School Schedule and Pune

From Dubai, we took refuge in Pune.

The school that we joined was Spicer Memorial Convent School located in Aundh viz; few kilometers from our residence. Then, it was considered as one of the best schools of Pune. I thank my Dad for going an extra mile in putting his hard efforts behind admitting us to the school. I remember mom telling us that he sold off our first color television to afford the school fee for both of us.

Most of you would agree that life's most amazing memories transpired back in school and so do I. With a mix breed of students we always had company of locals plus Afro-Americans, Russians, Africans and Far East Indians. Our school had almost everything, from gigantic class rooms, to out of the box syllabus, extra ordinary auditoriums, huge playgrounds and all bound together with strict discipline and order. 

Things have now changed by far and large at the school now, as a couple of my cousins are still studying from there. The school has converted from a temple of education into a commercial corporate venture. 

I studied upto 5th Standard and had bought the material for 6th, however, due to some dire sequence of events we had to move to Mumbai.

However, those 7 odd years at school scored a lot of memories. Memories which are now a part of my conscious. Few of them being:

• the fear of dogs while walking down the school
• shooting the same dogs with sling shots and rocks
• swinging on the banyan tree branches while waiting for the bus
• traveling without tickets in bus
• making friends with local shop keepers and buying stuff for discounted rates
• having a dose of sneezing powder for free and sneezing all the way to the school 
• boasting to friends claiming we visited places during vacations which we never did
• discussing the Eidi (gift, usually in cash given to children on the occassion of eid) collected
• playing foot ball, cricket, throw ball, lingocha(the game of 7 stones)
• crossing the Mula river while back home
• saving pennies walking back home to relish an ice lolly (lassi flavored specifically) &
• playing in the video game parlors, games like Mario etc
• getting chickened skin while wearing short pants at early mornings in winter
• the fear of african children and their hair (this was terrific, i simply used to cry just looking at their god damned hair)
• stage fear (i used to cry on stage while reciting a poem)
• eating stupid junk stuff like borkut and then getting blackmailed by my brother 
• returning home and waiting for mom and dad in scorching head but not going at my grandmas place (stubborn since beginning)
• so to speak bad words the worse ones were donkey and monkey
• looking at the crackend ground on the way to school and then relating to famines that happen as explained in different geography chapters
• killing earthworms
• trying to make leather cricket balls out of some seeds
• going to Mahableshwar on a school trip and I remember a very deep well where we threw stones
• and thats all i can highlight for now. 

All these points I feel require more elaboration, they might seem trivial but the joy of experiencing the same is immaterial and can never be relived.

Towards the end we started feeling that Spicer was not a good school (bad decision) to be and so our Dad planned to move us to a school that turned out to be a very sour proposition.

We joined Badriyah High School for a brief period of time...