I have been wondering – for me, there is a
tremendous degree of, so to say, life coming full circle, in terms of my
interests and life choices vis-a-vis what was taught to us in school as a part
of our syllabi. I remember studying Shakespeare’s plays in detail at school,
understanding each word’s meaning and import, making an entirely new discovery
every step of the way (a few I clearly remember, like reading about “ides of
March” which basically means 15th or mid of March in Julius Caesar).
But the amount of interest we showed in truly learning the work and exploring
similar works was very little, if any.
It was a world of discovery that I enjoyed, but
yet, my initiative in the direction of exploring new literature and reading
more books was next to nothing. In our school library, I remember liking the
smell of old hardbound books, in black and blue and green rough spine and
cover, and spending a lot of time facing the books in the cupboards, taking out
this one and that one, discovering new titles in the typical wondrous pleasure
of an explorer – yet making very little endeavour to read some of those (I’m
assuming) enriching books. I truly regret this and I wish I could turn back
time and actually pick some great works to read when we used to have all the time
in the world and access to a seemingly endless and accessible source, like our
school library. I remember having done the same thing at home – taking out
Dad’s old books from his bookshelves, studying their type and print, binding
and cover page, and rollicking in the fabulous fragrance typical of old books,
and then eventually keeping them back in their place when Mom called for
dinner. Looking back, the seeds of a bibliophile were always there in me, but
the initiative was missing.
I still wonder at times why is it that the
teacher with the most monotonous intonation is always assigned to teaching
History. And thus there was always a strong correlation between the subject of
History being taught and the lolling jerks of a sleep induced head in class. I
remember our History teacher in 9th and 10th standard
used to come to class, open his book on the page where he left off in the
previous class, and start reading and intermittently, sprinkling the narrative
with his own explanation of why and how things happened. I can’t really seem to
remember how well he explained those things – because I was hardly ever paying
attention – but I’m sure there was some depth to it. In fact, if I had paid
attention back then, I believe I would have taken a liking to the wonderful
subject back then itself rather than almost 3-4 years later when I started my
graduation and started reading more books.
History was the class in which we
(my best friend Ashish and I) were meant to amuse ourselves with book cricket
(where you randomly open a page of a book and the last digit of the even numbered page was the score on
that ball, 0 being out, with 11 wickets each side); or a miniature version of
cricket where an eraser rubbed off into the shape of a ball would be rolled
from the top of the slanting table top towards another eraser or a Nataraj
pencil sharpener at the other end which would act as the stumps; or to updating
and maintaining of the records of our individual performance in the actual
cricket session of that day (played during the half hour break every day), and
updating records like total runs that season, wickets taken, and even batting
and bowling averages, and expressing all of this in terms of line and bar
graphs (yes, I was an out and out nerd from the very beginning). With there
being so much to do, why would we ever pay attention in this History class, of
all classes, where even the teacher did not mind us indulging in these
“activities” right under his nose. Probably he knew all along how few students
were actually paying attention, but was too far off on the scale of been there
done that to really give two shits about it.
School days were, like for so many of you, one
of the best days of my life – a carefree time when one did not even understand
the definition of emotions like stress, negativity, envy, insecurities and peer
pressure – states which seep off a lot of our time, attention and energy in
today’s dog-eat-dog hyper-capitalistic world of extreme consumerism. If given
another opportunity, I would not miss a chance to go back in time. And this
time, I would play more sports, pick up music early, and for sure, explore more
of the beautiful world of literature.
p.s. - For further reading:
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