"Gitanjali," or, as known by its English title, "Let my country awake"

"Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action---
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake."

A wonderful poem by Rabindrantah Tagore.

Reminds me of my school days. The day used to start with the morning assembly. This poem was read on a particular day of the weak after the national anthem had been sung by the students. It is the only "Thought for the day" which I vividly remember from my school days. It used to instill in me lots of love, passion for India. It had a certain aura to it and it made me proud of my nation everytime I heard it. I also remember that one day when I recited a poem in the assembly. I was very scared, my legs were trembling as I stepped out of a group of around 1000 students to recite the poem in front of the whole school. I really don't know how I fared; for once I started reciting the poem, I have no recollections of the pace at which I went or the words I spoke. It must have been OK, becuase I got a decent applause at the end of this effort. School days ! I wish I could go back to school. I am very exhausted becuase I have been typing my final stage report for the past 2-3 days. And though I wanted to sleep, the lovely poem just sweeped through my mind conjuring memories of my school.

Ahh ! I remember this one time when participating in an inter-hostel debate, I had the guts to try out something afresh. The topic was "The World is heading towards self-destruction". Niharika madam helped me pen down the debate. I remember starting like this "Imagine myself as a bird, flying to different countries. Where shall I go? USA.... No way ! My children would then go to school, get arms and shoot each other. Horrifying. Or should I visit Chechnya ? On second thoughts no. The acid rain will destroy my wings" and so on. While I was debating, I tried to imitate the flapping of wings of a bird using my hands. The whole school rolled with laughter at this gesture. After the debate and before the results, the house master of DRH (min you i was in PH and it was an inter-hostel debate) walked up to me and shook my hand. He was moved by my performance. The judges were not, and when I returned to my class (shell schocked at having lost when I was expecting the first position) the whole class welcomed me by copying my flying gesture. It as in the air for a few days, the bird thing and then it died down. Thanks to Niharika Madam for giving me my best shot.

I took part in an inter-class poetry competition and I recited a poem by TS Eliot. I remember the last line
"And this is the way the world ends,
This is the way the world ends,
Not with a bang but a whimper".
Again an outrageous performance applause everywhere but I lost; to the same girl who had won the debate the other day. She sang a poem on Macavity a mystery cat. It went something like this I reckon "Macavity, Macavity, u defy the laws of gravity". Sexy poem.

Its not tha i always lost. I won the inter-school zonal coding competition and brought back the trophy we had last few years back to our arch-rivals YPS Mohali. Oops ! I forgot to mention my school name, YPS Patiala. I also remember winning tennis matches for school and hostel. I ran in the 3000 metres race on the Athletics day for my hostel and came third. No mean achievement.

I was a brilliant kid, no doubt,a perfect all-rounder. Sports, debates, poetry, academics, you name it I could excel in it. One thing I never had was friends. I just stayed away from everybody. I went to school by a bus. Attend all my classes, not bunk any of them as some of my batchmates did. I should have bunked one or two to hand out with them. Play tennis in the evenings. I had to improve on my tennis, so I couldn't spend the sports time meandering on with my friends, could I ? And then the zeal to top the class time and again. So i hurried home after school and got bac to homework immediately after some refreshments.

I was invited to birthday parties and I went to all of them. We used to play "hide and seek" and wait for the return gift when we knew the party was about to be over. I used to throw a party every year as well. I liked to entertain my friends by playing cricket with them. I didn't like "hide-and-seek" much. I remember on my 7th or 8th birthday. I received some 12-15 gifts. Almost 80% of them were pencil boxes. That was the cheapest sensible thing you could get to gift someone. It dawned to me that since the time I had been attending birthdays I had been gifting pencil boxes to my friends. OccassionallyI would gift a "Famour Five"/"Nancy Drew" books to the boys/girls respectively. It was a lesson; maybe I had inculcated the same habit in all my friends; it was the easy way out, wasn't it. From that day onwards, I never gifted pencil-boxes. I used to search for a good gift, spend time looking for it. relaised the importance of gifts.

Crushes! I had a few crushes. I can recollect 3. But thats it. I was the shy kind. I could never talk to any girl. I am still :). There was this one time when in class 5; in a midbreak brawl; one of the girls picked me up and threw me on a table. It was fun, those years.

I was caught cheating in 5th standard. That robbed me of the Best Junior school student trophy. I was again caught in 7th. It was my comp science teacher, Manvinder Sir. He just changed my seat and he was disappointed by my actions. I felt real embarassed. He was one person i was fond of. I have never ever cheated in an exam since then. That was the only semester in my 5 years of studying computer sceince at YPS when I got less than 99 in the subject. I rocked when it came to computers.

I had a fight in 10th. I would call ita draw. I don't remember the cause we were fighting for.

And yes ! the food carnival in 8th. There was this day in 8th when all students were grouped into teams of 5 each and were aksed to get any home prepared dish to school. The idea was to prepare it yourself; not take help from the parents. But over the years, it had turned into an unsaid agreement that parents would prepare the dish and students would just decorate the dish. I think we prepared the "Russian Salad". Fabulous preparation, very tasty. It had beans and lots of other things (I can't recall today).

Lots of memories! Some on the mischeivious front. The best possible use of concave mirrors I have ever seen in my life. All that hustle when someone would bring one of those magazines to school. We would tear up pages; sit on the last bench and read the stories. Peeping into school bags when we had no right to do so. Typical Boyish stuff !

When i entered my 10th class, I asked my parents to give me a vehicle so that I could drive to school instead of taking the school bus. They gave me my first vehicle, a luna (Panther was the make). When i returned home at 5:00 in the evening, I was accompanied by my classmates on their Enfields, scooters and motorcycles. They would span the whole road and sing "Bade Bade pahiyo se badhi hai iski shaan, Panther, Panther". An advertisement on TV those days for the Panther I proudly owned.

School was fun. I wish i could sleep tonite in the stadium of the school under a clear blue sky.