Long forgotten friends took me years back in time...
28 yrs!
The colonial buildings,the lofty trees with the nesting cranes,the stone benches,the meandering paths,trellis covered with creepers,
narrow staircases,the school building with so many entrances,dark corridors,a lift!..the charms of vikaasa were many.
Wide eyed - with hesitant smiles.. we - the new comers stepped in to make new friends,fit in ,and perchance study !
I dont know how it happened but we girls had to occupy the first row. I was sandwiched between Nina my south paw friend, with her continental clothes,ready smile and misleading softspoken gentleness and serious studious Akthar. With guilty pleasure I recall the horrible plots Nina and I used to think up to trouble the chem and physics lab assistants who were too strict with us! She could sweet talk Mr. Venky to free all the white mice and stand her ground that even from a different angle her artistic hibiscus was still a scientific diagram! You rocked Nina!
Across the aisle was Shoba my dancing friend striving for perfection and precision in everything.Next was Shyla the artist.We so liked your people on paper with big soulful eyes , sombre expressions and the earthy colours.Then of course was Brindha from Botswana with her ready smile and perfect diction !
Somehow the coolcats of our class Nikhat, Sudha and Uma were in the last row with Thiagarajan, Vijayarajan and Udhaya banu and seemed to be having a rollicking time always!
Nikhat could do so many things it was amazing play basketball, the guitar, croon along ,run, jump and be such a fun friend too!
Sudha had a little sister who called her Sukka which fit such an endearing,sweet, ever helpful friend even better .Umsy with her basilik glare and no nonsense ways turned out to have the warmest smile dimple et al to be the sweetest friend !
In the second row were all the brainiacs of our class. Can remember Arvind, Ramakrishnan, Vanchi, Prakash ,Mani ,Robert ..always furiously working on their maths, racing to get the answers first and scaring dimwits like me by their very brilliance! Vanchi's cryptic sense of humour riling poor nikhat always and Mani's amazing gk all had a charm of their own.
And we had so many rameshes in our class, S G SV who were only known by their initials finally! Brings a smile to recall sv singing ,playing,whirling around to dazzle and impress! Remember Eapen ,S Ramesh so quite and courteous... Srinath my sisters friends brother... Narayanaswamy the tall quite one from fiji ...
Kumar and G Ramesh the star athletes seemed to be Mr. Reddy's assistants leading the horrible drills and endless laps!
Some of us who were allergic to maths Sudha and me and others did advanced english instead with sk the sweetest most tolerant teacher, So we got to know Kiran Chitra and all the commerce group folks as well Maddhu, Rita and her lovely sisters,Sita , Sharon the perfect one!, Rajesh, Ashok, Deen, Chockalingam, Anand, Satyadev and his karate greeting, Ramesh dagga and everyone else!
So many memories rush in ... Thiagarajan frightening poor Miss Sashirekha, Sudha's shoelace as ribbon tied to a chair ,sharing laps and art class with mads,veena classes with shoba...
Inspite of the awkwardness of teenage I'm glad i was there... 28 yrs ago.. to find my best friends for life !
sumi
