Tears of happiness--- n laughter!

To start off with...let me give you a small introduction of what this post is all about! Well youre about to read my diary entries...those lighter moments of my 12 years through that home away from home.You might have guessed it right! LOYOLA!.Making a statement, I dont think im going to wrong anyone if i say... Loyola is the most fun-filled place on earth!(maybe coz its not a co-ed! HURRAH for those jesuits who made it so)Maybe all of you will be convinced if you would read Jiby chettans post -- http://jiby216.blogspot.com/search/label/Campus%20Nostalgia . What could me more awesome than those moments of joy the school and its staff have gifted us! Thank U God!

Off to the UKG!
YEAR:1996
6th period was about to end.Some bell rang somewhere.3 of us, me,arjun n ambrose dashed for the slides to play(in d rain.... :D) in the run for the glory of the person to reach the slide first gave us no time to notice the environment..as always..arjun reached first, me a close second, turning back..we saw an empty park! the realisation that the bell was rung for the senior school was accepted in disbelief.(we didnt know to say "shit" then..but we exclaimed something of similar meaning) .Running back to class, we found our dear old Vimala Madam standing there at the doorway, completely devastating the previous definition..her eyes were raging with fire ,and the heat burned us out! ---stood in front of the class for the last two periods!
There was this guy named Govind Padmakumar in UKG...who decided to pull on an adventure by staying back at school after class! He scraped off the 3-bus line and hid in the toilet till all the buses were gone..and then came out and celebrated the greenery of the school.Meanwhile his parents were rushing to school to find their "LOST CHILD".When he was found all he had to say was "orangi poyi amma...". A nice politician isnt he?

In the same year... a boy died of rabies...from a dogbite in the school. Deciding to play with the facts,(and to become a hero) I simply told Archith during the return trip that i saw a dog in school today..and i caught its tail and it licked me! He promptly reported it to our Laser Uncle.I was in for it...coz he told it to my parents.they really got worried and started to inspect me from head to toe.and upon finding a wound on the knee, they concluded that it was caused by the "dogbite"!(it started with "licked me" see how the facts are gonna turn) speaking to the principal, Father Mani, the best solution my parents could find were to ask my friends the tiny 5 yr olds, if anyone saw the dog licking me...all of them said they saw the dog licked me, but the colour of the dog and the place upon which it licked me differed with each kid. One said at the canteen,brown dog..the other said beneath the banyan tree...a huge black dog with a leaky mouth(nice description eh? wonder why aju couldnt become a story teller)..
My parents had no other choice than to be sure to prevent "the disease"..i had to undergo the pain of 5 injections.Wanted to become a hero..ended up with 5 holes in the arm....a simple lie...and months of suffering :D!

Lets move on to the first standard..

It was on a Monday…I remember that day so well because I faced my first test in Loyola on that day twas English,the test was quite easy though. Lets get to the point.

Bhanumathy madam was in class,as usual, teaching math. Nithish was engrossed in deep conversation with Sampath about of course some Big Babol tattoo.irritated by the whispers; ma’am makes him stand up and asks him to write the sum she was teaching 10 times.Nithish sits down, despaired, to discover an unbearable pain fling through him. The matter is simple..Arjun’s “pencil-held” hand was “accidentally” , kept perpendicularly to the bench.. In simple words…! Payyan had made a second hole in NVJs ass(well if u don’t believe me…. Just go and check! :P).Madam scolds Arjun and says.. “Mone…pena angane veykalle..murinju pokuule?” Payyan remarks, making a puppy dog face..”Madam..njan pena alla pencil aanu veychathu”! She’s left flabbergasted.

Chatty was the same then. He used to take up a seed from the ground and say, this is the secret of my size(thadi), when we all looked in awe, he would swallow it in a jiffy. Later on a discovery was made: The seed is poisonous! God knows how Chatty survived.Well we shall just be satisfied on the simplest of all logics. A cobra wins over a viper! :-P

Sampath was quite a popular guy among teachers then, his father being the city DYSP. One day in bus no:3, he beats Aswin to a pulp, next day when Aswin goes to Father Thomas to complain, Father Thomas punished Aswin.The reason is uncomplicated, Sampath expected Aswin to complain so he tells his father that Aswin beat him.His father informs the office before dawn! Father Thomas gets the impression that Aswin is a pretender. Besides hitting Sampath..he comes to complain against him,this is what Father thought.!!!!!!!!!!


