School reopening and return of the monsoons

 In those days, monsoons started in the month of June. By the time, school reopened for the new academic year, even the skies used to mourn - turning several shades darker, hiding the sun. In turn, we boys used to mourn going to school after 2 months of our summer holidays. From playing all day to studying all day (Exaggeration intended. I have never studied all day.). From sleeping whenever we felt like, to sleeping whenever our parents instructed to. From eating raw mangoes and rai awlas, to eating healthy food. From being pampered by our grandparents back in native place to being disciplined by our parents. It was a return from Shangri-la and an entry into the dark and smelly school corridors. (I say dark and smelly, not because our school was unclean or anything. Only that it was relatively dark during rainy weather when school started and the combination of smells from the wet and dry socks of around 5 dozen kids smelled like sewage. Sorry for being so gross about it, but it was !!).

Some kids enjoyed returning to school. We used to call these kids as weirdos. From me and almost all my friends, love of going to school was a heinous crime and looking happy at the thought of going to school was a punishable offence !! I hated going to school, I hated going to college and I hate going to the office also !!

Returning back to the point, monsoons are wet as the ocean in Mumbai. If it starts raining, it seems like an eternity before it stops. And it rains hard. Children used to wear full raincoats. Most of us wanted their parents to buy them gumboots. I never got gumboots. My parents always bought me sandals. I used to crib at this at the time. Later I realized that, I am one of the few, who is not contributing towards the gross smell.  Also, those gumboots pick up water. Its like standing in puddles of water. You have to remove and overturn them, so that the water is drained away. Splashing and sploshing, we used to make our way to school from home. Outside the gate of our assembly hall, muddy footprints were all over. Obviously, there was a lot of slipping and sliding. The assembly hall was open at the sides and the sound of our assembly prayers was dampened by the noise of rain, pattering down the ground and crashing down the metal shades. When it was time to go upstairs to the classroom, it was again through the wet footprinted stairs. In the classroom, every now and then, we had to close the windows as children who sat near the windows used to get sprayed by rainwater ocassionally. On returning from school, some evenings were lost sitting at home, since it rained so much that one could not go out to play. Sometimes, however, my mother used to make paper boats with me and we used to place them in the large puddles of water, enjoying seeing the boat making off to far away downstream. Also, it was fun, when my mother made some hot ‘taakatla sabudana’ or something hot like ‘wada pav’ was bought. During monsoons, there used to be frequent power cuts all over the town due to rain. All of us (My colony friends and I) used to come downstairs for a chat, if it was late evening time. A return of power was almost always accompanied by a loud cheer from all over town. Sleep time used to come pretty soon, with me and my sister cuddling up to our mother, while my father used to read a book and go to sleep.

Im just re-living those days of monsoons back in school via this post. These days, I look forward to the monsoons, since it gives us that slight relief in terms of soaring temperatures. Rains do not come in June. It comes in July at the least. My daughter goes to school very happily. So a lot has changed. One thing hasn’t which is…..personally I don’t feel like going to office in monsoons to this day !!