Looking back to a Dream of Buying 50 Frooti Packs

Sometime a few smallest or merest things remind us of faint memories.

It was an usual weekend afternoon, Bangalore being too hot nowadays I am missing my food adventures or weekend gateway trips, hence was browsing Youtube. Suddenly found that song, in the suggested list –

“মন চলো নিজ নিকেতনে

সংসার বিদেশে বিদেশীর বেশে

ভ্রম কেন অকারণে…”

And in a fraction of second, a place - beautifully serene, cold like ice and filled with beautiful smell of dhuna flashed in my memory. A campus, painted in white, red ,yellow and saffron, surrounded by garden, flower, shrubs, a small pond and a beautiful temple. The benches , the open drawers inside the desks, the scattered  copies around – marked as C/W(classwork) and H/W(homework) underlining with a stroke of highlighter, the geometry box just got shared between two bench mates, the half-finished tiffin-boxes inside the school-bags and smell of ‘aloo-kabli’ around the back benches. The tiny fingers, smeared with red, tangy, saucy aloo-kabli packet- licking the heavenly taste together. A big tamarind trees standing in the middle of the playground, where a bunch of girls in white shirt and navy blue skirt- with white ribbons in their ponytails are running around in their dusty white tennis shoes. The ice-cream wala outside the school gate selling ice-creams to his tiny customers through the tiny opening in the gate. Coconut ice-cream in 1 Rupee, orange candy ice-creams in 50 Paisa. The curly-haired ‘Tandra’ di , keeping an eye to the girls around the campus. The white ‘Bokful’ and pink  bougainvillea outside the classroom. And there I saw me, sitting by the  pond stirs staring at how ducks are swimming and shrugging off the water from their velvety soft feathers after coming out of the pond. Then suddenly the bell rang from the teacher’s room signaling them to end the recess.

Yes that was my school. Those were my friends licking the chat masala and playing kabaddi. Those were our pencils and newly-bought gel pens , specially kept aside of literature classes. The benches – where I stumbled many times to cut my knee and on which we used to stand up after failing to answer a difficult question on Napoleon Bonaparte  in history class. the classroom black-board where we used to note down the names who were ‘making noise’ during the period breaks. The Rakhis, which we tied around each other's wrist, even being all girls, the hand-made New year cards we used to make during Christmas week for friends and used to look back the collection of cards after the New Year had started. 

All I used to worry were the exam results, the punishment upon forgetting the home-work copies and all I used to care about were to tie the white ribbon around my ponytails and keeping the dusty shoes white every morning in prayer line. And there were remedies for those problems too. Exam results could have been made better simply by studying, forgotten homework copies used to be made instantly by tearing off a newer copies first few pages and striking off the subject name from name label.  Dusty school shoes were made white by rubbing the chalks on it before Thursday and Friday’ s prayer. And for ponytails and ribbons around it, mom used to be always there.

Friends and teacher was the other family I had apart from my own family. And like every family, there were ‘villains’ and ‘heros’. Glance of few of them were enough to hide my face behind others, and had cried for some of them when they had left the school.

Our school temple. I still remember the cold and red cement finished flooring it had. Every morning residential students used to make fresh garland using the flowers bloomed in the school garden. The temple hall used to be less ornamented, but the aroma of flowers, sandal wood, dhuna and ‘aguru’ ( a water used to bath the Goddess) made it a heaven for me. There was a beautiful idol of Bhabatarini (a form of Goddess Kali). And Sarada Maa sitting next to her. Being a Ramakrishna Missionary school, for 10 years all of us had to chant most of the popular slokas and prayer songs in prayer classes. Once in a week we used to have the prayer class in the school temple.  Now around 30 students used  to leave their shoes outside the temple before entering for 45 minutes of prayer session, and each day I used to worry what if I lose my pair of shoes as all were in same size, same design and no need to say there was no token system to keep track of it.

There in that class, I learnt so many Veda slokas, which my grandfather used to explain to me the meaning. And few life-time memorable songs – like the one I mentioned above.

I used to dream of being so rich one day, that I would be able to buy 50 Frooti tetra packets and never had to share with anyone, only to enjoy it after coming from school in sunny, humid summer afternoon. Being 'Rich and Grown up' was defined by solely this capabilities. Because Maa used to scold me every time I'd drank it directly from fridge.

So many dreams have come true. But those innocent dreams were so precious, that they remained engraved and unfulfilled in those moments of making wish… Wish I could relive those few years of my life again.

“যদি দেখ পথে ভয়েরই আকার

প্রাণপণে দিও দোহাই রাজার

সে পথে রাজার প্রবল প্রতাপ,

শমণ ডরে যার শাসনে। “