Today’s topic is about schools and the first labels that we get. Troublemaker. Quiet. Gifted. Whatever those labels are.

When I think about schools, there are people who spend their entire school life in one school. Then there are others whose parents are transferred often, whose jobs take them from one place to another, and they end up studying in multiple schools. I fall into the second category. I studied in five schools because my dad worked in different places. I studied part of my education in Dubai. I was in Iran. Then I came back to Kerala. I studied in a convent school, and after seventh grade they did not allow boys to continue, so for high school I had to move to another school.

Now, living in the US, I see that school is structured differently. There is elementary school, middle school, and high school, so it is never the same school all through. You might still have the same neighborhood friends, but the schools change.

The earliest school memory I have is probably from kindergarten. I remember erasers that had a smell to them, and I used to eat them. I was very bad at studies in first grade. I know this because when it was time to move to second grade, my teachers told my parents that it would be better if I spent one more year in first grade instead of moving ahead.

I don’t remember if I felt bad at that time. I don’t remember feeling like a failure. It was a long time ago. But what that meant was that everyone I started school with moved ahead, and I was one year behind them.

Even after that, I didn’t immediately get better at studies. I think I was still pretty bad even in third grade. We didn’t have grades then, we had ranks. First rank, second rank, third rank. There were about forty students in the class, and I would usually be around thirty eighth. There were one or two people worse than me. From fourth grade onwards, something changed. Fourth, fifth, sixth, and then by the time I reached high school, I got better.

I was never a big troublemaker in school. I don’t remember getting into serious trouble. Maybe a few times in high school, but otherwise not much. I talked a lot, so I was a disturbance in class. But I don’t remember fighting a lot. Actually, that’s not entirely true. I do remember fights.

When I was probably in third grade, I remember being bullied by a few kids. My mom had to come to school and complain. She also told me to stand up against the bullies. What that eventually created in me, especially as I grew into high school, was that my way of defending myself became becoming one of them.

Looking back at my school days, I know there were people I bullied. I didn’t beat them, but my interactions with them, the way I treated them, were bad. Kids can be very mean, and there was a mean side to me. There were kids who were mean to me as well, and I think somewhere I internalized that being mean was acceptable.

I am still connected to some of my school friends today, especially because of WhatsApp and social media. In some ways, we are more connected now than we were back then. I remember asking my dad about his school friends. He studied in the same school all through, then went on to study medicine and became a doctor. He had lost touch with many of his school friends.

He used to talk about one friend who worked as a driver in the Kerala police. I remember seeing him come home a few times. He was my dad’s classmate. He also talked about another friend who, according to him, had the best handwriting. That friend later committed suicide.

I had very close friends in school, and I lost complete touch with some of them. There were kids I studied with in first, second, and third grade, and then I lost touch when I changed schools. Later, when I joined college for my undergraduate studies, some of these people were in the same college. Growing up in a small place, you go to different schools, and then suddenly at some point, everyone comes together again.

I have never been able to attend a school reunion. I live abroad, and many times when they gather, I am not in town. I have stayed in touch with my undergrad friends more than my school friends. I have met a few high school friends at events, but mostly my connection with them is online. Some of them are no longer alive. Some died young.

When we were sitting in class together, we never imagined that. I remember one boy who was one or two years older than me. We had a fight in the hallway. Years later, I heard that his wife had passed away, and I felt bad. It had nothing to do with our fight, but memories like these come back. Times when you were mean, when you ridiculed someone, when you fought with people.

When you see your own kids growing up, you don’t want anyone to treat them the way you sometimes treated others. These things come back and bite you.

Bullying and fights are big issues in schools today. But when I grew up in the seventies and eighties, fights happened. We used to gang up and fight. We would fight in the afternoon, stop when the bell rang, go back to class, and resume the fight later. I don’t even know why we fought. Maybe movies influenced us. There were so many movies with fist fights, and we never thought of it as something bad.

Looking back, I think I had a reasonably good relationship with my teachers. Not in first or third grade when I was a bad student, but later, when I started doing better and became more attentive. I never went to class thinking I wanted to learn something. Friends were there. School was something I could not escape from.

We would go to nearby tea stalls, drink something, cut classes. There were very studious kids. I was not one of them. There were also kids who got good marks and still got into trouble. I never participated in any extracurricular activities in school. No writing, elocution, singing, art, theater, sports. Nothing. Not in school. Not in college.

I don’t know why. Maybe I thought I was not talented. Over the years, I have met many talented people who also say they never participated in competitions. In my case, I think I feared competition. I did not want to be on stage and compete with someone.

Even today, I cannot sing, I am not an artist. But I do other things now. I write poems. I write. I never imagined I could write, especially because I didn’t read much as a child.

Looking back, it was an interesting time. A kid with very little visible talent. That was probably me.

I’ll see you next time with another topic. Let’s see where that takes me. You guys take care. Thank you.