Eighteen years later, I returned to where it began

At its 60th anniversary, Woodlands House School became a meeting place for the past and present, where old friendships resumed and childhood returned, if only for a morning.

The morning of 13 August was unusual. I came back home with a school memento, like a school report card.

My mother held it, hugged it and, like any sacrosanct object, kept it carefully away.

It is a symbol of love, respect and admiration.

After eighteen years, I went back to my school, Woodlands House School, as it was celebrating its sixtieth anniversary.

It was established by Mrs Rup SP Singh in the year 1966.

Located in the picturesque, serene foothills of the Zabarwan mountain range and Takht-e-Sulaiman/ Shankaracharya Temple, the sight of these mountains was a constant shade during childhood.

The school was started with a few students, but with her persistence, dedication and devotion to impart education, its enrollment grew.

Her initiative to impart education to both girls and boys came at a time when there were hardly any private schools.

We joined more than three decades after its foundation.

In retrospect, we studied in the silent lap of nature. Those days, everything was less. Less noise, less traffic, no social media, fewer schools. I don’t romanticise the past, but it seemed we lived for ourselves in an anonymous world of our own. Everyone knew each other.

Now we are drowned in each other’s constant updates but never aware of what is going on in each other’s lives.

I left early in the morning when other students were also leaving for school.

However, this time I was alone. No grandparent, uncle, aunt, or any of my parent accompanied me to my bus stop. No school bus was coming to honk. There were no friends.

Life had happened, changed in eighteen years. We had drifted apart. Floated in different parts of the universe. Our own little worlds shackled us. We couldn’t fly back to school. Everyone had grown old. Most have become parents.

Seeing parents and teachers grow old often shatters something inside silently. It probably also tells us something about ourselves too.

Nostalgia crept up; childhood memories swirled as I met my batchmate, JP Singh.

For almost two decades, we could never meet despite living in the same city.

Today, as our alma mater had invited and considered us for an alumni talk, we had the opportunity to revisit school. We met as if we had parted yesterday. Really JP? We lived through times when we listened to cricket matches on pocket radios together with constant fear of being caught.

Irrespective of the team we supported, our friendship won. Our class had Hindus, Sikhs, Muslims, but there was no religion. We were just friends. We still are.

After all these years, my words flew and vanished as I entered the school gate.

As students were preparing for morning assembly, tears welled up in my eyes. I couldn’t speak. The past was meeting the present. I was staring in silence.

We had been absent from the school for a long time as alumni, but it greeted us with an overwhelming love and respect. The lovely, innocuous, obedient students welcomed us.

Our teachers should have punished us. They hadn’t marked us absent. We hadn’t marked ourselves present. It is their lovely, mild punishments that shaped us and our future. It instilled in us the sense of right and wrong.

They were our guardians when the fragile seeds could have been trampled, blown away by vicious winds.

They shielded us then with their teaching and now with their prayers and love.

Irrespective of any generation, everyone adores childhood memories and school days. Everyone loves their school, school friends, and teachers.

But once they leave the gates, once they stop wearing school shoes and uniform and wait eagerly for lunch break and games break.

So did we.

Everything was triggering memories of childhood. Each student of each different class reminded us of our own days when the school and its devoted teachers laid our foundation to be better human beings and students of knowledge and wisdom.

They imbibed values which shaped us so that we could contribute to society.

We came from a generation when neither social media nor mobile phones existed. Neither AI nor ChatGPT.

Our sources of seeking knowledge were limited, and we had only one address: teachers and books.

Now teachers say times have changed, and so have students.

We hold our teachers in deep reverence, as these were the values imbibed in us from home to school to society to media.

Has anything changed? Evolved or devolved?

However, teachers’ respect was paramount in our lives. We idolised them, as their behaviour shaped us. Our parents always expected us to respect teachers.

When we were punished, our parents considered it the teacher’s right and contribution to our shaping as better humans.

I am not espousing corporal punishment, but I am seeking a space for a teacher where she has the right to assert her authority and guide.

Unlike today, when boundaries have blurred between teachers and students, leading to the worst outcomes, our generation of teachers and students had a relationship of a parent and a child. The teachers were accountable for their behaviours, so were students. Boundaries were sacred.

Today, looking back, our teachers, who taught us different subjects, laid the foundation and made us resilient for future challenges.

The school’s infrastructure and pedagogy have evolved and developed. These teachers, whose contributions remain anonymous, are everywhere, in everyone’s alley of memory.

They are not mine; they are yours also.

We had a few minutes of alumni talk in the morning assembly with future generations.

“Life is beyond the books. It is the values within you that teach you to be empathetic, compassionate and loving towards fellow humans. It is life and life’s purpose,” my friend said.

As I had to speak, I reiterated that I restored my hope in backbenchers, as it is they who usually do well in life.

After school, life is full of unschooling. Life is mostly EQ, not IQ.

We laughed with wet eyes as our teachers were hosting us. Usually during school days, we were summoned for mischievous activities, but now our teachers were full of pride.

The seeds they had planted, watered, nourished, and protected had grown into trees with a shade spreading each day.

This shade belongs to them; here and hereafter.

“But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived a hidden life faithfully, and rest in unvisited tombs.” ― George Eliot, Middlemarch.