. I have played those for hours together. UNO was one awesome game which I started playing very late in my childhood. Skip one, skip two and what not?

Milo Essential Facts/Milo Sports Facts:

I have had 100’s of those small beautiful green books during my childhood, such a wonderful book. I guess Even now I have few of those books in my shelves. The joy of smelling the plastic coated pages is just heavenly. Bringing the book to school and playing Country and Capitals with my geeky friends were more fun at that time that I still remember plenty of country capitals even now. 191 country capitals would have been onto your finger tips if you had owned that precious green book during your childhood.

Eat Cricket, Sleep Cricket, Breathe Cricket was our motto:

This topic will for sure need a separate post I believe. The amount of Cricket, football and Badminton we guys played can never be described in words. We here include Guru, Sathish, Santhana, Subbu, Ajay, Srinath, Sandi, Gokul, Sabari, VG, Vaidy, Bala and I. It would not be inane if I tell you that the ground water level of Papa ground, Voltas Colony ground, Lakshmi Nagar ground, Vijay Avenue, AGS colony and Chinna School would have definitely had a considerable amount of all our sweats for the amount of sports we played days and years together. 

                                                 

Terrace Cricket with neighborhood friends was even more special. Srivatsan^2, Sriram, Balakrishnan, Ganesh and my friend Late Srikanth can never be erased for the entirety of my life. My neighborhood friends were mind-blowing wrist and finger spinners, Bala and Srivatsan Senior in particular. The Child Prodigy MRF bat of my beloved friend late Srikanth and the other MRF bat of Srivatsan Senior has indeed honed many of our batting skills particularly against spin as any other Indian batsmen. The Euphoria that the boost’s free red colored wrist band cum watch, cricket bat, shuttle racquet should have given us was immeasurable those days.

Coming early to the school after witnessing a very close cricket match the previous day, just to discuss/Analyze the match with friends was nothing less than being in a paradise. We mastered the noble art of discussing sports with each other ranging from Schumacher’s pole position, Hakkinen/Barrichello’s car failure, Patrick Rafter’s beautiful drop shots the other day, Andy Roddicks lightning quick ace, the mid fielding brilliance of Viren Rasquinha (Sathish this is for you and me), Brilliance of Anna kournikova and what not? Do we even have such sports buffs these days as friends?

Renga Lending Library:

Enid Blyton, Franklin W Dixon, JK Rowling and Herge had taught us as many things more than what our school teachers did. It was more of a one sided friendship for us with Julian, Dick, Anne, Georgina , Timmy, Peter, Janet, Jack, Barbara, George, Pam, Colin, Tintin, Snowy , Captain haddock, Harry, Ron, Hermoine. Not to forget the good times with Chef Morton, Joe, Frank and James Hardy. Bayport city had then become more than an imaginary city in our lives.

Google and Yahoo were too costly to approach those days. The only search engine we guys knew those days was the old man who owned that library. He was the first search engine we guys got to know in our lives. I got my first library card with the ID number 5709 for just 200 bucks that was when my life began. The happiness and the joy the single library card gave us during our childhood can never match even the multiple debit and credit cards that we have in our wallets these days. The most valuable and the precious thing in my wallet those days was only my library card. I started using wallet only to keep my Library card safe and not to keep pocket money as we hardly had any those days. Hide a book inside the Renga lending library and we would find in no time.

Cycle Kadai @ CD Shop:

Sathish, Vaidy, Guru and I would spend our hard earned 5 rupees just to rent a movie CD for 20 rupees those days. There was a cycle shop if you guys could remember which used to rent movie CD’s those days for twenty rupees. Sathish’s home would soon turn into our theatre that afternoon. Rush Hour episode was one memorable incident. All we were worried those days were just what would happen to us if incidents in the movie happen to us in reality. We would end up discussing all those for the whole day and used to while away our time. If Guru and Sathish you guys can remember, Sathish called each of us when Chennai was hit by Tsunami and told everyone of us to assemble at Guru’s place so as to die together just in case if Tsunami hits us once again that very night :P

Cartoon Network and WWE:

Life was too busy worrying about the Swat Kats (The Radical Squadron), T Bone, Razor, Johny Quest and Centurions only. We didn’t have anything else to worry about those days. Rock was the only good and true fighter we knew those days. Days were more beautiful when Rock wins against Triple-H. We always wanted Rock to win against Triple-H at any cost didn’t we? WWE was such fun during our school days.

