One more year left and then we voyage into the world. No more early morning pleadings for two minutes more in bed, no more walking through the school gates in blue striped uniforms, no more fabricating ploys to get out of boring classes for quick strolls on the looming empty corridors, no more accidentally bumping into other sinners during our oh so innocent escapades, no more… okay, I’ll stop my series of ‘no mores’ coz frankly, its losing its initial rhetoric image. But then, there are lots more things that are still left untold and will still remain untold even after I fill up this entire page and ten pages after that. For there are so many little things that happened in these fourteen years that we have spent.

There have been times of sorrow, times of joy, times of mischief and times of virtue. We have had our share of flouting school rules, having heated arguments with our teachers, peeped into our neighbours copy during tests ( to find out that she’s as clueless as I am ) and getting caught (damn!). There have also been times of glory when we were called upon to the makeshift dais during assembly to speak about our achievements that have made our school proud. Well, the assembly has also given us our fair share of embarrassment, when we were arbitrarily called upon to speak and since no one would volunteer, Ms Sicka ( it was her brilliant idea) and Mrs Kar ( adopted her viceys strategy out of sheer frustration) had to call upon girls,in their stentorian voices shrieking “ tenth girl from this line, seventh girl from the back of this line , blah blah.” Thankfully, I have managed to escape these twists of fate but I always rummaged through my cluttered mind every Monday and Wednesday to extract some quote.

All the years spent in this school have been memorable in one way or the other. I remember my first and my last ( and disastrous) encounter with dancing in public during rabindra jayanti in class nine. I always knew I had two left feet and two left hands and probably even a left body ( I am left handed after all), and I had warned Mrs. S Banerjee (don’t know if she heard it though) but we all went along with me as the rajputra in tasher desh, who cant dance for nuts, but keeps flaunting his ’talent’ all the freaking time. Well, the rest as they say was history.

Disputes with teachers were a common phenomena. English classes were the best platform to showcase our debating talents( or rather digressing-from-the-topic-coz-we-didn’t-feel-like-studying talent). There were classes with Mrs. Nathani where Divyani and devina would rage on equivocally with our exasperated teacher. Then there was the Bengali classes with mrs. P dasgupta where me, divyani and priyadarshini would never listen and be invariably slammed. Pdg has always been the mistress of blatant sarcasm and she thus labelled us as the three pundits of the last row ( under the assumption that we never listened coz we knew everything ). She had a penchant for picking on me and I had a penchant for making lashing statements on her face. So you have some idea about the entertainment that my classmates received in the class eight bong periods.

Teacher gossip never failed to fill our voracious appetites. Whether it was how goyal can never be from IIT, or why our school always has the best history teachers, and why all science teachers always manage to make us more confused then we already are, or why Mrs. Bhatia tied her hair with shoe laces, or how goyal wore a ‘phata’ kurta to school one day, there were juicy scandals everywhere we looked. There were also several related to students which being a student myself and subject to several humiliating encounters will dare not disclose. But Mhs has always been that one place which we can never forget.

I know what I am writing might make many parents have second thoughts about admitting their babies to this school. But dude, I am not righting for them. Neither am I writing for those teachers who will stick up their noses or curl up their lips in disdain. I am giving the picture as it is. Of course, on a more serious note, my school has given me a lot, taught me how to face life on my own and live life on my own terms like a true woman should ( courtesy : Monday mornings with ms sikka) and that is why I respect this institution. But the reason why I love my school is because of the society it has allowed me to be a part of, the mhs society, where I have met so many amazing people, made so many great friends and spent some unforgettable moments. And as the year goes on, I cant help but feel disbelief that in no time my tag of ‘student’ will have the prefix ‘ex’ and that I will no longer wear that blue uniform or that ugly black pair of shoes ( that by the way gives you a zillion shoe-bites) and no longer walk through the corridors with the smug feeling of delight that one gets on bunking classes. I want Hermione granger’s time turner.