School Memoirs

Class XI

It seems just yesterday when the classes for standard XI commenced for our batch on 16th April 2009. I won’t ever forget the date because the very next day was my birthday and I had grumbled quite a load of times for having to go to school, even on Saturday. The very first day had nothing so special about it except for our bursting enthusiasms and our school’s special morning assembly conducted for welcoming us, the students of class 11 to H.S.M.S, the real hell and prison without the slightest awareness that we were getting roasted under the scorching heat of the sun. You need to "move your toes" the entire time till our founder president was done with with the explaining of his entire travel route all the way from Springfield to our school with his "Me and my wife". No I won’t say HSMS was a hell then for it was the next two consecutive years that followed which were scary to their true extent. We being home students were accustomed to this inhuman torture being meted out and the never-ending speech of our respectable principal sir, better nicknamed as ‘teko’ and his famous quotation, “Failure is the success to pillar”. But we really felt sorry for the pain inflicted by this heartless assembly upon those poor, pretty, delicate little creatures, that is the Carmelites for making their fair skin tanned and our friends from Xaviers, who chuckled after every 5 minutes looking at the watch and cursing the school authorities for holding such an unnecessary assembly and snatching away their precious moments which could have been otherwise utilized cramming over IIT-JEE problems.

Never-the-less we returned to our class room, in one of the most segregated extreme corners of our school on the third floor, the one before the last, back to our AP, GP lessons of our Mathematics class (by Basudev Sir, our class teacher, the most gentle of all the teachers) with a great sigh of relief and were glad to learn that this was something which the ICSE background students didn’t have in their class 10 syllabus and was only present in the CBSE. Each day we literally fought for the first benches in the class, which within the next few months started to remain unoccupied. This went on for quite a few weeks until the rate of absentees gradually began rising till we faced our dreading first set of Monday tests. English and Computer Science were okay but I very well remember the wonderful scores, I had scored in PCM, which gave me nothing but haunting nightmares, The tests were out of 30, where I had somehow managed to secure a bold 10 in Physics, Chemistry (the ki mishti one) awarded me only a sweet 6, and not to forget Maths with it’s cute little 11. I can hardly recall the number of tutors I had changed frequently none of whom could satisfy my need.

In our section XID, there were only 16 girls and the rest 30 were boys. Out of these 16, eight were from Carmel whom we hated like anything in the first phase for their nagging attitudes and also the people who couldn’t forget their identity of once being ‘xavierians’ even within the boundaries of hsms and their egotistic nature. But finally I had to shed off all my preconceived notions and become friends because there is really a lot to learn from each one. After all you get to know a person closely the more you interact with him or her. Our class was the most united and studious of the rest with only a few couples and so not many movies to enjoy; Hahaha:-D and serious rank holders occupying the chairs in the back and solving Physics under the desks when English class was going on. Everyone was quite helpful and decent in their ways.

In the first few days when everyone appeared as if aliens invading and capturing our school and enslaving it’s inhabitants (I mean the home students), Priyanka was my only best friend and is still now also. Few more just got added to our group. Most of the days were spent either by yawning during the boring classes or gossiping at a stretch. Someone taking the experimental readings and the whole class simply copying, almost vacant classroom on the days with no practical classes especially on Thursdays, skipping tests , having tiffin during classes and getting caught red-handed while bunking were nothing unusual.

Finally our session of class 11 ended well with poor marks in Physics in the first semester and in Chemistry in the next semester. Thank God that I at least got promoted to class 12. We used to blame our dedicated teachers for almost anything and everything for setting such difficult and lengthy question papers, then unwillingly throwing only a few marks in our begging bowl, and on top of that calling us to attend the remedial classes the very next day, even harassing our parents.

It was only during this session, perhaps in mid January that I first tasted the fun of chatting over social networking sites and then landed up getting addicted to it.

Little did we know how adventurous our next and last year of school life would be like, filled with mixed feelings of embarrassment, struggle, depression, fear mingled with fun, joy, nostalgia and a bit of lurking sadness of parting from our classmates and school; The school where we have spent the long 14 years of our life, the school which has nurtured us from tiny toddlers into young adults, the school which has made us to both laugh and cry at times. Much of the part we may have had made fun of the teachers, management, students but still HSMS being our ALMA MATER makes us feel proud and connects us to the one whole big family of Hemsheelites.

Class IX

Another new session commenced on the first week of April 2007 and we on the very first day went looking for our class room (IXB) throughout the school premises and finally found it on the most isolated part of our school, ground floor, eighth phase, the last but one room.

