The longest wait is over.
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April 1st 2003: The new Classroom with the same friends, I found a bench/desk looking like newer, cleaner and which was more comfortable for me and reserved a seat immediately for Hussain as he was busy looking at the walls of our new Classroom and I shouted "Hussain, Yaha pe aaja, Maine tere liye seat Roki hai" hahaha as if someone was going to snatch it from me. Hussain came and occupied it. We cleaned the remaining dust of our desk using Rohit's bag as he left earlier for the morning assembly hahaha, and after keeping our bags we rushed towards the assembly.
After the morning prayers when we returned back to our classrooms, 3 girls and four boys were already sitting in our classroom whom we never saw before, seemed like new Admissions.
Our New Class-teacher entered, wearing the brand new sky blue coloured salwar-suit with spectacles and hairs properly braided with single plaits, she was holding a book and diary and a purse hanging on her right shoulder. After our chorus greetings of "Gooooooooood morrrrrrrrrniiiiiiiiing Maa'aam" she Introduced herself "Good morning everyone, sit down, I am Mrs. Maria and I am going to be your class teacher for this year, and I will teach you EVS (Environmental Science). I am just like your mother and friends, you can share to me anything you want to. Now each one of you should stand and introduce yourself".
One by one everyone started Introducing themselves and it was gradually becoming inaudible as it was boring to me until suddenly a new voice reached to my ears "ma'am, Mera naaam Neerupama Bakshi hai and I recently transferred from Kendriya Vidyalaya Jamshedpur. My nickname is Neeru and I like singing and drawing...."
My eyes could not stop following the voice, fortunately she was introducing herself from just another desk beside me. If not minding the walk space between our desks, her bold and clear voice made me feel like we were sitting together.
I and Hussain met with the new guys after the first lecture, Gurpreet and Sohan were friendly among them, they both knew each other before joining here as they both were just a transferee from Kendriya Vidyalaya No. 3 Bathinda Cantt.
In Recess (Lunch time) these two boys brought us to school canteen where the brother of Gurpreet was waiting for him, Gurpreet Introduced us to him. Bhaiya then ordered samosas from canteen with the sweet red chutney poured on top of it.
As it was the first day of the new academic session, we just spent our time introducing to the every teacher came in, while the old teachers just explain that what would be her strategy to teach us and what does she wanted us to bring from the next days. Classes went well for the day.
While we approached our home there was an Army truck loaded with luggage standing in front of our house. A new family was shifting their things, they were allotted the flat just above us. A Punjabi Family with two kids, an elder girl and a younger boy. Hussain went inside his home shouting "bye Kundan, shaam ko aata hu, park me khelenge", "theek hai sham ko milenge, bye" I said, and walked inside my home.
Lecturers were taking there speed to teach, day by day load of studies were increasing and writing works and homeworks were consuming much of our time at home. In the classroom we were now four in a group, I and Hussain on one desk and Sohan and Gurpreet on the other. though we would sit apart in classrooms we would communicate through smiles.
Once Sohan was making weird expressions. He would put the first two fingers of his right hand on his lips and would blow off, as if he was smoking, and while doing so he would laugh every time, we couldn't understand what was he trying to tell.
In the lunch break Sohan took us to school canteen and bought a cigarette packet for all of us. Yes, a cigarette packet, a sweet shaped sticks which were booming the markets of India those days. But it was the first time we heard of it or saw it. "Oye ye cigarette kyu le raha hai?" Surprisingly Hussain asked, "bhai, ye cigarette nahi hai, ye meetha lagta hai dekh kha ke" Sohan replied with excitingly smiling face. He then took a cigarette and offered me, I with no idea of what it was just took it and still holding it in my hand and then we saw again Sohan repeated the same act, this time he was holding this stick and did the same, it was making sense now.
I tried it, it was sweet.
Below are the pictures of the product I am referring to:
These sticks used to taste like a sweetened white chalk which is painted at one end to make it look like a cigarette.
Surprisingly I just saw that this sweet cigarette came all the way from Pune hahahaha. What a small world !
[ Do read the previous Blogs to correlate with it. ]
Hussain, I and Kunal babu still used to play in the same park which was near to our building until when we became friends with the kids recently started staying upstairs. Her name was Lovepreet Kaur and her brother Amandeep Singh was age of Kunal Babu.
She was in 4th standard, a beautiful girl with brown eyes and long blonde hair which were almost always braided into two like a typical school girl's Plaits.
I remember the first time our eyes met when she came to our home in the evening with a tray loaded with Sarso ka saag and makke ki Rotiyan cooked by her mom for our dinner. I opened the door and out of dilemma shouted, "mommy...". Didi came first and asked her to come inside while getting the tray from her.
So, we stopped playing at park on a regular basis after becoming friends with her because then we were persuaded very well to play "Ghar-Ghar" game with Lovepreet. It's just like a roleplay game with toys to cook food.
Each and everyone was assigned a role, she used to be mom and I used to be a dad and our brothers were the kids. Leaves were the currencies, the vegetables etc. I would work to bring the food at home while she would cook it for all of us and our brothers would just play around her. There was a small area where no one else used to come hence we chose it to play there peacefully. After the meal, there used to be a time of sleep also, when we would literally sleep on the grass where Amandeep and Kunal Babu slept near and I and Lovepreet would do the same.
