As a friend has stated, there is nothing like nostalgia. It had hit on me hard ever when I had visited my school in my native place Eluru, from where I passed out my SSC.

View of playground and hostel. We were not allowed to play in this part of the ground. The extend of ground sprawled by the tree is infamous - for eating lunch below it almost meant being a victim of crow s**t. I cannot recall the exact positon of that overflowing waste-bin but there used to be one in my times too.

Quarterly exams Time Table. Order of subjects did not change - languages, followed by Maths, Science and Social. I used to wait for the exams, not that they bring along holidays, but to see the marks I score. Whereas my knees used to go weak at the very thought of exams and results in engineering.

Now, that was my classroom in 8th std. I was always a front bencher (sparing in movie halls) and was the favorite of some teachers if not all. I won't say I don't remember getting punished. I remember few incidents because I got punished just those few times.

Corridor on ground floor, as seen from sports room end. Place of notice boards and also the shelter to have lunch when it rains. This wing has English medium classrooms and the other wing has Telugu medium, shown discretely as EM and TM respectively to on classroom doors, time-tables, blackboards etc. In between the wings is principal's office. We EM students would carry some subtle esteem that would shallow down during the exams (TM's English question paper would be very easy compared to ours but our Telugu syllabus and exams papers are same as theirs).

Above is St.Xavier's elementary school built when I was in 9th std. My sisters and brother have studied there. During intervals, they would buy things from hawkers sitting outside the closed gate. Exchange would happen from openings below the gate and half orange topped with mix of salt and chilli powder was the popular buy. This was a well kept secret for a long time.

Back at home, they used to imitate their teachers and sing the parodies and dance to the songs performed at the school functions. Not to mention the teacher game where both the sisters would be teachers and brother duals as student and peon.

Main entrance to the school usually seen bustling with hawkers and rickshaws waiting for the children to drop or to pick. It matched very much with the last snapshot I had in my memory.

Place to assemble for daily prayer and ocassional announcements. A different prayer on each day of the week, followed by a thought for the day and news headlines. Then they would play music (as in parades) with two students playing drums and we would march till we reach the stairs on the way to the classroom.