THOSE DAYS

The day I first set foot inside Stewart School, Cuttack, I was still a student of Little Angel's Nursery School. In fact it was my last day at the nursery school and I was had gone to survey the school I was to join soon for my preparatory classes. My cousin Tanweer was already in prep there. Yes, I was a year junior to the 1991 batch once.
It was also the last day of the session at Stewart School and they had organised, among other things, a fancy dress event. Tanweer had arrived early in the morning to my place to be transformed into a clown. I watched with envy as my father, the in-house artist, applied paint on his face. Work accomplished, he left for his school and I for mine. After the function at my school got over, I had headed for Stewart School to pick up Tanweer. I faintly recall the pond in front of the school, which must have been filled up with sand at some point of time.
At my admission interview, principal Mr H.C. Mishra had asked me how I came to school. While my parents looked on astounded, I had stood up and walked a few steps and said "Like this". I somehow made it to the school.
Unlike my first day in nursery school, I had not cried at all in prep. I just about recall my class teacher Mrs North's face, for, soon after, I left with my parents for Ethiopia, where they were to work for some time. In Asmara, a city in Ethiopia's northern province of Eritrea that became the capital when Eritrea seceded from Ethiopia, I took admission into an Ethiopian school but the medium of teaching -- in Tigrinia, the regional language, and Amharic, the national language -- was not going to be easy. I was soon shunted to an Italian medium school, the language being closer to English in a strange land. I got admitted into Class 1, thus jumping a year in just a few months.
Soon, I was studying Italian at school, speaking in Tigrinia with the children in my building, in Hindustani (that strange mix of Urdu and Hindi) at home, and in English with friends of my parents. That was not all. When I returned to India during summer vacations three years later, my parents admitted me into Class IV (D) at Stewart School. Miss PD James was the principal then. Within days, I was struggling to note down Hindi answers the teacher (Mr Latif, I think) wrote on the board. For me those letters were just shapes that evoked no sound yet. One look at my copy and the boy sitting next to me (I can't recall who it was) cried out to the teacher: "Sir, please take a look at his handwriting." I was rewarded with four tight slaps, which still ring in my ears, like in those Bollywood movies.
The same was repeated the day after and would have gone on had it not been for my other cousin, Shoaib, who was in the same class. He came and told my parents about my ordeal. "He gets slapped every day and doesn't utter a word in defense."
That is when my father wrote a letter to the teacher, specifying how I had been away from the country and studied in a totally different medium. The next day I presented my credentials to the teacher before he wrote a single letter on the board. He asked my why I had never protested. He never hit me again while my parents tried to teach me Hindi at home. So, when we went back to Ethiopia three months later, I was studying Italian at school and English, Hindi and Oriya at home (my parents had taken my books along), not to forget any homework I got at my Italian school.
I recall a few other things about those three months at Stewart School in 1984 -- I used to sit behind Pushparaj, Payal was the prefect. Once Payal and Sudeshna had tied a rakhi on me. I had gone red in the face and hid it inside my bag. Later my mother fished it out and asked me where it came from. I had gone red in the face while mentioning who. I didn't know, until I was told, the significance of the string. The next day, my mother had sent me to school with a carton of Nutties for Payal and Sudeshna. If I recall correctly, I had munched a few and given the rest to them.
My class teacher was Miss Kindo. I recall how Ms Chumai introduced me to Hiuen Tsang, the SUPW teacher who made us pick up stones and move them from one place to another, Ms Minati Patnaik's caning when one did not finish the homework and Ms Bhaskar's affectionate smile.
I had my third tryst with Stewart School two years later, in 1986, during another summer vacation visit to India. This time Mr A K Patra took my admission test and sent me to Class VI(A). There were no with me this time, and neither could I recall anybody who had been with me in IV(D). I was there from July to October after which I went back to Ethiopia, but this time we were to return for good in a few month's time so I remained a non-resident student, my fees being paid regularly, returning in March for the final exams.
After my promotion, Class VII was the first class I attended from beginning to the end. I faced difficulties adjusting to a totally different kind of school and culture, but in hindsight, those years played a major role in preparing me for the rough and tumble of life in any Indian city.