happy days

"those were the days my friend

we thought they'd never end,

we'd sing and dance

forever and a day,

we'd live the life we choose

we'd fight and never lose

those were the days

oh ,those were the days "

previous post has made me all sniffly and nostalgic for my school days..
oh those days.. they're all bathed in a rosy pink glow , when all was fine and the world was great. that's the thing with memories ,all the negative stuff is eroded away, leaving the soft cushiony bed of good times and great fun.

i remember being woken up at 6 in the morning but refusing to leave the bed till 6:17 . early morning baths were mostly conducted in a zombie like state .
i remember last minute cramming , with everybody walking around the school campus with their fingers stuck in their ears and reciting formulae . i wonder if i anyone ever benefited from it?
i remember my panic attacks during exams . i was always quite sure i would fail maths coz i just never got it. and then chemistry came along and between both of them they just about managed to finish me off.
i remember the days when all that mattered was that i perform the best - life was an endless see-saw of marks . they were it .
i remember walking around the entire house reading shakespeare ( english- my fave subject ) and desperately calling up friends during frenzied attempts to solve physics sums.

and of course , the day when we woke up and looked around and discovered 'boys' - suddenly they were all around..how did we ever miss them?
i remember waiting for my friend's bro in front of his school ..this was undoubtedly the best time .. surreptitiously checking out cute guys and then later dissecting them ' i think he looked at me' , 'what do u think it means?' , 'does he like me?'.. ah.. crushes were the order of the day.
i remember being upset at never being allowed to go to the socials.. the day after would be spent in furtive gossip with loads of glance-sneaking at the girl who had danced with the cutest guy.apparently we were all convinced we were the stunningly attractive ones and many days were spent in visualising our dramatic makeovers.
i remember going to the city hub on saturday evenings , with absoloutly no intention of shopping and with all intentions of drooling over guys. i wonder whether it was just my hormones , but every guy i came across was devastatingly cute and definitly the one i had to spend my life with.

i remember the time when all that mattered was that i have enough time to go to my friend's place.
i remember the starlit evenings on her rooftop when we both felt we were poised on the brink of discovering our exciting lives .
i remember hazy afternoons spent spinning long yarns about our future romances and glittering careers and long vacations abroad.
i remember hating her and promising myself i would never ever ever talk to her - not even if she begged me to.
i remember spending an hour after school just walking around the school campus talking and talking and talking .. despite having spent the whole day glued together in class.
i remember calling her up the very same night with truckloads of information i just had to give her or the earth would self destruct.

i remember the last day of school before the summer vacations - the anticipation of loong lazy sunny days to come .
i remember the utter glee at unexpected holidays - even when all we could do was go home and study or watch tv.
i remember sundays , the only days when i was fully awake while taking a bath.
i remember being absolutly delighted whenever my mom bought me a tee - i thought i was the bee's knees.. and that everybody would be satisfyingly dazzled by my painfully hip self.
i remember drawing and painting and creative writing .
i remember S.U.P.W. and needlework and the last ditch attempts to complete it.
i remember the feeling privileged at being asked to deliver notes by teachers or alllowed to write on the blackboard.
i remember collecting report cards while full of gut wrenching dread - feeling low, low and lower when i compared my marks to others or feeling higher than ever when i topped.
i remmeber parents being proud and buying me a book as a treat. i remember the agonising and detailed decision making between two nancy drew's.
i remember the prize distribution days - feeling exuberant at being a part of the best in school.
i remember the solitude of the library - the ingenious rota system my friend and i came up with so that we could read two books a week.
i remmeber morning assemblies , the hymns the prayer ' our father in heaven ....'
i remember the christmas concerts - the plays, the songs , the choir , the story of jesus and the feeling of contenetment .
i remember the sports day- feeling self-conscious in shorts and blushing with embarassment when the boys arrived.

i remember hating the rival school girls and sniggering at their uniforms ( ours were definitly better and still are)
i remember the day i was made a prefect .
i remember staring in awe at my badge coz i had spent most of my years gazing respectfully and with wonder at the prefects - that hallowed instituition of the trusted ones.
i remember sobbing on my last day in school - 12 years of memeories - a lifetime in an instituition.