The Alma Mater

It was supposed to be a simple in and out trip. Trip when you go visit something or someone on your way to something more important. This is just to be content with the feeling that you touched base with something that was significant to you some day. It was not going to happen with me that day though!
On my routine trips around the town, with small errands to run, I saw the old building and the big iron gates of my school. The place i spent twelve years of my learning little things here and there. I just fancied a walk around in the grounds and a look at the building long archived in the memory.
The hot wind blowing from those big grounds welcomes anyone entering through the big gate. The usual prefect at the gate duty and his whistle were not there...just a gate opening to the empty grounds. No one to say "you are late ", no fear of a whip although it did begin to seem i was late. The cycle stand was empty, no one to fight over parking space for their beloved bicycles. I stood there looking into a distance...distance that spanned years!
I saw students running, hurrying to catch up with the prayer queue before the dreaded whistle blew and the ground fell silent. The loud thanking to the God and the national anthem. The girls i watched through the corner of my eye. The long queues where no one walked a step without creating some sort of nuisance, all ending in the cool cozy classrooms where each one had a marked place, a corner of his own. God help those who had no corner to themselves, those were the ones supposed to learn all that was being taught. For others, it was either tic tac toe, hangman or simple inter-compassbox fight. As the years passed, these passtimes were replaced by stolen glances across the class.
The breaks used to be less of eating and more of "rappa-dhappi" (this word means a lot more than just a game of throwball). The tree on whose roots we sat eating the tiffins. It was sharing tiffins actually. No one asked or allowed, a friend's tiffin is a fundamental right!! The roots still stand there, god knows if someone still sits on them chatting and playing some childish pranks. The benches are all lined up, who rules the last row now is just a matter of changing times. The most favourite class used to be the Games class. It was the rivalry between the girls and boys during langdi or the more boyish kabaddi and stuff that all of us looked forward to. Cricket and football came later, it was the time of a simple dodgeball and the mockery of losers that follwed.
The building is now more colorful, new name, new room, new furniture. My eyes still tried to find that old wooden bench, the broken glass windows and the paintless walls with names written all over. I remembered the familiar tiled path to the toilets, the only solace we had from a boring lecture. The board with thoughts written on it, the tally of house points and the big brass bell that sounded the end of our day in those precincts. It was the people related to the building who still remain a significant part of all that we still remember.
Those familiar "baai"s who took care of us through kindergarten to secondary. Those rebukes for making the class dirty or not parking the cycle properly. They are still there, standing along with the high walls and gates as if pegging all our school days around them. To let us see those old times when we see them, talk to them. The teachers, most of them have moved on to better places (as if i would believe there are better places when i was back there). Those who still are there have now seen too many students pass from under their vigil to remember each face and name. Its all vague with them, you remember all about them, the small mischiefs and the most secret of names you gave them. They just remember the outlines of your years in school, some results and some awards. You try desperately to make them remember..as if it is going to give you something you have lost long ago. "I was the one who borke the window, i was the one who called you a parrot, i let out those taps in the toilet, i threw chalk sticks all around the class" Yes! pretty good idea to scold me for all that now...but please just say once that you remember me...just once.
You have by now been pulled back to the familiar days in school. You want to start playing kabaddi, just that there is no whistle to signal a start. You want to throw water on you friends and run away before getting wet yourself, only the friends are now far away. You want to ask more difficulties, more questions to those teachers, they are now busy with the new students. Your time has passed, as it had come, lucid and silent all the way, it has given way to new days and new feelings. What now remains of the old day is just the engram, some in the mind and a lot more on the heart. There is a child inside you which still wants to jump out and ride the rusty bicycle and race it to the school reaching before all to the coveted parking spot. The lad yearns to show a report card and ask for a new cricket bat this summer. He begs aloud for a small pack of cup cakes to be shared with the bunch of cronies like all other small stuff from marbles to radiums to stickers to trump cards. He is locked up somewhere, and you know you will not be able to get out of this magical world if he is let to have his way.
What was supposed to be a in and out visit, is now a long walk down to the golden times and as with all gold, you are reluctant to leave. The express way of your new world, your priorities is all tugging at you to start the run again, after all this is just a memory lane, you have to speed to your future. Why is it that you leave something behind as you move on? And more so, why does it keep beckoning you back to itslef, to relive the moments long gone by. You shake the memories away, you have to leave. Its a moving world after all, you have to move on.
So back to your bike you go still wanting to have one last race with friends the way you had after getting the latest model - better than all your friends. Its time and you turn to leave. Suddenly, as if from a long long way, through the distance of time rather than space, come those familiar words... " Roll number 13" .
A hand goes up, almost involuntarily, and you hear yourself speak "Present Maam !! "