So.
This Monday, I went to my old school- Modern School, Vasant Vihar, and conducted the Mod Quiz- the annual interschool quiz. This was the latest- and perhaps last- in a series of visits to school since I passed out. I’ve been either to conduct quizzes, or programming contests, or to make arrangements for conducting them, or simply to meet my teachers and juniors and chat. Since I passed out, I must have returned to school well over fifty times.
It used to mystify my parents that I could drop a week of college classes just to come down and help out at MODEM (the computer symposium)- which I did in first and third year. It never mystified me, but that’s because I never thought about doing it, I just did it.
When I did think about it, though, I realised that many people leave school and never look back. The majority, in fact. Then, I too was mystified.
I still can’t explain all of it, but here’s a start- it’s nice to be appreciated, and I’m appreciated much more at school than I am at college. Sad but true.
The appreciation goes like this- your old teachers are delighted to see you. People five years your junior talk to you like you just left school. I ask to be quizmaster, and Mrs. Bahl and Mrs Soni go and fight with the principal, Goldy Malhotra, (who is a horrid horrid woman) and persuade her that I am indeed a good substitute for Soutik Das (who is a useless useless quizmaster- according to sMac, anyway).
Appreciation is when you get a book as thanks for conducting the quiz. The book’s a formality- but what makes it special is Kunal going to buy the book, picking something out that he thinks I’ll like, and then Kersi telling me about it and hoping I’ve not read it before.
Appreciation is when Mrs. Poonam Mathur asks you to stay an extra day and take your old job as moderator at Economite (the economics symposium). This, when my crowning achievement as moderator four years ago was to get into a fight with a horrible Valleyite (who went on to become Baldy’s girlfriend, but let’s not go into that).
And here’s the crux. If everything goes well, I crack the CAT, and I make it to an IIM, most of the people in my college batch will congratulate me, smile, take treats and deep inside, be pissed off as hell that I made it and they didn’t. The old story of the Indian crabs. Wheras most of the people from school are going to be delighted that somebody they knew made it.
That’s the difference.
That’s the reason.