Category Archives: Musing

2019 Secondary 4 Week 39 Update

Posted on by
Reply

School started for term 4 and GG also finally finished up her prelims. We are now counting down to less than a month to go to start of their written exams for the O level exams.

This week GG will also have her graduation ceremony and BB’s happens next week. Then next week is GG’s Science practicals while BB’s practicals will take place the week after next. After that it’s full steam ahead to the exams.

I am just looking forward to the end of the exams. I am so stressed with the exams even though both have gotten a place to study for a course for the next year. But still I want them to do well.

That is pretty much our week. Actually all our days are like this and will remain the same till the end of the exams!

Have a great Sunday!

School Stories: Sports Day

Posted on by
Reply
Source

One more story from my school days. Last week I was speaking with GG and BB and we started talking about sports days in school. BB’s school usually alternates between sports day and cross country running every other year and so I shared some stories about sports days in my school.

In my school, sports day usually happened in the second term, which would be after the winter holidays (you could not schedule anything before that because of the Mumbai monsoon) so it would be sometime in December/January.

Our primary school races are the standard ones and happen without much fanfare. It’s the Secondary school that has all the fun in my opinion. I’ve mentioned before how our houses are allocated and during the main sports day, one half of the stadium is split into four parts – each section for a house. So we generally sit in our house section and not with friends, because that day it’s house loyalty before family and friends.

The sports day would usually be on a Sunday and would start around noon. Once we reached secondary school, we would go on our own and my parents would come by later to pick us up. It’s usually a festive air there with hundreds of school girls screaming and shouting.

There’s fierce competition to see which house comes first and a blackboard in the centre of the field will usually have the current point tally going on. The prize for the best house, in addition to the champions trophy is the honour to lead the march past at the end of the sports day and this would be fought relentlessly.

The house I was allocated to, Shenaz or the Green House used to always win the championship and we used to lead the March past each year. I can only remember one year we did not. I must have been in grade 5 then and was the first time in the Secondary bleacher when this happened. What happened was unprecedented in the history of the school. Three houses were joint first and since three houses can’t march together, they had to toss and Godafried or the Red House won the toss! I can still see the red house captain coming excitedly to the stands to the house teacher and shouting that they were going to lead the march past while our captain walked by crying. We were second in the march past that year.

In the last few years in school, I used to get pulled into the march past contingent. We used to march wrongly while practicing thinking we will be kicked out, but no such luck for us! Being in the march past meant that we had to wait all the way till the sports day ended and could not sneak out earlier.

But it also meant a month or so of missing the last few periods in school going for march past practise in the garden behind the school. As I type this, I can hear the commands in head and the one arm length we had to stand behind each other. We used to wear a strip of ribbon in the house colour on the sides of our white shorts (we were one of those rare schools at that time who had to wear white shorts for PE and sports) and a cap in the house colour.

I just checked my school website and Shernaz is still continuing to rule, they are still overall champions, though some of the uniforms we used to play in has changed over the years. The march past is no longer in shorts, but in black long pants and they wear a house tee shirt over it, while we used to wear our school uniform shirt. The cap still remains and the school head girls and captains and vice captains all wear black long pants and a blazer (with the captains and vice captains also wearing the house cap). During the the I was in school, they all used to only wear their usual school uniform. And we also have a school band now! That looks so much fun, wish that was there when we were studying too.

The march past would be like in major sporting events. The head would be the school head girl carrying the school flag with her deputies behind her followed by the junior head girl and her deputies. Then we would have the first contingent which would have one girl (usually a small grade 5 girl) carrying the house name, followed by the house captain with the house flag and her deputies behind her. Behind them would be 30 girls marching in three columns. This would be followed by the house which came second and then the third house and the last house bringing up the rear. We would make one circuit of the stadium and the guest of honour would get the salute after which would be the prize distribution ceremony including that for the best march past contingent (which I can’t remember us ever winning). We would go home late evening, tired but happy with the day. The next day would be a holiday from school which was very warmly welcomed by all.

As with other school memories, this post brought many smiles to me as I went back decades to relive my school days. For more stories about my school, click here and here



2019 Week 21 Update

Posted on by
Reply

This week has been me in the sick bed pretty much the whole week.