There is nothing much to narrate about class IX except that I had improved a lot and could score quite a good percentage in my school Monday tests and semesters compared to any other exams after that. Of course, I wasn’t among the top three but surely I used to work hard and struggle a lot to make it up among the top 10 rank holders. Thanks to the teachers who used to take our classes- Enakshi ma’m(Eng),Mekhla ma’m(Bio),Sanchita ma’m(Phy),Moloy sir(chem.),Shamita ma’m(Beng),Ranjana ma’m(Maths),Sonia ma’m(hist & civics),Mahua ma’m (geo), Aparna ma’m(eco) and last but not the least Milon sir(comp sc), Bardhan sir(G.K)and our Amma, I mean Shampa ma’m for art and craft . They created the teaching- learning process quite interactive and interesting and were really very helpful.

I had quite a lot of friends in my circle- Moumita, Anindita, Sanchari, Ankita, and Shalini and not to forget my ironical best friend Saini. The best part of it was gossiping endlessly and landing up getting our names scribbled on the black board by our obedient vice captains for disobeying them and breaking the discipline, sharing tiffin under the half-barren trees, learning to shoulder little responsibilities assigned by our class teachers like, closing the doors, switching off the fans and lights before leaving the room, taking charge of cleaning the boards, collecting and distributing notebooks after correction. Doing social service of getting the columns of CW/HW of our almanacs filled up for ourselves as well as for our friends and rushing to take “ Autographs” of our class teachers at the end of the day was also none-the-less quite a great deal. We also took a lot of interest in working to decorate our class room, bulletin boards before Dr. Roy’s birthday or Founders day, participating in school events like sports, competitions for singing, recitation, debate etc. I remember, we had also done a group project on Global Warming and had been sent to DGP NIT for demonstration.

How we dreaded our principal madam Subha Narayan who used to make our whole class stand for almost over a period under the scorching sun anytime and every time as a punishment we actually didn’t know for what, whenever we happened to pass that way for our computer science practical!!!!!

It is still fresh in my mind those winter afternoons when we played Kabaddi, Khoko and Poisonous ball in our PE classes and the sleeves of my T-shirt and sweater had got elongated due to occasional pulling by my friends while playing. I miss those unities, those enthusiasms, that team spirit and those cheers on the day of sports and the slogan that we used to scream-

“I am from red house, you are from blue.”

“East or west, red is the best”

“Yellow yellow dirty fellow”

“Take a pillow, go back yellow”

The most interesting aspect of all was the silent, innocent crushes in the class. I too had a crush on one of my classmates for the very first time. I never dared to disclose this secret before anyone. Although I never talked to him much, nor were we good friends but still seeing his face made my day, made me more determined that I had to bring myself up somewhere to his level of academic progress but that inspiration flew away after class 10 when he left the school and my grades went down. I was a crazy girl. His roll number was around mine. Our class teacher arranged our sitting positions according to our roll numbers during the normal classes. I used to literally fight and complain and make lame excuses of eye-sight problem or my partner disturbing me, if his place was at a considerable distance from that of mine. My hands nearly froze with each tensed breath on his presence.

When I recall those days, those moments, I feel like crying out with laughter, the tears filled with nostalgia, yearnings for those sweet, cherishable and yet simple instances back to my life when just good scores, ranks in exams and a glimpse of my crush, used to make me so happy and joyous that I didn’t feel like staying away from school even for a single day. I needed nothing more. Neither had I known anything of Facebook, Orkut nor did I have my own cell-phone,computer or internet. What I had was a TV without cable connection or antennae (my parents feared that I may get addicted to TV), a small F.M radio that had to be slapped ten times before it worked. Now we have all possible material pursuits yet life is different, full of discontentment. Is it because we are growing up?

Walking down the Memory Lane - moments to make you smile

When I retrospect my school days, few moments really make me laugh......I remember in nursery we plucked flowers from the school garden and presented it to the teachers..... Imagine that too a china rose.... Fighting and weeping over lost candies, color pencils.....From my very first day in school I found ways of escape with the excuse of either toilet or drinking water,entering into the wrong class and what not.....And the best part of it was our teachers who put up with all our mischief patiently....

Days rolled by...we too were growing up.. and once I remember I had prepared a subject whose exam was not scheduled for that day.I used to be a quiet girl till class 8 after that I turned into the most talkative one...Thanks to Prakriti and Priyanka.....In class 6 I remember I had lost all my classmates' notebooks and what a good scolding I got from our Bengali teacher! That wasn't my fault after all..... Faring below expectation and blaming the teachers, not paying heed to a few who couldn't control the classes, studying the night before the exams were nothing unusual....The funniest part of it is once in class 11, we wanted to go to the washroom of our newly constructed wing.....The gender wasn't mentioned clearly on the doors and what an embarrassment! I along with Priyanka had accidentally landed up into the wrong one meant for boys....And last but not the least I would never forget Faraz's bird chase and Ankita's funny dialects.....And many more whose names I couldn't mention even our teachers who did make this journey worth remembering even after three years of passing out from school.

14 years in the same school!!! H.S.M.S has indeed seen us moulding right from toddlers into young adults.