Time Machine

School days – the very thought of this today ignites a blast of memories from the past in me. And the good thing about old memories- we generally forget the imperfect , the unfortunate and gloat over the good. Good. The older I become , which we all do with certainty every passing day, the fonder the school becomes.

 

Those were really the halcyon days: days of gay abandon, days when we could do anything and everything with carefree spirit. But the funny part is , when I think about it now, at that point of time we all wanted to quickly grow up and become adults ! To come out of school and become adults in this serious grim world !

 

Talking now about those days today brings back glimpses from the labyrinth of my memory, some hilarious, some shocking, some pure adulterated fun. These parts of my memory was numbed in these decades and are brought back to the fore as I bump into school-mates whom I have not met for decades ! Hours pass by as we dive together in the past, out comes black and white photos , now yellowish with age, photos where sometimes I cannot even recognize myself.

 

In such deep dives, one of the commonest subject of our discussion is our school headmaster, Late Rev Fr. Wautier. From those days in kindergarten till almost we were out of school we had this magnificent administrator, a man whom we have always respected, feared at times, fond as we grew up and idolized in our own way. We saw him from close and feared his strict discipline but admired his vivacious energy. We can almost see his Vespa parked in the corner, the cigar in the corner of his mouth and the key-bunch dangling on a chain from his pocket as he walks past.

 

And such millions of other memories flash by, big small and sundry.

 

The past has come back to us now, with technology uniting a handful of old (young?) balding school-mates pushing fifty, who are now dispersed in various sections of the world and the first thing that they do after brushing the teeth is wishing Good Morning on WhatsApp. We share memories , present problems and sometimes fight as if life has transported us in time back three and a half decades. And gloat over splinter reunion pictures and dream of a grand reunion some day !