School life was to me a time which I wanted to get out of while I was in it.... and to which I want to get into while I am out of it! And it was only later that I realized the fact that everybody felt the same way. It felt nice to know that I had comrades who felt that the ritual spanking at school was much better than what we encounter at Grad Schools, and Colleges, and businesses and, in my case, at work..... They say 'join Infosys, and your life is made'..... and they just stopped short of saying with what.... for life is made from that moment on with project deadlines, unimaginable schedules, night-outs, skipped meals, office during weekends, screwed up romances, and every other difficult thing..... and all these have to be shared with office parties, project parties, games, and fun days...... well, it is indeed difficult finding time for one or the other. And then they say Infosys has been the best employer for about 300 years in a row.... in India.....

To be honest, I have not slogged as much as many in my office really do...... In fact, I have not even put in a regular 18 hour schedule..... but somehow I still miss all that the life during school days offered me.... It was strictly 08:40 to 16:00, and there was only as much homework as the next television programme. Of course, we only had good old Doordarshan then..... Anyway, when I do a line by line comparison of when all I remember to have got kissed by a teacher's cane at school, and when all I have been sweetly reprimanded at office, I would always vote for a return of the school episodes...... And here they are, the some of the less embarrassing ones......

KG I I was an early starter, and Mrs Marilyn Gomez blessed me with one on my hand too...... to start off a glorious chapter during my school life. I still insist that I was innocent.... but we have an adult's conviction pitted against a 4 year old toddler's cries of innocence.... So, maybe I had done something wrong..... Ouch... It pained.....

I Std Tamil Miss, PT Master's wife.... and the fear factor among all RSK A Sector Primary..... and the crime - I did not take to school a notebook.... and I somehow uttered an unutterable fallacy.... Holy Rome..... thwack! I hated her then..... and rejoiced when the scale broke over the next guy's hand.... It (the scale) was a weak thing, and there is no credit to the force of the thud! Today when I look back, probably the best lesson that I have learnt is not to not tell a lie... but to tell one sensibly!

Somewhere in my II - V life 'Horin' Miss - I still somehow have never known how she spells her name, or how we have to pronounce it...... And I was class leader in III A....(How the guys hated me for that!)... and it was her class, and she had not yet come.... and I marched straight to the Staff Room to drag her in.... and somehow, there was a role reversal...... Thankfully, she let go of my poor ears just millimeters in front of the classroom, and I walked in with dignity! Moral of the story - Always, look before you leap! Do you really want to bell the cat?

Meera Miss - She was teaching us handwriting in IV standard.... and it was a day when I forgot to take to school my handwriting notebook.... And in the morning, after crying two Ganges, and an Indus, I went to her, with tears in my eyes for special effects, and bellowed the fact. She asked me to go to class and await punishment....... The bell went, and I was almost [CENSORED] when she walked in..... She was calm, and dignified... as Mrs Meera always is.... She asked about the homework and all that.... and I was hollering mutedly..... And then she asked if all of us had our handwriting notes..... Nearly three-fourths of the class did not have it.....and after about fifteen minutes, they did not have their palms unstained either..... except, of course.... mine! By presidential decree, I was offered a Royal Pardon, as I had informed her previously. The lesson learnt... if you do not have something which is necessary, tell people concerned. If you cannot make it to a meeting at 5:00 because you have your niece's birthday party to attend, tell your boss you cannot make it. It always helps.

Helen Miss - She was teaching us Tamil in IV standard, and we did not have a proper classroom as we were in A section, and there were only 14 or so of us in Tamil in that class with a Hindi Majority. And she asked me to fetch the Tamil Composition notebooks, and that was in Class IV C's cupboard. So, I left the language room (Opposite to the staffroom in the Ground floor of E Sector), and went to the IV C and asked the Class leader to hand me the books. Venkatramen B, handed me the books, and while I was coming down, I noticed that the first book in the bunch was mine. I felt proud... and happy... what a coincidence! And when I finally reached the class, Miss noticed that my notebook was first, and she questioned if I wanted to receive my book first. When I said yes, she said that I had kept that notebook first on purpose for me to be given the book first. An inquiry was also held by calling in Venkatraman. But finally, the accused was branded to be guilty without proof. And I had my notebook in the end. Moral of the story: Do not count your chicken before they could hatch!

Junior School had a lot of silly rules, and if you got through it without having as much as burnt your nail, you are a crazy Neptunian! One day you had to only walk through the stairs in the eastern side of the building, and the other you had to only run by it. The next day, you could only look at it as it was reserved to the teachers, while the very next, you could only play football there! Well, it so happened that we got it all wrong, and Vijay Krishnan and Arun happened to be playing running and catching, and I was watching them when our PT Master (Anyone remembers Patrick Sir?) happened to remember what day it was, and came marching down Brother Head master's hallway. All three of us could not sit for sometime after that! As far as lessons go.... be awake when you are asleep.... more important.. be awake when the others are asleep!

I am sure there were many more... if I say I did not get a single blessing from our PT Department at Main School, I would be lying through my teeth...... and there was this occasion when I was handed a gift in the form of a neat red stripe when I failed to get the names of the talkatives in a classroom shouting even louder than a parliament at session in India..... and there was an occasion when I was blessed because my classmates were not going in a single file from the Music Room to the class in Junior School..... Hey All, as Class Leader, I have given more blood than to mosquitoes!

Sitting back in a huge office room, with instantaneous Internet access, and email and connecting to friends across the globe even faster than it took to have a letter of mine delivered to Santhosh, my best friend at BHEL, during the vacations..... I sit and think.... have I gained anything? Or have I lost something? I do not know.... but the lessons I have learned at school went beyond the academic texts, and covered the entire spectrum from how to ask to go to the restroom to how to utter a lie. For, without those, something would be on fire! You are only a part of who you are by acquiring the seen..... the majority of you comes from what is unseen..... Thankfully, I managed to see the unseen, at least 7 years since I left school......

Vijay
(Vijay managed to scrape through RSK, and managed to get into Engineering at Shanmugha. Did not know what to do there, and stood first in his course. By accident got a job in Infosys, India's best employer, and does a lot of work - mailing, writing articles, organizing company programmes, parties, Alumni programmes.... and still thinks he has not left school.)