I was on a call catching up with a friend of mine. In the background, his younger brother’s voice leaped decibels. Turned out he had reached the morning assembly late that unfortunate day, to consolidate the memory of which, his teacher had decided to pen it down in the remark section of his diary. Just then, my door-bell rang and my sister dragged herself in. I watched her fall upon the sofa and tune the television set to Pogo.
Very gradually the assortment of stimuli poking my mind began to weaken. The afternoon sun died out, and the rosewood furniture disintegrated into grains of sand and for the next subsequent few minutes I let my subconscious self steal my attention, as I began to pace past the memory lane of my good old childhood days.
Everything that succeeds school times is so much in contrast to what we imagine as kids. College is drastically distinct, though the thread of attaining education persists as one of the very few links. Professional courses may yet be segregated as disciplined, though most students may express disagreement. School was about not feeling miserable after witnessing the near end of the sunrise. It was about rising above lousy whims. Nobody missed the day for the heck of it, or perhaps because they were much too engrossed in snoozing their cell phone alarm. Sure, the rise-and-shine bit never happened to a lot of us back then either, but we were small in size and that gave our folks a hassle-free ticket to pulling us out of our tiny comfortable beds.
Then came morning prayers, somebody reading the news, the whole swarm singing the anthems and songs in unison, waving ‘hello’ to a friend from another division while returning to individual classrooms in an admirable file, listening to every lecture diligently, standing up for the visiting teachers in respect, exchanging evident dirty looks with the monitor ex-friend of yours because she wrote your name on the black board, sitting far away from that boy who your fellow batch-mates tease you with, hurrying down to the ground in the lunch break because you want to sit with your choicest friends and share tiffins because secretly you think the other moms make delicious food and you’re sick tired of your own roti-bhaji, running back immediately as the sound of the school bell hits your eardrums, and screaming out loud as the day ends with that deafening trrring, and rushing outside the school gates so you beat everybody else to the coolest window seat in the bus.
Advancing academically from primary to secondary school, and degrading in terms of dedication, from tiffins, to tiny friends in half pants, to being teacher’s pets and crying at home over every scolding; to bunked lectures and black lists, torn jeans, messy hair-dos, to incomplete assignments, and last minute studying for exams; and peeping into the future - resumes, internships, jobs and responsibilities, sure, we’ve come a long long way.
School is, without a shadow of doubt, the most incredible kick-start the life of any little child could be blessed with. And it’s not just fond memories and the most special friends you carry forth, when you cross the campus walls to get to the other side.
The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 states that The Government of India shall provide free education (fees, uniforms, books) to children between 6-14 years of age in a neighborhood school till completion of elementary level. Our major responsibility is that it requires proper implementation. And implementation can be taken care of only when everybody at the ground level learns of it. May the children who have been unfortunate learn about this before they have wasted their childhood years in factories or on the streets, instead of school classrooms. To make the Right to Education Act successful, it is important that each one of us knows about it, to get every single girl and boy into school.
Make A Difference. Do it for India's future.
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