I visited my old school today for what was probably the last time. It was the investiture ceremony for the tenth grade – which had been the seventh grade when I was a tenth grader. How time flies, and how quickly immature little brats grow up to be immature not-so-little brats is astounding. (To my consternation, I learned that the kid who was bestowed the glorious office of the Captain of Literary Activities, which I had held back in my day, is the fat little clown with a face as big as a family-sized pizza who recited unintelligible Hindi poems at the assembly on a regular basis.) The school looks oddly smaller and more claustrophobic than I remember it, possibly because there are more students now, or because I had an exaggerated memory of it. I realize that I sound like an eighty-year-old at the end of his life. In truth, it’s been only two years since I graduated – which is very little, considering that the earliest entries of this blog are mostly based on my tenth grade experiences, and that this blog is only three years old. At any rate, I will fastidiously chronicle the events that took place during the one hour that I spent there on what was otherwise (or nevertheless) a boring, cloudy day.
The first person I met was Mrs. Smita, my eighth grade math teacher. Thereafter, I met: Mrs. Thripathi, the head of middle school, who dyes her hair orange; Mrs. Karabi, my history and geography teacher; Mrs. Zehra (“Z”, as Nanochip and I called her behind her back), my eighth grade English teacher, and her sister Mrs. Fatima, who taught me English grammar in the sixth grade; Mrs. Sulabha, my chemistry teacher since the sixth grade, who, as always, gave the impression of being on crack – and for some reason, she gave me a candy; Mrs. Harriet, the physical education teacher, an ironically old woman with little capacity for intense physical movement; Mrs. Kusuma, the vice-principal and my ninth and tenth grade English teacher, who, in her usual unpretentious, dignified manner, gave me a candy bar, out of respect for the contributions I had made as literary captain, I would think; Mrs. Sarita, the computer science teacher; Mrs. Ghosh, my brother’s first grade teacher; Mrs. Anne, my elementary school computer lab instructor; Mrs. Gelusia, a fat lady whom I had apparently impressed with my wit back in the eighth grade; Mrs. Shanti, a teacher who hung out with Gelusia; Mrs. Kalpana, my biology teacher since sixth grade; Mrs. Sonia, my ninth grade Hindi teacher; and Mrs. Rachana, my seventh and eighth grade Hindi teacher, who had a sadistic penchant for making fun of my disappointingly poor Hindi (today she smiled wryly, and said, “Now you won’t have to know Hindi anymore.”) It was rather a nostalgic visit. Maybe I shall return a second time with Nanochip before I go off to America.
That has to be the briefest chronicle and the most verbose paragraph I’ve ever written in this journal. Still, it serves its purpose well. Let’s quickly move on to a different topic, so that I won’t have to end this entry right here.
I made a rather ambitious reading list for myself that I showed Nicky. I have come to realize that it would be impossible to finish even half of those books by August. Here’s the list: 1) The fourth volume of Churchill’s The Second World War; 2) Jeffery Archer’s Sons of Fortune; 3) Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables; 4) Dante’s The Devine Comedy; 5) Ayn Rand’s Return of the Primitive; 6) Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter; 7) Homer’s Iliad; 8) Spinoza’s Ethics; 9) The Queen’s Thief series and The Magicians; and 10) The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch. My loyal readers, it has been an honor serving you. But I’m not sure if I will be able to come out of this alive. Fastidious Chronicler, over and out.
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