Have You Ever Read the Motto on Your Crest

What does it mean?

I changed schools in Class III. It was devastating because moving schools meant I wouldn’t get to see my old friends again. There was also a real concern about making friends at a new place. To add to that, and I don’t know where this idea came from, I associated a new school with higher standards. So, before even stepping inside Modern School, Noida, I had formed a picture of it as this militarised academy where kids come to forget the meaning of joy. I was convinced that this building, however it looked, held within it a land of strict teachers and heavy bags.

Modern used to have an entrance test for primary school. Somehow, I managed to completely mess that up, to the point where I was almost given the red light. Leading up to Day One, folks at home reminded me that the teachers would be keeping a close eye. It made me miss my old ‘hood, Sunrise Ville, even more. Crisp uniforms arrived soon, as did books, notebooks, and laminated brown sheets. Funnily enough, the uniforms were of the same colour I had been wearing for the previous three years. They just came with a new crest and Life, Light, Love written under it. The stitching on it seemed a little untidy, though.

Modern School’s junior wing — the building for kindergarten up to Class III — was a couple of kilometres from my house. On a sunny morning in April 1998, Grandad and I took a rickshaw there. Something on the lines of “be a good boy, best of luck” was probably uttered as I got down and walked towards the red gate within which stood a frankly unimpressive building. The textured bricks on its steel grey outer wall looked like jagged edges; the plants wore a weary shade of green; and the handles on the slide were rusting.

Looks a lot more inviting now

I found my section from a list at the reception: III-A. Cool. The class teacher walked in, and we all stood up. I wanted to hear the familiar choral sound of a “Good moooorning, Maaadam”, but all I got was a stern “Good morning, Ma’am.” Ma’am? What is a ma’am? She returned the greetings, then called out my name, and threw some incomprehensible gibberish at me. She also reminded me how I was on the verge of getting kicked out from school and they would monitor me. I hadn’t realised that “keeping an eye” meant telling me explicitly that they are watching me. Will they also follow me home, or to the ground during games periods? A bit of a loaded truck to deal with on your first day in a new environment.

I was silently cursing my family’s decision to move me here when the guy next to me gently nudged my shoulder and said, “New student? Welcome. Mazze karenge.” (We’ll have fun.)

It doesn’t look like you guys have a lot of fun here, but thanks. We shook hands. “Hello, I am Sarthak.”

“I am Adil.”

It took me about a couple of weeks to warm up to Modern School. The place did not turn out half bad. The teachers were nice, for the most part, and we were encouraged to not bring heavy bags. My classmates were sweet too. They sympathised with the disproportionate attention I was getting from the teachers and made me feel at home. Some offered me their tiffins; some others wanted me to sit with them for a day so we could become friends. The early academic season brought quizzes, debates, and lots of extra-curricular competitions. I was a nut for those. Adil and I enrolled for everything that came our way. If a team was getting made, we would register together, and ask about the event later. This one time, we mistakenly put our names for a fancy-dress competition. Our coordinator wanted us to play out some scenes from Panchatantra, and we ended up dressing as trees. 

We were inseparable. Adil was the first face I looked for as I entered the classroom every day. Too bad he didn’t live close to where I did, or else we would have found a way to hang out in the evenings too. We replaced the handshake with a fist bump as if we were batting in a cricket match. That gesture has stayed with me to date. Romantic partners have rolled their eyes at me for offering a fist bump as a greeting. Anyway, one day, our class got together and decided that we should all get to sit at every desk in the room. Our class teacher loved the idea and came up with a system for daily rotation. We weren’t rowdy enough to scratch our names on the desks, but were tempted.

Class III melted into Class IV — Adil and I stood first and second — and it was time to move to the Senior Wing, a different building a kilometre or so closer to my house. Now, this looked like a proper school. A sprawling low-rise building with an adjacent football ground, a basketball court, and a mini-amphitheatre. The classrooms were bigger, as were the desks and blackboards. We looked at the thick wooden scales and gulped. But, like the year before, my fears were unfounded.

