JOIN USThis photograph was taken when I was a student of class 10 at Sri Vidya Mandir High School. The year was 1987. Sri Vidya Mandir High School, which started as Sri Vidya Mandir Education Society by N Leelavathi, was one of the oldest schools at that time in Malleswaram. The Malleswaram Post Office was also located adjacent to the school building and was one of the landmarks those days.
School days, as they say, are the happiest moments in one’s life and most of us in this group would agree that they were the best days of our life. Our school was small with a playground adjacent to it. Most of the time, we used to reach school earlier than the scheduled time which was 12.30 pm and used to play cricket in the vacant site next to the school till the school bell rang.
The bell was quite an interesting one. It was a piece of a railway track bar which used to be tied to a support bar. An iron rod was used to strike it to indicate the change from one period to another! Some of the ‘aayas’ (the housekeeping staff), as they used to be called, I remember, were Saraswathi aaya and Thimmi aaya. They were the best amongst the housekeeping staff.
Other memorable times in school were during the monsoon. The school had asbestos roof and during monsoon, water used to seep into the classroom resulting in our classes winding up early.
Going to school was always fun. Most of us used to walk to school picking up friends on the way, thereby making it a kind of ‘friend-pooling’.
After reaching school, there used to be either the last-minute homework check or the preparation for unit tests.
Our batch had some excellent teachers. Mrs Soumini, Mrs Sugandha, Mrs Indra, Mrs Chandrika and Mrs Maithili, to name a few, were some of those great teachers who taught us.
The school and the teachers also encouraged the students to participate in extra-curricular activities like debates, recitations, JAM, singing competitions. Sometimes the prizes would be books.
The books chosen would be abridged versions of classics. This instilled in many children the love of reading. Many years after we left school, we kept hearing from our friends that our teachers always used to praise and remember us, ‘the 87 batch’, as the best batch.
We also had a cricket team with talented players on our side. Our school had participated in many cricket tournaments, including ‘BT Ramaiah Cup’, which was considered as a prestigious inter-school tournament.
Today, only some of us stay in Malleswaram. Most of my classmates moved out to other different localities in Bengaluru and some have settled abroad. The school has also grown by leaps and bounds and has a pre-university college as well. Some of our friends also have their kids studying in the same school today.
My classmates have made a name for themselves in medical, advertising, hospitality, HR, and engineering domain. Apart from this, some of them run their own businesses as well. Thanks to a couple of social networking sites, we were able to get in touch with each other and from the past four years, we make it a point to have a get-together at least once a year, go back to the past and cherish some of the memorable moments in school. Those days will never return but we are thankful that we are in constant touch and will be friends forever.
There are quite a few classmates who we still continuously scout for but for those of you who have read this article and wish to connect to us, you can visit www.facebook.com/groups/srividyamandir87/ and we will be glad to have you back!