You know you're from CJM when..

This was a facebook group that I came across and I found not many people as members of it. When I read through the info page, I had tears in my eyes as a flood of memories came rushing through my mind. The feelings can just not be explained in words. It's been 6 years since I left school, Convent of Jesus & Mary, and many more years will pass by, and I will only love it more with time. Even after spending 12 years of my life there as a student, and that's a lifetime, I know I feel that time raced away.

I'm posting those things from that facebook group so that if at any time now or in future, any Convent girl happens to visit my blog, she may as well be able to reminisce those days while reading them here. I guarantee that she would definitely be able to relate to each and every thing said here and would take a long time to come back to the present after reading them and suffering those flashbacks that would make her laugh, smile and cry at the same time. 

A very important thing that's missing is that we loved greeting our teachers and nuns. We used to run to them to say: Good-Morning Sister! or Good-Morning Ms. Anyway, here goes:

You know you're from CJM when...

- you own atleast one red bag & pony

- you try your hardest to stand next to a tall girl and ask her to 'saath saath chalo' (walk with me) in an attempt to hide your dirty shoes from the watchful eyes of the teachers

- you've sneaked your way into the bio lab just to see the dead snake

-you've experienced the feeling of pure, utter dread when a teacher said 'come with me to Sister Pilar/Sister Monica’s office'

-you've gotten up in the middle of the night just to polish your shoes

- you've heard scary stories concerning the skeleton in the bio room

- every play, article or function you've organized or written was value-based

-you've heard or hoped at some point that a swimming pool will be constructed in the heart-shaped ground in the junior section

-you've gone to school with a temperature of 103 instead of staying home to rest - just because.

-you'd skip school rather than go without the essay Mrs. Khan asked for

-you hear the words 'Oh God I beseech thee, ardently to desire, prudently to study.. rightly to (you know what's next)...' and a flood of memories rush through you 

-the bench in the basketball court has been your safe haven at one point

- 'do you believe - cher' reminds you of every ‘meena bazaar’ (funfair) you've attended 

-you've tried atleast once to enter Thevenet Center and perhaps been successful too 

- you call CJM your second home

- you've wondered how many saari`s Mrs. William owns

-you've been told off because a strand of hair slipped out of your otherwise tightly made pony

- ringing the gong to mark the end of a class in junior school was once the biggest honour imaginable

- you remember asking around for an extra-shoe polish or nail cutter before break ended

- you can almost feel the sharp tiles/rocky edges of the computer lab’s corridor as you walk from the junior section to the canteen (it's freaky how your hand's literally all tingly right now)

-you've dared to have a water fight in the physics lab using those plastic water bottle thingies

- you were fooling around with your friends in front of Asna’s corner once, only to look up and see a teacher peering down at you - and then you ran with as innocent an expression as you can muster towards the shed out of her sight

-you remember waiting upstairs in the senior section for the outgoing class to do their ‘special entry’ in school on their last day

- you remember entering the hall, heart beating fast, in a straight line with all the seniors already inside casually turning around and clapping... welcoming you to the senior section on your first day in grade seven- your first taste of pure intimidation.

-you remember sitting at the back of the character-building class frantically copying the weeks 'value' from a friend’s copy

- you begged and pleaded the teacher not to change your house

- you remember asking your friends for just 5Rs. more for the poor box so that your house could 'win'

- you've discussed the Grammar vs Convent debate countless times.

- you've felt a wonderful sense of unity when everybody prayed collectively for the death of a loved one of any student

- you've known most of your friends for at least 8 years

- the teachers know you as 'blahblah's younger sister' or 'blahblah's daughter' - 'blahblah's grand daughter' isn't a surprise either

- you remember Sir Paul’s music lessons and his piano on Thursdays

- you're never too old to slide down the 'bari wali slide' or take pictures with Mr. Elephant

- the simple line 'walk fast, don't stamp your feet girls' reminds you of a break ending

- you peer into every car that has 'I (heart) Convent of Jesus & Mary's sticker on its back

- you greet your friends by screaming LOUDLY

- everything in your world is red and white

- you can include no less than 12 girls in your 'close friends' list

- you think that everything bad happens to YOUR batch (changes in school timings, courses, school trips, exams etc, etc)

- the announcement of the council is/has been the most dramatic event of your life

- only you can understand what the games teachers mean when they say what they do

- a lower position of your house flag on the house flag board is a matter of personal insult

- no one does the 'tarareereeruureera' and drumming the benches better than you

- 'shitttt, duppataa!!!' is always followed by you running all over senior, junior and kg sections looking for one before an Islamiat class

- you aren't / weren't - aware of any world outside Convent

- you're pretty sure that none of the above will make any sense to an outsider and that's the beauty of it all.. 

--- You helped me realize that all the things I ever wanted to be, I already was. Like branches of a tree we grow in different directions, yet our roots remain as one; each of our lives will always be a special part of the other's. So today, I thank you for being you --- 

Happy Me; Happy World

A recently published author said in an interview, that in the process of writing her first ever novel, she chose not to read any book at all, put herself to an absolutely no reading routine, because she didn’t want herself to unconsciously adapt to any other writer’s writing style, while writing down her own book. I feel that I can actually relate to what she has said; I mean that there is a possibility that such a thing could happen. One could get much influenced by his/her favorite writer that they might begin to pen down their thoughts or stories or opinions in a similar fashion. 

Maybe I should or would put myself under that kind of punishment too, as and when I begin to write my own book. Only that I think that it’s going to be extremely excruciating and awfully painful for my brain and myself (also for the people around me). I imagine it to be like fasting, as in abstinence from food and water for endless days. I would probably turn schizophrenic, reading the label on a tea-bag while having my cup of tea, and imagining, or more like hallucinating it to be a book called ‘Villette’ by Charlotte Bronte or ‘Vanity Fair’ by William Thackeray. 

I would probably be caught by my family members, lying on the floor of my room, suffering a ‘cold turkey’ period. I would be accompanied by sneezing, shivering and periodic goose-bumps on my body. I would undergo an intense phase of emotional and psychotic disorder, which would definitely make me lose my appetite and the sheer thought of food would make me feel like throwing up and actually worsen my pain. In all probability, I would become an insomniac, staring at ceilings, walls and just randomly in the air. People would talk to me and I would not respond to them and that would lead to my staying in bed all the time with the muscles of my body getting stiffened day by day. 

It might be decided by my guardians that I better be shifted to an asylum for the purpose of my own good, where psychic psychiatrists will try to converse with me in an irritatingly polite manner and keep repeating to me these words: ‘I am your friend; I am only here to help you.’ And I would have no choice but to keep answering back by saying: ‘I am not mad; I am not mad.’ My relatives and other people who know me would make me a subject of their drawing room discussions; I would be the hot topic in many kitty parties. Mostly, people would be heard saying to each other: ‘She used to be such a sweet and darling girl (stress on the word: succchhhaaa).’ 

All in all, it’s going to result in the most tragic circumstances for me and the people around me. In such a condition, I don’t think I’d ever be able to write my own name down, let alone a whole novel. So, it’s really not a good idea for a person like me to take any sort of break from reading books while taking the bait of writing a novel. However, what I can do is that I try and abstain from reading books by my favorite authors, and whatever I decide to read, I make sure that it’s done by different, in fact a variety authors, in order to avoid that particular tendency which the recently published author has described could take place. That way, I wouldn’t adopt anybody’s particular writing style. I think that that’s how it’s going to be. 

Happy Me; Happy World. I be an angel.