I guess this game was just what she or any kids see in their life. I realized it now that how every single thing parents do in their lives impacts to their kids.
Now we had two different options to play for, sometimes she accompanied us to the park and sometimes we accompanied her to play her Ghar-Ghar game. Summer Vacations started and we left for our hometown Muzaffarpur.
I don't remember much of it as muzaffarpur was always like a transit place for us, as after keeping our stuffs there we usually travelled to our Grandmother's place, my mommy's birthplace "Balmi Sirsiya".
Balmi Sirsiya is the place where Almost all of our vacation time have been spent. We used to meet out Cousin Golu Babu (Sahil Kumar Sharma),Saurabh babu, Mukesh bhaiya and Vicky bhaiya and lot of Mamas (maternal Uncles) and Mausiyas (Maternal Aunts).
Sirsiya is very beautiful, peaceful and a happy small village with less than 200 families and all of them knew each other. Farming being the only source of income of the village those days where the people for so happy of what ever they were doing. A small heaven where everywhere greenery and Happiness was seen. Outside every home there were cows and Bulls. I and Kunal babu popularly known as Atal Bihari or Atalji in Sirsiya village used to rome all the day from this corner of the village to the another corner of it, from one jungle to another of it and we really enjoyed doing it because we felt like explorers while doing that.
Nani(my Grandmother) and Mamaji( my Beloved Mama) loved us more than anyone we know in Sirsiya. While we set our goals to visit different places every Next day, likewise they set their goals to feed us different cuisines, different organic fruits grown in the farms every next day. From Blackberry to Mango to Litchi to jackfruit to iceapple to date palm to mulberry etc. Etc. Every day Mamaji used to feed us with different fruits while Nani would cook delicious cuisines by herself to feed us.
Sirsiya is the place where we were pampered to the heights of it.
The speciality of the Sirsiya was that everyone knew us from our mother's name
and any home we entered we were never left unfed.
That's how Sirsiya looked. There were no roads in the village, electricity poles were there but no electricity, bullock carts were the means of transport, but life was still good there. It was all natural.
Golu Babu's schools were still open for one more week, we would just start attending the classes with him as Mamaji would scold us too for always roaming from morning to evening in the village. So we would sometimes attend classes with Golu babu where Pawan Kumar Mama, Vishal mama, Bittu mama, Deepu mama, Ujjawal mama and would also be there. Their morning prayers were different. While Kvians ( students of the Kendriya Vidyalaya school all around the world) sing "Daya kar daan Vidya ka hume parmatma dena..."
In that school they sung "Tu hi Ram hai tu Raheem hai, hey ishwar..." After prayers we would accompany them to Classroom, Atalji (Kunal Babu) would accompany Golu Babu and Pawan Kumar mama and I used to go with Bittu mama. Since there were no desks in classroom we used to sit down on floor with self brought mats to sit-on. The school was developed in front of our eyes year by year, there was a time when the classes started under the biggest and oldest Peepal tree of the Sirsiya and soon small temporary structures were made which by next year was transformed into a wooden building with three Classroom and then bricks building with classroom. One thing was sure, though the facilities were not so good, but they had a best teachers to teach, one teacher would take two to three subjects and would Use whatever resources he had to teach the students at his best. The teacher was also somehow our Mama because everyone in the Village would either be our mama or mausi or nana or nani etc.
So there was not a single place where we could not trespass easily. Nani would say "Jail se chhuth kar aaye hai dono nati(Grandsons) mere, inko ghumne do jaha ghumte hai, koi inko nahi rokega-tokega" she would just tell the whole village that no one should stop us from playing or roaming anywhere in the village or farms.
Summer vacations are longest Vacations in schooling days. It was early june already and rainy season was about to begin with its first rain happened in the week.
I still remember a day when clouds were roaring and suddenly the extreme bright light of the sky turned into a soothing blue and the hot summer loo turned into cold breeze, all of us were just looking at sky and then it started drizzling, we all kids started dancing in joy while gradually the speed of the rain, the amount of it and the size of rain drops increased and so do our Happiness. They would say a phrase "Ek mutthi Sarso peet peet barso" when they want more rain. All of us started shouting this phrase again and again and then Pawan Kumar mama said "Chalo Aam ke Bagaan ki taraf, there must be mangoes falling from trees", so in that heavy rain we, completely wet with full excitement ran towards the Farm, there were already Bittu mama and others collecting mangoes, we started collected some too.
Kids nowadays would never know the joy of it, as most of them would be afraid to get wet and if someone likes rain they can only enjoy it on the limited area of their terrace. I just call myself to be blessed to enjoy those moments of the life. Which nowadays people crave for.
Summer vacations ended and it felt like it ended in a snap. We were not ready to go back to Bathinda but as kids, who cares our feeling? All those elders who were nice for us seemed cruel for the moment.
Relatives gave us money as Blessings and to buy candies but our mommy would as always get it from us. I guess this happens with every kids in their life.
This cycle goes on and on until you become adult.
We came back to Muzaffarpur, our transit home back then, spent a night there, prepared the luggage and next day we boarded from there on the Train Awadh Assam Express.......
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