The halcyon days of Darauli 1

Our school was approx 1000 km far. We would walk to school with our box filled with our books, note-books,pen,inkpot and a jute-mat(to sit on the floor, rather earth because our school had no building). One or two guys had bags and they would flourish their free hands and tease us. Poor us! We would carry our boxes with our left hands when our right hand grew red and tired and started hurting. We would talk so much, share so much of our stories and make a world of childish fantasies where everything was happy and problems had no entry. I vaguely remember the days of my early childhood when I had just entered std 1st after passing LKG. I did my UKG after passing std 2nd! It happened because until then I was in Hindi medium. My parents had to demote me to get me admitted in an English medium school. After an year that I took admission in std 3rd, in Hindi medium again. :)

We were not very fond of sunlight. Our bodies started melting under the sun. So whenever some cloud like a kid-loving hero of a comic book would come to our deliverance by covering us from the innumerable heat arrows incessantly fired from the sun, we would feel relieved. One of us conjured up a wonderful formula to prolong the fleeting moments of cool and comfort. And it was incredibly easy! All we had to do was to clench our fists tightly as soon as the sun was eclipsed. It seemed to work also. At least initially we found it pretty effective. But sometimes it flopped. The wise innovator would then blame the carelessness of one of us because the formula was undoubtedly infallible. Each one of us would then vow of his and her sincerity. We would then decide to clench our fists more tightly from next time and drop the matter.

There was a place(I dont exactly remember what it was. The place I lived was rural and very open.) in our way. A mad man used to reside there and would walk on the road nearby. All of us were scared of him. We would stop and wait till he went away if we saw him. My kid sis would hold my hands strongly while we passed that place. I would feel like superman then and pretend to be absolutely insulated to any sort of fear. But I was perhaps more afraid than her because I had to keep my composure too.

And my father would give us a rupee in the morning as our pocket money or as a token of his unlimited affection for us. After the school hours we would eat 'fuchka' with that money. The fuchkawla seemed to feed us some 'hazaar' fuchka by that money. Even then I would hope my sis to finish early so that I could eat her share too. But she was a hell of a glut! But I loved her. We used to eat our tiffins together in the school field with a lot of flying eagles above our heads. Some friend of mine had warned me of eagles. The eagles pounce and snatch the bread out of a kid's hand leaving him or her hurt and terrified for lifetime.

I was 'relatively' a good student and I used to top the class. I was even bored of topping the class. I remember once I failed a paper just to see how does it feel when one failed? The experience was not very encouraging when my father came to know about it. No, he didnt flog me or something but still I dont remember repeating it, perhaps because this idea didnt seem as interesting to others as to me and I was slightly disappointed with the anti-climax. Some 3-4 years later I remember urging my teacher to give me 'Better' as remark on my handwriting sheet instead of 'Best' because I was sick of it. There were some 'Good' but one of the trio was conspicuously missing and I was not very happy with it. I wanted all!!!