The Way Back to School.....

The last day of the holidays folded all the month long of homely fun. The very reminder of going back to school incited a gut clenching feel. The home that day would turn into a gloomy ghetto filled with only talks of pressing dresses, packing the eatables, taking measures to protect the project works and bearing all the morality talks from the elders in the home. After all the cozy comforts of home, going back to school was a nightmare. The way back sure was a heck of a struggle, battled by almost all Navodayans I suppose.

From waiting in the bus stop in the village to entering the dormitories in the school, there was a choking, uncomfortable feeling. It was like the ‘butterflies fluttering’ feeling when one's hungry. The heart beat fast and the tips of ears used to be warmer than usual. Also, all along the journey, the incomplete assignments reminded the knotted faces of subject teachers and made the experience still haunting.

This anxious feeling had it's stages. It shot up progressively as I got closer to the school. From home to Dharwad bus stop, it was like the silence before the storm. The blabbermounth in me would not talk to anyone more than necessary. After reaching Dharwad old bus stop, seeing the other dull faces like me invoked bit of variations in the anxiety. For example, meeting a topper guy of my class would make me more uncomfortable as it reminded me of the assignments and that guy would have completed single one of them. Again, there were guys like me, whom I met like my own alibi.

Then there was the bus journey from there to school. Maybe the Kyarakoppa buses knew all our extreme emotions. From someone's ecstatic moment when leaving school to the nauseating tread while entering the school. The bus full of navodayans with different shades of paleness carried emotions of its own. From the more petrified sixth standard kid to the ‘holding their shit together’ seniors, all had their own fears of entering the gate.

The final stage of this anxiety began once the bus crossed the pedha factory. There was this room for the peons beside the gate, on which ‘Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya, Dharwad’ was etched in bold blue fonts. It was visible from around the distance of some 200 meters. After covering some distance from pedha factory, it was visible. The sight of that churned my stomach every single time till I completed school. My insides quivered and I think that was peak of it.

Once inside the gate, the anxiety faded slowly. The long road, the old faces with some new stories along with the evening roll call by the teachers reminded us our place. The house cleaning, preparing the bed, going to dinner rotating the plate, the prayer and the food laid some ground for the day ahead. Some peaceful sleep and irksome whistle in the morning pulled it out of us to dissolve us in the routine again.