~~~ My golden school days ~~~

Half awake
Sleepy burning eyes,
Already 8 am,
And the usual echoes of a day…
Mom yelling from kitchen,
“Get up. Will you? It’s already 8. You don’t want to be late for school assembly.”

Long past, the ghosts of memories manifold…
Childhood memories that once were green and gold
But now, are grim and ashen grey.
The drowsy schoolgirl wakened up from sleep,
First feeds her system with substantial barely chewed food,
Then off for school with tasks half understood,
Alas, those cribs now sound so lame and cheap!

Yet there was an excitement bubbling within
To reach the school…
Riding the cycle ferociously with winds blowing through the hair
Dumping the satchel in the classroom
Rumbling down the stairs for the assembly hall
Queues lined up…all in attention
Sneaking, peeking through corner of eyes
The loved infatuated one….
Ohh the mere glimpse or smile from him
Would run chills down the spine, goose bumps on flesh, butterflies in tummy…

Kicking up a ball before the teachers come,
leaping over fences in the morning sun .
School children must have fun at play .
The usual sing song, "Good morning teacher"
We all did say.
"Good morning Children "
Was the reply at the beginning of another school day .
It was early morning in 1988,
A teacher with cane in hand approached,
"Who's responsible for breaking the windows "?
"Don't know sir"
We giggled in the background.
Screams of excitement echoed around the playground.
It was innocence at play.
Jumping from the roof twenty feet off the ground.
The teacher went off his head,
"Stop that at once and come over here"
The din of his voice was like a police sirens screeched.

Within, the master’s desk is seen,
Deep scarred by raps official;
The warping floor, the battered seats,
The pen-knife’s carved initials dash loves dash
The charcoal frescos on its wall;
Its door’s worn sill, betraying
The feet that, creeping slow to school,
Went storming out to playing!

From 9 am through 4 pm, it was same
Running across the corridors, screaming for nothing.
Library time was time for mischief
Lunch breaks were freedom time
Budding love, passing chits, conspiring love-bird meets
And there were times when
Scattered across the concrete where our bags,
Gathered on our red faces where cheeky giggles.
His objections were overruled.
Dismissed we made our way out of mathematics lessons ,
That we would take on another way as we worked out a part in,
The difference between x plus y all over the square root
Of those prime numbers to the power of
Whatever you've out smartened .
We all fit in somehow and together we stood in lines…

The hours of lessons -- hours with feet of clay
Each hour a day, each day more like a week:
While hapless urchins heard with blanched cheek
The words of doom "Come in on Saturday".
The master gowned and spectacled, precise,
Trying to rule by methods firm and kind
But always just a little bit behind
The latest villainy, the last device,

Born of some smooth faced rogue’s fertile brain
To irritate the hapless pedagogue,
And first involve him in a mental fog
Then "have" him with the same old tale again.
The "bogus" fights that brought the principal down
To that dark corner by the old brick wall,
Where mimic combat and theatric brawl
Made noise enough to terrify the town.

But on rainy days the fray was genuine,
When small boys pushed each other in the mud
And fought in silence till thin streams of blood
Their dirty faces would incarnadine.
The football match or throw-ball practice in the field
With rampant hoodlums joining in the game
Till on one famous holiday there came
A gang that seized the football for a lark.
Then raged the combat without rest or pause,
Till one, a hero, Hawkins unafraid
Regained the ball, and later on displayed
His nose knocked sideways in his country's cause.

Ooooh’s and Aaah’s cheered the girls.
He saw her lift her eyes; he felt
The soft hand’s light caressing,
And heard the tremble of her voice,
As if a fault confessing.
“I’m sorry that I spelt the word:
I hate to go above you,
Because,”—the brown eyes lower fell,
“Because, you see, I love you!”
To right and left, he lingered;—
As restlessly her tiny hands
The blue-checked apron fingered

Before the mind quaint visions rise and fall,
Old jokes, old students passed out and gone:
And some that lead us still, while some toil on
As rank and file, but "Grammar" children all.
And he, the school captain, who had laid the course
For all to steer by, honest, unafraid --
Truth is his beacon light, so he has made
The name of the old School a living force.

Still memory to a gray-haired lady
That sweet child-face is showing.
Dear girl!
The grasses on her grave
Have thirty years been growing!
She lives to learn, in life’s hard school,
How few who pass above her
Lament their triumph and her loss,
Like her…because they loved the fire-fighter her.

Every day with our backs to the wind as we began to grow.
The school bell rang,
The streets signs changed ,
Traffic signals went up
Before you knew it ,
Times had changed and it was time for us to go
Into the lifeless, cruel and selfish world…