From Class IV up until Class X, Modern School was incredible fun. From my section alone, there were about six — I can recall those many names, there could have been more — who participated in every extra-curricular activity. Sports, debates, quizzes, theatre, even dance, because why not. The friend circle burgeoned too. We grew into our preferences and held strong opinions on why those who bite into orange lollies were apes whereas the rest of us looked suave like James Bond while licking a coloured bar of ice. Sometime in Class IV or V, our section came up with another unofficial rule: no one gets to eat their own tiffin. Delightful. We would sit in a closed circle and nibble off each other’s boxes. A multi-cuisine meal every day. Our section had minimal churn over those seven years, so we kept that tiffin habit going until it was time to break for our board exams.

Through this time, Adil and I developed a brotherly rapport. We had our disagreements, some Sampras vs Agassi discussions that raised the pitch of our voices, but never really fought. Every time a discussion veered towards an argumentative territory, there was a chal, koi baat nahi yaar lurking around. This also osmosed into the greatest source of competition between students around us: marks. We were never jealous of each other’s marks, even if it stung if someone else took the first or second place ahead of us.

After my Class X boards, I moved schools again. This time, it was even more painful. I was going away from eight years of grown-up friendships. I tried resisting a bit, but Noida and Gurgaon, where we were moving, were too far apart.

The rhythms of Delhi Public School, Gurgaon caught up with me. Especially because I was entering Class XI, where you cannot have a conversation without ambition or IIT being mentioned. We lived life with blinkers on. Some years later, I got back in touch with a couple of people from the Modern School group through Facebook. Adil, as luck would have it, was studying in the same college as me. We coordinated through text and hung out after what felt like a decade. It was lovely to enjoy a drink with someone you had once shared a pack of Frooti with.

But a lot had changed, too. We had moved on with our lives. Our priorities and interests shaped our routines, and unfortunately, there was too much on our plates to rekindle an old friendship to a comparable intensity. We kept running into each other on campus, bumped fists, played a couple of tennis-ball cricket matches, but eventually drifted. I think he is married now.

I sometimes think about that day in 1998. While it is easy for me to look at Adil’s gesture as some sort of transformative event, I don’t know how much of that is true. If not him, somebody else would have. Maybe Matthew — bugger nicked my packet of Cadbury Gems, or Rupen, or Preeti. All of us just wanted to make new friends.

I can remember some of these things like they happened yesterday, while some other memories have completely faded away. There was, however, a line of incidents that I will carry with me forever. Every year, after the final exams, parents and students were called for Result Day. The highest-ranking three students from each section would be called on stage and given a bar of chocolate and their report cards. It was quite cool, like an Oscar for Best Rote Learner of The Year. Regardless of where I finished on the podium, my teachers would find a way to have a mini-conversation with my father. After the pleasantries and feedback on my result, they would sometimes, bizarrely, speak about my rapport with Adil. I was taken aback because both of us were close friends with a lot of others too, but attention was given only to us. The teachers were surprised at how little friction existed between us, even though we were finishing top two most times and competing in sports. That remark was often followed with a patronising wish for this friendship to last long, as if they were hoping against the inevitable.

The tone was unfamiliar to my naive mind then, but I realised what they meant later.

Amongst the many privileges I grew up within, one of the biggest was the environment of religious, racial, and communal equality at home. The teachers at Modern School did their part too, but only to an extent. They scolded anyone who made an inappropriate remark, but never told us why it was wrong to think of someone as inferior. We were just asked to not air our views. Some of us got lucky at home, and I can imagine some did not.

The othering of people doesn’t start on Twitter. It starts at home and classrooms. If the people I was listening to taught me how X religion and Y caste is inferior, I would have believed them. And I cannot even imagine what it would have taken to scrape off all that conditioning.

I find the videos from Karnataka scary in that specific way. There is an obvious problem with blocking someone’s education, but I am a little more scared of the long-term classroom culture these teachers are creating. In Class III, I did not know the difference between a Hindu or a Sikh or Muslim beyond the kind of temples they visited.

Adil could have been Anish and we would have had just as much fun. Kids are pure. It sucks that we are hurtling towards a world where they won’t get to make friends with anyone who nudges their shoulders. I have no hope from our politics, but maybe a newer generation of teachers can arrest the slide.