School, Nostalgia and Big street

“Hey, let us get out and take a look at our school,” I told my cousin Babu. He agreed reluctantly but quickly introduced himself as an ex-student to the person closing the school gate who then opened the door and graciously let us in.

As we entered the gate that Saturday, the air was thick with memories of a happy three years that I spent in the school and its associated hostel when my parents were abroad. I was there in the Chennai school -the Hindu Senior Secondary School from Class VIII to Class X.

A quick glance at a board revealed that my English teacher Prem Dulari had been the principal of the school for 24 years. I glanced at another board and saw the list of toppers in the 10th standard and the 12th. Standard board examinations. I remembered the debating contests that I had won, the music competition where an unforgiving audience had made me vacate the stage, the teachers and the school romances.

Soon it was time to catch- up with an office staff-- Ms Anuradha who to my considerable discomfort remembered Babu and not me. I learnt from another member of the staff that the hostel had been closed down and now housed classrooms.

I was saddened by this but then everything changes with time. When I said my goodbye and moved out-I saw one enduring remnant of the hostel- the metal statue of Saraswati-the goddess of learning atop the building which had housed the hostel. There were other changes as well with a couple of shops that I had known including the appropriately named Fancy Mahal having disappeared. Nor was the bakery in front of the hostel where I had gorged on cakes present any longer. Clearly, the times had changed.

So had my perception despite the nostalgia and the sepia toned memories. I realized that the road in which the school was situated was nothing more than a narrow line. Ironically, it was known as Big Street when a more appropriate name would have been Small Street. It was me-- the school boy who had grown into middle age and fatherhood. My son Sandi has now begun school and life has in many ways come a full circle.

Big Street has been replaced in my life with ambitions big and small. A corner of Chennai has however forever become a part of my consciousness. As the poet Wordsworth wrote in his poem ‘The Solitary Reaper’—“ The music in my heart I bore long after it was heard no more.” It was wholly appropriate that I had learnt this poem at the Hindu Senior Secondary School-Chennai.