"If my hands aren't dirty at all, why should I go and wash them? we barely get a 15-minute break. Please don't waste my time."We would spend every minute of our interval as carefully as a broke person spends his wealth with extreme precautions.
Now every year in school, along with the classes, something or the other get changed. Be it a Sanskrit eliminated after 8th grade, the games period vanishing from the time-table after 9th grade, the number of mobile phones increasing in the schoolbags 10th standard onwards. The shamelessness bubbling up on scoring fewer marks after 11th grade, or the death of curiosity to study in 12th grade. The only thing that remained consistent throughout was the happiness at the arrival of the lunch break. Now how much did we actually study, is an entire tale on its own. But sitting there in the class, planning to escape out of the same class, was no less hard work. And so because of the same hard work, hunger would creep out on all of us by the second period ;)
Now in that scenario, if I would be sitting on the last bench, then why would my majestic hunger wait for the lunch break at all. But for the reason, whenever I would have to sit in the front then after seeing the face of the tiffin, trying to control the hunger inside, the ache that would awaken in my heart could be heard in my stomach. And meanwhile, whenever a peer would open their tiffin, with the aroma of pickle and paratha (orange too) reacting the corners of the entire classroom, at that moment, my heart would just break into pieces.
Huge flocks of children, a lot of tiffins placed between those flocks, and just three chief rules.
First- it doesn't matter if it's salty potato curry or macaroni, everybody will finish off everything in unison without any drama or hesitation so that on returning home, the mother's scolding can be escaped.
Second- the tiffins with tasty dishes will be passed around to everyone one by one, provided you stay patient.
And third, at least try eating like humans a little?
amidst all of this, everyone was full of manners in childhood, no one would touch another's tiffin without asking for permission. but as we grew up, all our manners were thrown away into a ditch. All that mattered was knowing that there's tiffin and that you need to eat from that, and it doesn't matter whom it belongs to.
Now no matter how they were, all of them were my friends. All of them. They were what collectively made that time of my life so precious and if someday I somehow forget to get my tiffin to school, they would never let me stay hungry. I don't remember the last time I sat with every one of them and ate my lunch this way. Maybe at that time, I didn't realize that that was the last time, and that moving forward, whenever I would look back, all I would pray to God was to just give me one more chance to live that day again, time wouldn't let us go back to that moment.
This was what I miss the most about my school, please comment on your moments!!
Keep Smiling!
