I clearly remember the day I first entered into my class room. I was ushered in by somebody ( I donot recollect who). The class teacher looked at me from tip to toe. The boys and the girls giggled. The reason was my size. I was looking too puny. There was an empty desk near the girls’ desks. Little realizing that it was the seat of a girl who was absent on that day, I sat there. The giggle changed into a hearty laughter. Someone from the back-benches even gave a  very loud lip-sympathy on my discomfiture. The class teacher had to put on an air of mock seriousness and asked the boys to keep quiet and brusquely told me in impeccable Sambalpuri (of which I could understand very little) that the desk was meant for a girl and I must come to the desk at the corner of the second row. My self-pride badly injured, I silently walked upto the desk shown to me and sat down. The class-teacher asked me my name and the school I came from. His second question was the meaning of the word ‘Longitude’ ( Why ‘Longitude’ of all the words is a riddle, which I have not been able to solve as yet ). Looking back on these days, I find that my puny stature and thinnish look were assets because the titter of my class mates at my size filled me with a sense of determination. I resolved to be at the top of the class to prove that my intellect was inversely proportionate to my size. I developed a stubborn inner resistance and a calm resolve.

Later when I read Churchill’s ‘My Early life’, I found that young Winston had similar harrowing experience in his school. Being poor in Latin, he was first refused admission but a  far-sighted. Headmaster took him in. His proficiency in the classics and Mathematics was so poor that at the roll call parade, he used to stand at the bottom of his class and listen to the sarcasm of the onlookers who whispered about his rotund appearance and remarkable dullness. As Churchill writes, that gave him the drive, which gradually was in-built into his personality. The humiliation at school was the inspiration for the bulldog determination of later years. Thus the spirit of ‘Blood, Sweat, Tears and Toil’ of World War-II was born. How important are the impressionable years at school !

In 1947-48, when I was a student of the Zilla School, Sambalpur was a sleepy little place with no electricity and no water supply. Except for some areas, the flickering kerosene lamps used to give the town an eerie and mysterious atmosphere at night. There was the famous Pantoon bridge. Decision had already been taken about the construction of the Hirakud dam. There was considerable unrest in Sambalpur with lathi charge and arrests. In 1948 I saw Nehru laying the foundation of the dam. He addressed a mass rally at the college grounds. His charisma had a telling effect on the people and the opposition to the dam melted a little.

As students we had a lot of respect for our teachers. Though, as all school boys do, we used to howl and shout, but at the appearance of any teacher, a hushed silence used to descend over the class. The teachers used to take a lot of interest in the students. I do not recollect if any one of them used to entertain boys for private tuition. The lessons in the class-room were so lucid that necessity of private tuition never arose.

I cherish very sweet memories of my association with Sri Satyanarayan Bohidar, who was teaching us Oriya. I met him at Sambalpur, when I was under training as an Assistant Collector. He was overwhelmed to know that I have competed sucessfully in the I.A.S. examination and for a few seconds became speechless. Such undiluted love for students is rarely found. Sri Manmohan Patnaik was not taking any one of our classes but all of us had deep seated respect for him.

When I was in school, India became independent. Almost all the people were out on the streets to attend the hoisting of the National flag. Sri N. K. Choudhury unfurled the national flag and gave a short speech at the Police Ground. He was choked with emotion and so were the people who had gathered for the occasion. I remember that some sweetmeat shop-wallah distributed sweets free and most of us made a bee-line for the shop immediately as the parade and the flag hoisting ceremony were over. Again being puny in size, I could not push my way through the jostling crowd. A young man realizing my predicament rushed into the melee and gave me some lolly pops.

In the afternoon of the Independence Day, we had a school feast. All of us had to pay Re1/- as contribution. The richer boys paid more. The feast was scheduled to be held at 5 O’clock in the evening. After walking a lot in the morning, I had become a little tired and had an afternoon nap. I had given strict instructions to my servant to wake me up at 4 P.M., so that I could have clear one hour’s time before the community feast starts in the school premises. Being tired I fell fast asleep and woke up to find that it was already 5 P.M. I dressed up in less than a minute. We were staying up in the Brooks’ Hill. Lest I might be late, I ran through the paddy fields to the school, I sustained some bruises and by the time I reached school, I was dusty and perspiring. The feast had already started and I found out my classmates, sat down there and spread a leaf before me on which food was to be served. Though we had been told that a lot of mutton curry and other delicacies would be served, we found that hardly a piece or two of meat fell to our share. The items served were far from delicacies. Later on I learnt that the boys of the tenth and eleventh classes, who were managing the show ( I cannot vouchsafe for the truth) had kept the Lion's share for themselves and we were treated as poor hyenas.

Sports and athletics were greatly prized those days. the annual sports of the school was a great event in the school calendar. There were a lot of field and track events and the boys who used to get prizes were looked upon as heroes. On the sports day, my impulse led me to overestimate my abilities. I offered myself as a competitor for the 100 meters flat race. The whistle was blown and all the competitors raced for the tape. After running for half the distance I realized to my chagrin that four boys were running ahead of my and I had no chance of beating them. I clearly remember that I stopped for a second or two and looked back to ascertain how many were trailing behind me. It gave me great consolation that I was not going to be the last man to breast the tape.

My size was a great liability. I was not given a chance in the best eleven of my class in foot-ball but fortunately there was a foot-ball match between the two sections of my class. I was possibly the lastman to be in the team of the Sixth ‘'B" section. I was chosen not because of my outstanding soccer abilities but because we had to field a team of eleven at least in a foot-ball match. As the match started, I found that I was nowhere never the ball and the players were dexterously dribbling the ball past me. I was playing in the forward line. Realizeing that by running about I would only waste my energy and probably be helped out of the field due to sheer exhaustion, I took my position at a fixed place at my opponent’s side so that when the ball would come to me I would kick it into the net. In the first half the chance hardly came, I almost stood like the statue of Olympus with the same amount of detachment towards the game. In the second half the one in million chance came. I got a clear pass from the outside right and God alone knows wherefrom I got the energy. I banged the ball into the net and was literally lifted and carried on shoulders by my admiring team-mates. It was my D-Day.

Nothing now remains of the school building. True it was a drab-looking mud-plastered hutment. It had nothing of the posh look of the present school building; but it was certainly sui-generis.