CHAPTER 8: Memory is a Collage.

My eyes probe the classroom like roach antennae. My legs quiver like an unsupported creeper in a storm. It is our first day in school after the summer break.

Children- wearing starched uniforms, sparkling white socks and carrying unopened textbooks- storm into the school gates. Following orders from the principal, everyone has been scattered across the three divisions.

While the benches have become taller, the students occupying them in my new classroom look less familiar. In fact, everyone looks identical in this anonymous crowd. The classroom is a graveyard of my happiness, I whine.

I dislike everyone and everything around. Suddenly, the class bullies and the Late Kates from Class 2 look a little more pleasing.

The teacher’s face resembles that of a demon, for having held me captive in a deserted island- away from my friends. Friends, who must be having a gleeful time together without me in the other classroom, I dread. A little more exaggerated in my imagination, of course.

The customary attendance rolls are read out. My ears start ringing in anticipation of a known name that I might have accidentally missed noticing. Alas, my eyes hadn’t misread.

What follows the attendance roll remains only in the fringes of my consciousness. I am busy making mental notes about how I had been thrown into a hellhole of strangers and strange looking classmates. The minute the lunch bell rings, I gallop to the corridors to meet my old friends, hoping that they missed me as much as I did. 

Amidst the sights and sounds of crisp uniforms and animated conversations, I identify three familiar faces. I realise that nothing had changed.

The walls of the classrooms were temporary and couldn’t come in the way of the very many shared experiences that we had had in the previous year. After exchanging notes about our new teachers and bench partners, we walk back to our classrooms.

At that moment as I walk towards my bench, I exchange smiles with my new bench partner. I seek refuge in her bewildered smile.