My school

My sister finished her 'middle school' and went to a school run by a convent. Having studied in Kannada medium till then, she continued in the same medium. But she and all children in that section had to face a lot of discrimination. the humiliation she suffered can be narrated only by her. Anyway, the JSS institution opened an English medium school right next to our house and she was immediately shifted to the new school; and we all followed.

The school premises was a sprawling 2 to 3 acres of land full of trees and weird looking buildings. It was a film shooting studio and for what reason we don't know, it was sold to the JSS Matt. So when the school was started, all the old structures were there - huge halls with high roofs, some broken spot lights and reflectors still hanging from the wooden beams, round 'mantaps', and make up rooms - to name a few. The make up rooms were our class rooms. One huge hall was an assembly hall. Another hall without roof - it had all fallen - was haunted, we were told! the mantaps were used by us to sit and have lunch and sometimes to teach the unfortunate friends who were labeled 'dull'.

But we had a lot of place to play. There were mango, jack fruit, coconut and many other fruit trees. We would explore the wild growth behind our class rooms and come across many surprises. You will not have seen so many varieties of butterflies even in a book. the varieties of beetles we had collected!-fluorescent green and blue ones, black ones with red spots, some with red stripes, some with horns and some with a fan like antennae. Big, small, fat, lean, ugly, beautiful,it was something that could be described just like how rats are described in 'Pied Piper of Hamlyn'. I did not know much about the birds then. There must have been plenty of them. We recognized only the crows, sparrows mynas and koels.Wow! we had a nice time! I mean outside the class. what we did inside is a different story. :)