I have been having some issues with my eyes for a while and it was diagnosed as dry eyes for which I have been getting treatment. Last week, in the middle of the week, just before bedtime, I felt a searing pain in my right eye and it felt like something went in. I rubbed the spot and went to bed thinking it was nothing. I woke up in the morning to an eye that was completely red and looked like something out of a horror movie.

I rode out the day thinking it will subside, but when it didn’t I called the hospital where I was getting treated and asked if I could get an appointment. I was lucky that I managed to get an appointment for later today.

I also saw my GP who suspected that it may be some sort of viral infection and gave me an antibiotic cream to tide me till my hospital appointment. I was also asked to monitor the situation and go to the A&E if it becomes worse.

My eyes have become extremely sensitive to light and I can’t use any electronic device. I am able to only use my phone for extremely limited amounts at a time.

It’s only now have I realised how much I depend on my eyes and how much I need it for my daily activities including hobbies. I have to keep taking rest very often to rest my eyes and find myself sleeping a lot. I have literally slept my way through the weekend and am joking to my family that I am clearing sleep debt of a couple of years this week.

Wish me luck as I see a specialist later today that it’s just a simple infection and that it gets cleared soon. I am having a digital detox this weekend and want that to also end.

2019 Secondary 4 Week 21 Update

Posted on by
Reply

We are at the last week of school now, though both BB & GG have to go back to in the June holidays for extra lessons.

Both schools are also doing intensive lessons for those who take the mother tongue languages of Chinese, Malay and Tamil. They will have their first attempt at the O level exams in the first week of June. Since both BB & GG’s mother tongue language of Hindi is not in this scheme, they, along with other classmates sit in the library and self study during this period.

We are also gearing up towards the Early Admission Exercise for Polytechnics. Both have specific courses they are interested in and will apply for them when the portal opens in end June. If they get selected in the course of their choice, it means even if their O level results do not meet the cut off points of that course, they still get in as long as they meet the polytechnic entry criteria and course base criteria.

That’s all from us for this week! We have the parent teacher session at the end of the week and I wonder what both sets of teachers will have to say for the children.

Memories: The time I repeated Junior KG

Posted on by
Reply

Do memories become stronger as you grow old? I wonder about this because these days I have been thinking about my childhood a lot. So here’s another memory for your reading pleasure plus for me to browse when I am old and probably senile.

A small background before I start – when I was young, I remember my dad telling me that our area was designed to be an educational hub when the city of Bombay was being expanded. So if you draw a circle of around 2 km diameter around my home, you will find many educational institutions like schools, colleges and even higher educational institutions. This includes my dad’s alma mater as well as the school me and my sister went to.

This memory is around the time I was about three years old. Since we had many schools in our vicinity, it’s quite usual to see students on their way to school in the mornings. Growing up, there were many people around my age group (give or take five years) in my building and when I was around three years old, they were all in school too. My mum was handling me and my sister who was a toddler around that time. We also had a fulltime mum’s helper named Maria who would come in the mornings and go back in the evenings and her main job was to help my mum look after two young children and play with me. Maria stayed with us for about two years and then left as she was getting married. By then I started formal school and my sister was also slightly older so my mum was able to manage without a helper.

When I used to see my friends go to school and also see all the children going to school from our home, I also decided that I wanted to go to school. However, the school my mum had decided for me would only take me in for Kindergarten 1 at the age of four which was still a year away. I have spoken more about the discussions and arguments my mum and grandmother had in deciding the school I would attend in a previous post.

I started throwing mega tantrums about going to school and used to create a ruckus at home because I wanted to go to school. Exasperated, my parents decided to send me to a school which was literally next door. This school would allow me to get into Kindergarten 1 or Junior KG as it was known in Bombay then. So I started going to school and was thrilled. I think I started school after the formal term had started because I don’t remember wearing the school’s uniform and used to wear my normal clothes to school. Most days, it used to be either my mum or Maria who would take me to school around 8:30 – 9 am and bring me back around lunchtime.

I must have been a model student there because the teacher who used teach me remembered me right around the time I was in college and would ask my mum about me when she met her on the streets. I used to be so touched when my mum used to tell me about her encounters with the teacher. Someone who in her career has taught thousands of students who pass through her class still remembers this one girl who was so determined to go to school, even though she was there in her class for less than a year. I actually have no memories about this teacher and don’t remember her name or even face.

So this is how I repeated Junior KG!