15. Earth Day

In Search of Swami series. Semi-autobiographical work about my school days. Sri Vidya Mandir, Salem.

Every time any activity happens in school, the first line of students to be called in was the hostelers. Be it to control the crowd in annual day, doing drills by building human pyramids in sports day or to plant saplings around the school area, it was always hostel students at work.

It was a Sunday morning, since the exams were around there was no TV session, so we were put to study. Me, Aravind and Vino were at the first floor study hall along with the other students, who were pretending to read. Nagaraj sir, who was in-charge of the Shradha hall, came with a volunteers call. As usual, I put up my hand. He said the school management is looking for ten boys for a stage show, which is to be held the next day morning along with the school prayer. He picked ten from the eager looking souls, who were trying to escape the study hour. I was one among them. He asked us to go to school, where we will be briefed by PT master.

Aravind said, “PT master! I thought it was some kind of drama or stage play”.

In ten minutes we were near the school stage. The stage was newly built; it was almost seven to nine feet in height from the ground level and nearly 30 feet wide. It was so big that it housed the school PT room underneath it. For my size, it was so imposing.

Unaware of the activity, we were waiting for the PT master. After sometime, Kathiresan sir came in his bike. He said tomorrow is earth day and so there is a drill program is to be conducted on the stage.

The drill was usual; it consisted of floor exercises, a pyramid formation and then a flower formation. After rehearsal, Kathiresan sir asked us to assemble near the stage at 8 AM in the morning, before the prayer. He also asked us to wear brown colored pant.

I didn’t have a brown pant and I had to barrow it from Vino, who was shorter than me. The pant was way top of my ankles and the zip was not working. I managed to patch up the unsafe place with the safety pin. The next morning, when we went to the school, we found heaps of leaves and small tree branches near the stage. We were asked to remove our shirt and asked to tie the leaves on our body, like adhivasis. The idea is we were “trees”. Super, on an earth day, someone had this idea to cut so much leaves from the tree!. Worst was yet to come.

The chief guests, who were supposed to give short speech, gave elaborate and extempore speeches for more than one hour. So the drill which was supposed to be started on 9:30 AM was held at 11:00 AM. And, we were in that leafy costume for more than three hours.

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Chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19

*** Above image by the blogger