Second standard was tutored by Elizabeth Madam then.

The old junior school building was awesome then. Built in Western style, the building used to build up admiration in all the onlookers. There was a building behind it then, yellow painted,quite unused building! The “haunted house” as it was nicked, send chills down the spine of anyone who went it! Suddenly one day, when Nithish was absent, Abin came up with a theory “Da avane innale aviduthe pretham pidichu thinnu – Vella saare itta aa pretham avante chora kudikkunnathu njan kandatha”. Well coupled with all the rumours of the haunted house… we all did believe it.(creative 7 year olds! :D) No one dared to sit next to NVJ the next day.They(We) thought he was a ghost!

Sometime later in the year, an image appeared on the yellow cracking plaster of the haunted house.. that of a lady, with pointed teeth and ugly features. It was drawn in charcoal and was labeled – Pretham….. Well, I just cant recollect the name of the
clever chettan who did it! That day was nevertheless the day of horror among all the youngsters. We went there in dread..with fingers on the lips..pointing to the image and telling one another, “ Nokkeda….athanu Pretham” ! One of the glasses of the building was found broken, one of the guys said “Eda, ee otta vazhiya Dracula varunnathu”! Well needless to say…. All of us surrounding him threw up our hands into the air, shouting “AYYO DRACULA VARUNNEEEEY” n ran to the park, spearheding the so called , instant news revolution! Overexcited children(specifically Chatty n his gang)did come to the class and say. , “Nammale Dracula pidikkan vannu, pakshe njan AUM ennui paranjappol avan karinju poyi”….Sometimes looking into the retrospect does bring up some funny incidents.. which can be laughed at all life. Such stuff which brought thrill and surprise to us when we were small……. Later realizing the crude face of the stupidity behind them.

Third Standard was superb. The limits of our zone of adventure in Loyola grew unchecked that year….. we wandered far out into the forest and the so called “cave”

Speaking of the Loyola “Forest” brings tears into my eyes… it was the place of boundless fun and life…. I pity my juniors, who never got a piece of the Forest! Loyola was a kutti-hogwarts then! Well…if u didn’t know…there were self proclaimed Kings of the Forest, and of course our small gang “The forest raiders”…we used to walk around with sticks and dig at places,inspired by the stories of balarama, about people finding treasures in forests! BELIEVE IT OR NOT! The first clue of a treasure in the forest was a rupee found on its mossy floor. I don’t know…. Didn’t we have enough senses to think that it was fallen off from someone’s pocket!

The best part is….no one dared to venture into the forest until third standard, because of rumors of a LION(pronounced “chingam” then) in the forest! We did not quite refuse the existence of a lion… but still tried to spread more fear among others saying “ I heard it roar”.

Ahh! If u want another piece of Abin’s imagination..there is the smoke man! Once, thick smoke was coming from the forest, and it could be seen clearly from our class!Abin started to make stuff like “Dey, athaanu smoke man. Shaktimaanile villain aanu… ayaal kochu kuttikale pidichondu pokum”. Well im kinda ashamed to say…we did watch our step that day!

Yeah, back to the cave! If u have seen the new lawn and the LCA shed above the stadium ground now, that place was an unreachable destination then! The only way of getting inside the heavily shrubbed zone was to climb underneath the fence skirting the forest, and run around the road to enter the other part of the shrubbery to enter the cave! ( Hats off to the guy who discovered the way) The cave was never really a cave . It was a series of circular roots of a plant that has pink flowers! The roots were looped around like a solenoid and the greenery around , protected it from sunlight, making it reach the same zip code of a cave!(No other name was convenient than a cave). It was Vivek CS, me and Nithish who reached the cave first from our batch! Well, considering this fact, we were free to say anything to our friends! First of all we went to the canteen, and bought a coke with NVJ’s 5 rupees and when Aswin came asking for a sip, I told him…, “da nokk, aa cavil ninnu enikk thady(wood) kond undakkiya oru 5 rupa kitti, athu vecha nammal ee coca cola vangiyathu, nee venamenkil poyi edutho, avide pandu manushyar thamasichirunnu…!” Aswin broke into a sprint! After lunch break, Aswin told us that he could not access the cave(lucky he didn’t know the way into it) We also told him that there are skulls in the “prehistoric” cave!

............TO BE CONTINUED..................(in twelfth std now...lemme see if i can get more tym)