A Walk down the Memory Lane...

Recently I got some school and teenage times pictures of mine scanned and uploaded on the social networking site-Face book which brought a whole gang of my school and college friends into action...commenting, remembering and poking, for all of us batch-mates were stirred within by a churning feeling and yearning to return back to those good old days. As we conversed and communicated, the past memories came unraveling and filled me with that deep sense of something lost, when you feel happiness and sorrow at the same time. Joy that these days did come in your life at some point and despair that they passed by so soon!
Some of what we remembered I would like to share here...

This must be when we were in Grade 5. Normal children at that age are coy and geeky but we...na ji na...we never did confirm to any standards and sought to shatter them whenever they sternly towered before us. I would either scandalize you or cause you to break into guffaws with this, but either ways this must come out. We were not horny or malevolent...just simply fun driven. There was a gang of some five of us and what was our favourite once-a-day drill? To bend down under the benches and be able to tell what colour the girl behind us, with her legs spread apart almost always, was wearing....ewwwww gross when you think of it now. But then an insane competition would ensue of who would succeed in knowing the maximum colours and also making predictions of the colour next day! How we judged the authenticity of the winners was subject to much controversy and eventually got the cat out of the bag. The age old tradition was quite nipped in the bud, but then it was maha adventurous till it lasted. I guess all-girls school or an-all boys school are indeed injurious to health of growing children, for see how we have turned out to be!

This next anecdote must be from the time when we were in Class 11th, I think. A beautiful rainy day of monsoons like now and my friend Surabhi and I decided to go for a drive to grab up some eatery. Now my little town has a famous street called Arya Nagar with equally little food shops fringing either sides of this long lane. It is like the Mall Road of big towns and the hang out for youngsters. So like they say “mulla ke daud masjid tak”....whenever we would want an outing, Arya Nagar was THE place to go to, with its shops offering nick-knacks to tantalize the taste buds and “items” of either sex hovering about to capture the eye of someone who’d be interested...

So dressed in beautiful Indian suits, we parked our car on the opposite side of the street of a shop which had two handsome famed hunks of our town standing under its shed. Hmm...We were out on a prowl and had just found our targets. This was our destination for ‘ek teer do nishaana’ syndrome...khaane ka khaana and harmless display of ourselves and some eye tonic as well...Why settle for less, when you can get more, simple fundas!
So with oodles of style pouring out of our pores, we moved out into the pitter patter to go to the next side of the road.

Handling our duppattas with great ada, unruffling our mildly wet hair, pulling our salwaars mischievously some 7 inches above the ankle due to water all around and smiles playing on our faces...what hopes of great conquest we thought awaited! Surabhi moved out first and just as she was about to walk out to the spot, she went off my focus and disappeared...
Aha, no magic there my friend....because when I looked around I did not see her, but when I looked down, there she was stretched out upon mother earth. Apparently there was a main-hole or something open, just outside the shop and she had dropped into that full on, since due to water logging on the street, no inch of the ground was visible. Suppressing my laughter and thinking how dumb she can be to fall before the hunks and let me add to my market value by rescuing the damsel in distress, I took the giant leap for mankind to lend her a helping hand...

And voila! The very next moment I joined her on the ground for it was not a main hole but a drainage line...And for the next five minutes, what did we do? We sat flat out on the ground, right in the middle of the busiest high end street of our town and laughed our guts out.

The handsome hunks had more of surprise on their faces than any kind of conducive impression that we had expected to create...But they also lost big time on our cards for not being chivalrous enough to come forward to help. Probably they had learnt by my example and feared wetting their branded clothes...So after being completely drenched in that street water, a pathetic sight to look at probably...we still had the balls to walk past these guys and order our burgers...went full on back in the rain, laughing and dodging the conspiring drainage to latch onto us again. What a day! Those out on a conquest had been conquered and tagged with being the dumbest girls but we had loved each moment of it!

Aaaaaaaaaahhhhh...so much more to share...but let me keep that for a sequel for just these two memories have left me with a sweet, light aura that I would like to linger...So until next time let that child in you stay alive! I stopped growing mentally after the age of 21...and no fatal damages have been done so far but letting me rest in peace. So stay alive and kicking!