Fourth chapter in In Search of Swami series
Oh!! Just reading the last three chapters, I forgot to mention the name of the school. Should I mention it? It is Sri Vidya Mandir at Salem.
Up until 5th standard, the class rooms were on the first floor of the hostel. After 5th standard, I had to go to the adjacent building and ground. The classroom was a familiar environment. Since it looked similar to my previous school classroom and emotionally it gave me a familiarity. First day, all the teachers asked who were hostellers and day-scholars. I don’t know why they asked it, but that was the first staple question. Later I found out that there is a gethu-effect on being a hosteller.
There was also segregation on who knew Hindi and who doesn’t. Remember, I was straight into 5th standard and I don’t know how to read/write/speak Hindi. The spectacled Hindi teacher, Reena miss, wearing matching ear ring and bangles, said that those hostel students who don’t know Hindi will have special tuition, which will be taken by Muthu Krishnan pandit. Yes, like how Tamil teachers were called as Ayya or Amma, Hindi teachers were called as Pandit. Sanskrit teachers were called as Sharma. There were no female Sanskrit teachers!
Our class teacher was Ramesh sir. He took science and looked like the Nivaran 90 ad guy!
I acquainted easily with other students. Suresh, Bala Subramanian, Vidya, Aravind (he was a hosteller). Yes, it was co-ed. Suresh, short guy, walked limping for some reason. He was a Mike Tyson fan, on the very first day he reveled it to me. I asked him “Who is Mike Tyson?” He didn’t talk with me the rest of the day!
Bala, taller than me with the well-oiled hair, he might now look like Clark Gable. His father was a banker. All his notebooks were covered with IOB oil paper sheets.
Vidya had an unkempt hair, which made her terribly unattractive in front of Maha Lakshmi and Radha. These two were a different league. Padips. So we don’t need to care about them now.
Aravind was from North India, technically central India, Madhya Pradesh. He will be my best buddy for the next three years. His mother was a singer; she once sang “Papa Kahathey Hain” in the school anniversary.
Enough of the school, let’s go to the Shutter Island to see its rules and regulations.
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