The days of my life
I had my early schooling at a Christian school called Our Lady’s Nursery. We used to wear a white Shirt with the OLN badge on our shirt pockets. This school is located at Pondy bazaar. I had many of my firsts here, obviously. Flashes of memories of me crying, blood on my shoulders, the guy called Vishnu, my two first best friends, everything is stil visible in my mind’s eye as i write it.
When i entered the school in LKG, i was Just one of the four guys in the class. the rest were girls… It sounds a pretty good thing right now, but i never got to enjoy in that kind of an environment the way i would love to, now.The other three guys were Sunil, Bhargav and ram narayan(i’m not sure about this guy). The last one was the dumbest of the four. He didnt even know how to make a boat. Sunil and me were the budding kids there and we both stole the limelight(or thats what we thought). I’ve been a teacher’s pet since this age and had enjoyed that feeling till 9th standard. Info about that will come later when i write about it. now back to my LKG and UKG days..
My class teacher’s name was Sandra. a very strict lady who struck terror in the hearts of the girls and never cared about us incorrigible guys. beautiful looking too. Girls, when very young, can be quite gullible and innocent as sunil and I found out to our advantage. There have been loads of incidences when we would commit some mistake and blame it on them!! Once when Sunil hit me, i started to cry, and he could do nothing to pacify me. then he said this, still vivid in my memory- “Enna da, Sai priya adichtala, va miss kitta sollalam” (what da, did Sai priya hit you? come lets complain to mam) i didnt know whether to laugh or cry about it, but i am sure that poor girl had a rough day because of a mistake that wasnt hers 
During UKG we were tutored/managed by Mrs Martha. a very sweet old lady who had a round face and always kept smiling, and we always kept complaining. After’s Sandra mam’s clutches were gone, we tasted a new found freedom and we relished it to the core. The number of girls increased and that Ram guy shifted to some other schools. So it left just the three of us, Bhargav, Sunil and I, to wreak havoc in the class. This is also where my saga of competing with girls began for the first time. One of the girls who consistently managed to get praise from teachers was Ranjini, a tall studious girl. She was touted my competition by everyone and my parents encouraged me to be better than her(Mum especially). This was when i started to realize that being on the top was not the important thing. Staying there is tougher, as Federer is finding it these days.
We both competed in almost everything possible. A mark here, a grade there we must have tortured the poor teachers for sure. She got the first prize in Handwriting and me in singing. A head to head competition. when you are young, you are so romantic that u always go for the kill. Mum still remembers me coming home, taking off my shoes falling flat on the ground and starting to do my homework. I wouldn’t've removed even my socks but the spark was burning bright that time around. My mum used to recollect that incident, and scold me for ages to come, saying that i wasn’t sincere in studies as before. but that will be after ages to come..
this was the last time of my childhood(and in my life as well) when i played freely with girls not bothering about anything, treating them just like i treated my Sunil and Bhargav cos this was all about to change in my next year, when i stepped into an all-guys 1st standard. A new saga began, more about it in the next post.