Undertaker was the only scary magician we knew as he was supposed to reincarnate every single time he dies. Do the kids these days have quality cartoons like that of what we had those days?

“Britannia Khao World Cup Jao”:

If you remember the above slogan, then trust me when I say this… you have had an awesome childhood. Britannia Cream biscuits would fetch you some 20/25 runs. Tiger biscuits would easily fetch you 10 runs for 3 rupees. So when you accumulate 100 runs and give it to the shopkeepers they used to give us a World cup scratch book. There were days where I have even collected the biscuit wrappers from the road. 

I was such a freak that I used to keep the world cup book in the pooja room before I go about scratching it for the prize. I even went to the extent of asking my dad, how will I go all alone to England if I win the prize ticket without even knowing that a passport and a Visa are mandatory even if you have a ticket: P Apparently all I won collecting those hundreds of biscuit covers and from scratching more than 30 world cup books was just a checkers wafer which I was not even allowed to eat as it contained egg and just because I am a pure vegetarian L (To KP Sudarshan: Contains Egg only)

Changing the Bat Grip:

As we were basically chennaite, our bat grip made of rubber won’t last long due to the low quality rubber and the heat of the city. So more often we used to change the grip of the bat in the nearby Bhai kadai (Modern Stores). He was having a beautiful cone like structure with which he used to put the grip to the bat with such an ease. Every time Sachin changes the grip, I would go and change it accordingly. Cream bun, Thaen mittai, 50 paise samosa’s, Colorful pepsi ice can never be an oblivion and can never slip from our memories for a life time.

Eve of Diwali with Friends:

I had those selfless school friends who used to bring their Bijli vedi, kuruvi vedi, lakshmi Vedi, Double shot crackers to my house so that we used to burst them all together amidst those selfish giants who always boasted about the huge money for which their dad’s had bought them crackers. 4 am bang on time in the morning, we used to assemble near our apartments main gate with our neighborhood friends to burst the crackers together. There was a silly competition in our minds as to which apartment’s front area had more cracker papers. We even went to the extent of pulling out some of the burnt cracker papers from the neighborhood apartments to our front area. If Diwali was fun, wearing the Diwali dress and taking the sweets to the school after the holidays was ever more fun.

Relationships, Trust, belief, loyalty, sudden change in attitude of people, fair weathered friends, egoistic people, politics around us etc came into picture and started giving us woes only as we grew up. When I was a school going kid all I worried was only about India’s Victory in Cricket, Sachin’s performance in that particular match,Rock’s Victory in WWE. Will I be able to execute the shots tomorrow in the ground that I had dreamed up all the night? Will my D section win the section match against the A, B and C sections? Will the librarian ask for fine as I returned the story book a day late? Will it rain the whole night so that my school ground gets flooded and so they declare a holiday? We weren’t even worried about studies as our gang was always an erudite one.

Life was so very beautiful those days. My sincere thanks to all my school friends and neighborhood comrades, for without all of you the pages of my life’s diary would have not been as indelible as anything else in my life.

            I'd give away all that I have earned all these days,

           If someone guarantees me that they would take me back  

           to my school days,  

           To be once more a School kid at least for a single day....         

Pictures Courtesy: Google as always
Video Courtesy: Youtube

PS: Thanks to my friend Balakumaran who was instrumental in reminding me the Britannia Khao World Cup Jao and Changing the Bat Grip episodes.