BACK TO SCHOOL

Pencil drawing of my school, Sainik School
Kunjpura, Karnal. All boys boarding school


And this is how it looks today...

It is never particularly healthy to dwell in the past. I have learnt the lesson the hard way, just don’t ask me how. And in my case, even childhood doesn’t bring fond memories. If I started writing about it, I’d fill volumes. So, I’ll keep that for some other time. Going by Calvin & Hobbes wisdom, too, “People who get nostalgic about childhood were obviously never children...”

Honestly, I am not nostalgic for childhood, mine or anyone else's. Especially, if you went to a military (read Sainik) school where you get yelled at, slapped in the face, made to stand at attention until you nearly dropped, made to parade in the cold of winter, made to keep away from the town girls our age, made to study in the day and in study hall at night, and get slapped around, as I did, one of their best students, if you misbehaved, like passing notes back and forth with your friends to have some fun, for God's sake!

I remember dad telling me a military school is a privilege to attend and can only be accessed by students who have a desire to excel. The potential student must come with a good report card, he told me, all of 11, exactly the same age as my kid now. He told me he loved me and it was only for my good future that he wanted me there. “A military school offers a desirable experience,” he drilled it into me. I don’t know how much of the monolgue I actually understood. And as I said, it is not a point of this post to show either how childhood is a time of great excitement or great disturbance, or that I miss it or that I suffered through it. What is most interesting to me, especially now that I have a kid of my own, is that childhood is the time when one learns how to think, how to feel, how to move forward…something that I’m still learning. And boy, that keeps me so alive.
Innocence is so underrated.

Anyway, one of these Sundays, drove down to my school and must admit the reason wasn’t Kochhar ma’am, though most of my school types would like to believe. For all such creeps, here is the dope: ‘curvaceous’ Ms Kochhar is the school mistress now! Back to the reason, it was purely the desire to drive Speedy out of town. That reminds me I’m fast turning into a junkie! And for any unfortunate occurrence, the blame should squarely go to Mr Honda for giving me this high called Shiny Speedy.
As for the school, it’s under major renovation, thanks to the largesse of Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, an ex-Kunjean. And yes, I’m not the only old boy who’s taken to media: there’s adman Prahalad Kakkad, too, of the 1966 batch. BTW, I’m the 1977 batch.

P.S. The school’s spread over 270 acre and that my dear, can house an entire township these days with lush-green lawns and the works.
The school main building was originally the mansion of the Nawab of Kunjpura, Mohammad Ibrahim Ali Khan. It was built in 1900 AD to house the marriage party of his daughter. It has 365 doors and windows said to signify the number of days in a year. It has four corridors meeting at a vantage point to represent the four seasons of the year.