Wonder years

me reciting the poem

Eleventh class is a watershed moment in every child's life and so was ours. Parents had high hopes from me in the board exams but I was too busy in playing cricket matches during preparation holidays and that reflected in my result. Fortunately, I got enough percentage to sit in the science class. 

Well Section A and then Science class!  It was a combination to give superiority complex to anyone. All me life I studied in the section C (basically all the good for nothing student's section). To my credit, I was the 'अंधों में काना राजा'! The studies were not too bad and extra curricular activities contributed towards getting famous in school. I once recited the Hindi poem  " सतपुड़ा के घने" and that feat gained me the almost recognition.

This was the moment of reckoning and beckoning. We were progressing towards adulthood. We had a 3 months long holiday celebrating the culmination of board exams. We were told that the 11th is ' take it easy' and no one should work hard. I had chosen all the subjects Physics, Maths, Bio, Chemistry and English as there was no counselling available and everyone did what everyone else did.

During the early days of XIth class, our first class was taken by  Vikramidtya sir (popularly known as physicuu sir).He discussed the function of x, function of y, scalar quantity, vector quantity and 'hence proved' the theorem. Everything was going bouncer but who cared, we were enjoying the early days of freedom. We never had full set of teachers, there were few adhoc teachers and our maths sir (Mr. Kochar) was always busy in the adminstartion of the school. Our English teacher Ms Mehta was a very rude teacher and she always used to derive pleasure in humiliating and putting down students. I never liked attending English class and always wanted to avoid it and that probably was one of the reasons that inspite of doing my studies with an English medium school I hardly managed to speak any English. 

Now let me talk about my fellow students. As I said before that I was happy to be in section A because it symbolized the success, winning and feeling superior. All the thick and lowly ranked students were chaffed and were forced to take the arts because to study science you needed to score above 60%. In other words studying science was the prerogative of 'bourgeoisie' and arts students were 'proletarians'. 

There were few old faces like Amit Garoo, Sugan, Ashok Maurya, Dinesh Gupta, Vineet Saxena and Meeta. They all were the bright students from the 10th A class and had the proven track record in the studies. Nitin, myself and few others have made the jump from C. In addition there was a group of students from KV no. 2 because their school had classes only till 10th. That group included the likes of Ekansh, Ravi Yadav and Sukhi (flying sikh).

dontknow, nitin mudgal, dont know, ekansh jain, dont know, sandhu, sandeep salathia, nitin sharma, vishal varma, cant recall, abhishake, dinesh gupta,amit garoo, hardeep, amitabh khajuria,2nd row: atul barara, neeraj sisodhia, vineet saxena, suhas dalvi, naryan, chitan, sugan, sanjay gupta, gaurav pandey, ravi yadav, sukhi, mayank, amit, (girls will be tagged by garoo)

Being a KV, every year we used to get new influx of students which meant that every year I used to fall in love (specially at the beginning of the session). I used to be very organised during opening days as my main aim used to  impress the new girls (never succeded). This also meant that we had several new students which included the likes of JV Singh, Atul Barara, Deepika Sirohi, Sushant, etc.

As there were never enough teachers to taught us so either we were playing in the assembly ground or creating rucus in the class room. I remember that because of the noise we were making, Kochar sir made us to stand on the assembly ground as punishment. Though I doubt that it actually had any effect on us. 

The studies were getting neglected and without proper guidance our basics were also getting weaker (for which we all paid dearly after passing from the school). We had the first unit tests and almost everyone failed including the brightest of students ashok, garoo, meeta etc. That result made few students serious towards studies and some of them even started to prepare for IIT exams. I did not even know what IIT meant at that time. 

Then came the sports meet time and selection trials were happening. Sugan used to be the star sports person of the school and as 12th class students are not allowed to take part in sports, we had a free reign. I got myself selected in TT team, Garoo was in cricket, Ashok in football and Jodhvir in TT and Badminton. Most of the contingent was comprised  of सिफारशी टटू. 

The regional meet was in Jalandhar. We all packed our sleeping bags, suitcases and boarded the bus to Jalandhar. It was  a fun trip as we were nearly 50 students of same age and all were going to play. Our bus left us in the Jalandhar city, and we needed to made arrangements to go to Cantt. Our teacher got us boarded in a tractor which was carrying the gobar a trip before. The tractor was smelly and we were put in it like bhed bakris. That short journey is so memorable that I still  remember that one.

Finally we reached our destination and as we were settling down, we were told that 100m trials were going to start. Our super star racer was Rajesh Jha from the arts section. We all went to see the race. Our candidate( Rajesh) came last and that was just the start. By next afternoon 3 pm almost the whole contingent was out of their respective events except Ashok and Garoo. This meant that we had full 2 days to our disposal without participating in any event. We utilized that time very judiciously in knowing the city and roaming around.

After coming back, we were having auditions for youth parliament. As I was one of the good speakers in the school, Narender sir chose me to play the opposition member. Everyday we use to have one hour rehearsal in practising for parliament session and it also meant that I had one hour extra break from studies. To be frank I do not remember studying much in the 11th section. My scores kept getting worse to worst and I was moving away from the studies.

to be continued