We sat near the stairs…

….and the memories flashed back.

After the pool side dinner in the evening, we were just sitting & chatting. Suddenly some thread of the chat took all of us back to the school days.

The excitement of the first day in a new class when we got the new books, to cover them with brown cover and polythene sheet properly….and then the search for the proper label of our choice: cartoons, cricketers, cars, flowers….for name slip. After sticking the label, the small little fight with the siblings at home that who will write the name on that sticker. The great collection of different kinds of pencils & erasers. The excitement and the wait in the primary classes that when we will get promoted to the senior classes & start writing with a pen…..Hmm…..

Filling up the fountain pen with ink at night….and sometimes we will forget…..then we decide of buying the pen with a big ink tank so as to last for at least two days to save us from the ordeal of filling up the pen again…..

Someone used to go in a ‘Tonga’ (horse cart), someone in bus, and trying to finish up the homework in that moving ‘Tonga’ or bus.

Some of the coolest things used to happen in the physics lab, when sometimes you won’t get the proper measurements and sometimes our friends won’t get it. With this there used to begin, the quest for tweaking with the lab instruments, to get the right value of the temperature or the correct value on the potentiometer. When nothing worked out, the final resort was to copy our friend’s readings in our practical notebook. ;-)

The chemistry lab was in no way less interesting. The experiments with pipette, wen sometimes the soln., will go inside…Ah...that taste of the base…. I can still feel it in my mouth, if I think.
I remember in one of the lab exercises we were performing Titration. Our lab assistant was a lady. One of my classmates, after every five minutes was taking his test tube to her & asking ‘Mam, is this color OK? ’ and she will say, ‘It is supposed to be still lighter Anurag, you should get the light tinge of pink.’ Poor chap, he will go…add some more base to the test tube and go again to Mam. After three times, the fellow came near me. I was standing near the sink. He opened the tap, added little water to the test tube and went back to Mam to show. Mam was impressed to see that perfect tinge of pink, she took the test tube in her hand and said “Attention class, see Anurag has got the perfect tinge. You all should perform the experiment SINCERELY like him & this is what you all should get.”
…..SINCERELY LIKE HIM? :- )
Do you still remember that last minute submission of the assignment after copying from some friend…?????? *winks* ;-)

Gone are those days, but the memories will remain.