Memories of something or someone special never die. It lives with us throughout our life. Bitter ones deserve to be forgotten, which instead haunts us when we are marooned in our island of thoughts. Happy memories bring smiles, followed by the grief of their never coming back. When old age grabs us, there is nothing to do but go to the backyard of our life.

The memories which will never leave me and will always stay alive in my mind are those of my school life. The very school where I entered the kindergartens and after 12 long years I came out to be one of those millions & millions of race horses in the race of a job. I also feel that I was the dough which entered the oven & after 12 long years I came out baked as a cake. I recollect and reverie the days I had spent in my dear school.

I remember my first four five days in the school and how unlike other sobbing and howling kids I was very happy. But a few days later, God knows what the devil entered me, I sobbed, I creed, craved & finally I had tried to jump the BIG gate. With streams of tears running down my round cheeks, I was dreaming to break the shackles of restriction. But gradually everything became normal and the days went on glibly.

Talking about our dear playground, I will tell you that it’s each every corner knew me very well. I remember how we gamboled all around the ground, how we played, fought, gossiped, planned to bunk the classes or fire a big cracker and all the childish, devilish stuffs.

In the 12 years of my school I saw 12 different classrooms and I bet all of them still remember the tiny, plump, chubby cheeked boy, I bet they still remember the boy who was always good to them, I bet they remember the very naughty teen, I bet they still remember me. The corridor was one of my peculiar schoolmates. It knew me more in my last years. I, my friends and our dear gloomy afternoon corridor have spent hours together when we were punished and sent out of the classroom. I remember the corridors and I believe the corridors remember me.

Many a time memories of friends, foes, teachers dance in my mind. What to say more, only we have to accept that talking of schooldays is Sisyphean now. Neither these memories have an end nor are the days coming back again.

I had always a grief in my heart that I couldn’t set my foot in the school with the same indifference. Yesterday, when I visited my school, first I felt to be an outsider. Looking at the vast sandy field with patches of new grass, I felt the fields had forgotten me. All alone I was standing in the middle of the ground. I was recollecting my old days. The wind was blowing on my face and I could smell something very familiar. Minutes went and a strong breeze blew the sands settled all over my body and I got an old dusty feeling. The wind was humming a tune which was very close to my heart. The sound of the emptiness and the occasionally humming wind created a vacuum in my heart. Suddenly I got a feeling.

I felt as if they were trying to tell me that, “You belong to us, still you are our very own, You are Our Good Old Guru.”

(In 2002 I had written this page after visiting my school and today, I thought of posting this emotional experience in rememberance of my happy days of my life)