Like It Happened Yesterday

About the Author

By the Same Author

Also by Ravinder Singh

Dedication

1 First Day, First School

2 Happiness in Little Things

3 My World in Black and White

4 Fear of the Needle

5 All for a Toothy Grin!

6 The Question of Birth

7 Life’s Greatest Mystery Solved!

8 I Have a Pen!

9 A Change of Schools

10 The Power of Chapter 10

11 Show and Tell

12 First Crush

13 One Dark Day

14 Fighting to Be There

15 The Annual Day

16 In Sadness and Defeat

17 Grand Finale to School

Author’s Note

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

Follow Penguin

Copyright Page

To my loving parents …

I cried. And I cried hard.

I think I had never cried like that ever before. Till then I didn’t need to.

It was my first day in school. I had been admitted to the nursery class.

My father had held my left hand in the warm safety of his right hand. All I did was to keep pleading with him to not leave me alone. Till then, I had never been away from my family. And Dad was trying to do exactly that. I was scared at the very thought of being without Mom, without Dad. It didn’t matter for how long—what mattered was that the very next moment there wouldn’t be anyone around me whom I knew. Dad was going to leave me among strangers, many of whom were of my age and a few older. The anxiety I suffered was tremendous.

I wanted to talk to Dad and explain to him what it meant for me to be left out of the family this way. But neither did I have the words in my mouth, nor was Dad prepared to listen. And even though I would have known what to say, I wasn’t sure how to express what I was feeling. All I could do was cry. So I cried, despite my heavy, wet eyes. I cried despite my leaky nose, and I cried till my throat became hoarse. For some unknown reason, I was hopeful that seeing my terrible condition, Dad would have some mercy on me. That he wouldn’t leave me but take me back home, to the soft cocoon—my mother.

But he didn’t.

Rather, he left me in that unknown place called ‘school’, which I began to hate with all my heart in the first hour itself. He handed me to two of the ‘ma’ams’, who grabbed me by the shoulder and dragged me away with them as I tried my best to run away. For a few minutes, I was hanging from their arms, above the ground, paddling my legs in the air desperately. I bit the hand of the ma’am who had grabbed my shoulder from the left, and succeeded in escaping her grip. I pulled up myself with full energy and slid out of the clasp of the second one as well. Then I ran straight towards Dad, who was about to step out of the classroom.

I wrapped myself tight around his right leg and clutched his white pajama in my hands. In the grip of my front teeth was the corner of his kurta. I was ready to tear it apart but not let it go. But Dad didn’t stop. Instead, he began to walk faster so that he could escape my hold.

But the fear of not being able to survive without my family made me cling stronger to him. The louder I cried, the heavier I panted—I had succeeded in creating a scene in front of everyone. And I was absolutely not ashamed of it at all!

It happens—this shameless display of emotions, when you realize your worst fears are about to come true. At that time, I was merely a child. I have seen grown-ups creating a scene too, when faced with their worst fears.

Well, I kept holding on to my father with all my strength, so much so that, when he dragged his leg ahead, my little body got dragged along with him.

‘Nahi, Daddy … please mainu chadd ke nai jao … please, Daddy,’ [No, Daddy … please don’t leave me alone … please, Daddy] I wailed loudly in Punjabi.

But it seemed to have quite the opposite effect on him. Being older and stronger, he scolded me in his loud, angry voice and stretched out his palm as if he was going to give me a slap. Then he yanked away my little arms to release himself and handed me back to the teachers, who were more cautious this time about holding me. I saw my father walk away from the classroom. I couldn’t do anything.

At that very moment, I hated him.

And now that I hated my father, I loved my mother much more than I ever did. So I started missing her.

I was left sobbing in the class. The sound of my crying lasted as long as it could.

When all my energy had been drained, I became quiet and went to sit in one of the corners of the classroom. I was still scared, but it had been more than an hour, and I suppose I was getting a little used to the environment around me. I also realized that it wasn’t just me who was crying. There were plenty of others. And, just like me, they were all in the navy-blue-and-white uniforms. I wondered how come all their parents had ended up choosing the same clothes as my parents had chosen for me. A girl in the far corner was still crying. She had more energy to sustain her agitation than I did. She was also louder than me.

Sitting alone there, I thought to myself—What would I do without my family? I believed that Dad had left me at that place forever. I remembered my mother. I remembered her love for me. I wanted to run into her lap and complain to her about Dad for what he had done to me, that too in front of strangers!

But I didn’t even know the way to my home. I wondered if Mom was missing me. Thinking of her my eyes became moist again, not that they had dried out completely. But, this time, I cried quietly. I was much too exhausted to shout any more.

Suddenly, one of the two teachers approached me. She raised my chin with her hand and asked, ‘Kya hua, Ravinder? Kyun ro rahe ho?’ [What happened, Ravinder? Why are you crying?]

Through a choked nose, I said, ‘Hu … hu … hu …
mujhe … hu … hu … mujhe Mommy ke pass jaana hai … aaaaaaaaa …’ [I want to go to my Mommy] and continued to cry.

The teacher wiped my wet, dirty face with the handkerchief that my mother had pinned on to my shirt. She sighed and smiled. Then she promised me that she would take me to my mother. I looked into her eyes. She appeared to be telling the truth, or maybe I didn’t have any other choice but to believe her.

‘Sacchi?’ [Really?] I asked and so many hopes started swimming in my eyes.

‘Haan. Lekin tumhe meri baat maanni padegi,’ [Yes. But for that you will have to listen to what I say] she offered.

And soon I was game for all that she wanted me to do. I sat where she asked me to sit. I played the games she wanted me to play with the other kids in the class. There were lots of toys and balloons around me, and lots of kids playing with them. In a short while, I had made new friends. I still didn’t know their names, but I was happy.

Each one of us, for whom that day marked the first day of school life, had his or her own level of insecurity about each other. But it took only a short while for us to shed our inhibitions. Human nature is strange. Just because we all had a common thing to be afraid of, we turned into friends. In that new and unfamiliar environment, the only support was seeing people who were just like me—and that made things a little comfortable.

In my mind then, I was happy to think that at the end of all this, I would meet my mother and all would be fine. I would tell her about the cruelty of my father and she would never let me go again!

Two years passed by in understanding what a school was all about. By the time I got into Class I, I had finally accepted that there was no escaping school. I had a fair idea of what my life was going to look like for the next twelve years, or even more if I failed midway. My friends from the class, too, didn’t have any idea about what else to do with their lives; so they accepted what their parents asked them to do. I thought it was safe to follow everyone. And, so, I accepted going to school.

But now that I had accepted going to school, my parents upgraded their level of expectations.

‘Study well. You have to come first!’

When I nodded my head to that demand at that time, I never realized that I had stepped on the starting line of what later was going to become a rat race.