Hallowed Corridors

Offtopic : 1) My last post was not exactly yesterday. I have tons of stuff to write about but somehow lack the execution with which I am satisfied. Hence I tend to have a few incomplete docs in "My Documents". My new computer and better net connection will hopefully make me a better blogger.

2) I also put a lot of passion into my blogs and can't write when I don't get the feelof it. A large part of me is smirking and telling me that I am plain lazy.
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The last viva of my engineering career got over a couple of days back. It was a relief to walk out of it, never to face strange externals and smirking internals. My friend(Abbas) and me decided to visit our school which is located right behind my college. Abbas was a year younger to me at Christ Church school(CCS). We never knew each other at school but had similar experiences.

Both of us were happily anonymous and were utterly confused about life and times during our school days. I put it that we just took like 15 years to get accustomed to the world around after our birth. ( We cry as we are confused on being born, the lights, sounds and PEOPLE scare the umbilical cord out of us. We both seem to have stopped crying but were similarly confused throughout school). I passed through school similar to a blind man walking without a stick in a rain forest. The highest post I ever held was desk monitor when in the 5th standard. To cut a long story tiny, I spent my school days catching up and fitting in. Abbas tells me, he spent his- brooding.

Hence, it was with mixed feelings that we entered our school gates. The place was deserted as the vacations were going on and the watchmen were kind enough to have a free run of the place. That walk around school on the 9th of May healed me. A lot of confusion, wounds and regrets melted away.

My school was initially meant to be a school for poor Europeans and had a very post Victorian design and legacy. The school was dark and cool. Not a soul around. As I entered the first floor corridor, a tingling sensation that comes with bottled emotions exploding overwhelmed me. Memories of far ago started running towards as if it was suddenly lunch break and the whole corridor was teeming with seven year olds. I joined in the 2nd std. I vividly remember 3 incidents of my first day at CCS:
1) I entered the girls bathroom.
2) I got my chair taken away when I entered class and plump I was on the floor.
3) I was helped up by Mrs. Bhagat - My class teacher and my first crush.

Nothing much changed during the next eight years expect that I never entered the girls toilet again.

My first class was just as I remembered it. The furniture was from the lands of Lilliput. The 2nd and 3rd floor evoked very similar memories. The staff rooms, the computer lab and everything deserted. But wherever I looked, I saw tons of people. Wherever I looked, I saw me - in different stages of childhood. White stained shirt, dirty white pants and a crooked green tie. All those regrets of having a below par school life washed away like the tide washes away things written in sand. I realized that I am what I am because of each and every event that happened in my life. The person that is me (whatever is me) is because of each second that I lived. If my school life was any different, I wouldn't have been me. That walk through empty corridors taught me never to regret even a second. Never to regret events that have gone past. Each and every second is a brick on which we stand.
I remembered how I used to fly out of the house with socks in my pocket, tie around my ear and toast in my mouth because the bus had arrived. I remember a large cock called Mr. Khan chasing the living daylights out of me. I remembered going over a broken wall with friends to get ice cream. We also used to search for stone age tools at a deserted corner in school. Things came flying at me with every step. Lots had changed in the school but the aura hadn't. Endless memories that would make this a very long blog indeed snapped playfully at my feet. The silent school and its deserted corridors whispered : "Good to have you back, Mr Chatterjee, things were not so bad was it? Dont' always trust your memory. Face your past and walk into it, the minuscule specks of bad times will fade away and all that you will see is the beautiful colours on the canvas. Your Alma matterS, always."
That was the lesson I got, the final lesson from my school, seven years after leaving it. Life is beautiful - change your vision.