Times @ Maddy Kripa-V
Year 02-03
I believe this was one of my best years at Madava Kripa, even when I was in there it was certainly a fun filled year, beautifully wrapped with all the excitement and a whole wide range of activities to be looked upon. A bunch of my most memorable moments at the school were born in this year, so in spite of this post being held back due to a lot of reasons, let me try to share the same things that this year showed me.
Solomon teacher was our class teacher for the year. She was a special teacher, and when I say special it was for many reasons. She handled English and social studies for us. She used to conduct a test after each lesson and the best thing about it was that, it would always comprise just fill in the blanks, match the following, and such other one mark questions. It always saved the trouble of reading pages long question and answers.
In English, after each poem was dealt with, while writing notes, we were required to be drawing a scene which depicted something from the poem, maybe a overall picture if it was a poem concerning something in general, or a scene or line if it was some kind of story, and we would be given marks out of ten for it. It would always be an achievement for me when I used to get 9 on the average for it, and I would be on cloud 9 on the occasions when I got 10 on 10. It was the same case in social where we were required to maintain a map drawing book, and again I was happy to be getting 9 or 9.5 usually.
Among other things, everyday after the prayers, one of us was required to read news and another was supposed to read a thought. I still remember those two occasions when it was my turn to read news, that after the normal few news items, I had spoken of those things that happened in our immediate surroundings. It was the time when signals were just installed in Manipal, and the time when they no longer worked!! My headlines went something like, Signals a waste investment in Manipal, or something like that, and I had received a merit for it. Another proud moment, among the many in that year…
For the first time in my life I heard of the concept of Friendship week, and it was because we celebrated it. It was usually in the afternoon sessions that we were indulged in these activities and I still remember that particular afternoon, when we made bookmarks for our friends. Our teacher provided us with a piece of nicely cut red colored ribbon which we used for our bookmark. We were required to give it to any of our friends, and I remember receiving one, and I am very much happy to say that I still have it with me. On the last day of the week, she had asked us to call our friends home and give them some snacks and anything else. I usually played in the evening and so I had no problem gathering friends. There were about twenty of us, and after a round of play, we enjoyed the snacks I had got along with other things. Back then it didn’t mean much, but thinking of it now, it really is a wonderful feeling to be with friends, enjoying as if there is nothing else more wonderful in this world….
We has three rows in our class, and usually whatever competition was conducted as a group, it would be between the three rows, which were named love, peace and joy. My row was “Love”, and like elsewhere, it was LOVE, our row, that won in most of the competitions. Once we had a kite flying competition, wherein each row was required to prepare a kite and then fly it during out P.T hour. Our kite was both the most beautiful and the one the touched the maximum heights. The other time that we worked together on something was, when we were required to prepare a model of, “The turtle beach”, which was a story of a turtle, which comes to the shore, to lay down its eggs. It faces a lot of difficulties on its way, which included stumbling through the bricks and other materials lying around, of a building being constructed nearby. But in the end it succeeds to lay its eggs safely, but dies in the process. It was really fun doing it, but it was more fun when children from 1st and 2nd standard came in a line, to see it and each group narrated the story of the turtle to them. Again we won it.
As I said above we received a merit for our good deeds and it goes without saying that we received a demerit for our misdeeds. On earning ten merits we got a silver star, and on earning five silver stars or twenty merits, we got a golden star. It was a very proud moment for every student to receive a star. At the end of the year, she had in fact presented us with those golden stars that we had earned. Its a pity to say that I misplaced it sometime ago, but those were really hard earned moments of happiness within those stars…
Once it so happened that our maths teacher was on leave and the class was in chaos, of course. At that time our class teacher was taking class for students of seventh standard, which was situated in the ground floor, unlike ours, which was in the first floor. She had asked a girl to make us do some work, and give her names of those who misbehaved, so that she could deal with them. It so happened that, we were having fun and that girl just for fun wrote my name as well as another guy’s name, and guess what? A few moments later the teacher comes to inspect the class!! There you go.. no excuses from her to anybody, so off we go. We had to sit in her class(seventh standard) and listen to her lecture, which happened to be the causes and results of the battle of Panipat. So for no fault of ours, we simply got punished…
Within no time we reach the end of the year, a year full of excitement, and memories that will be cherished through out. The various things that we did was mostly just for fun, back then, but now they really have paved the way for us to learn a lot things… Actually there were many more things that were a part of the year, but to pressurize my mind too much on those things would simply result in activating my tear glands. It might seem childish or whatever, but the very simple reason for it being those time will never come back, and that, they were among the best…..