When Is It Enough Part 2

• After facing the terrrors of Kindergarten we finally stepped into the world of actual education with prpoer curriculum.
• Oh the horror of it all.
• The first shock came when I was told to wear that awful thing we call uniforms. But that was just the beginning. Not only did I endure that awful attire but when I stepped into the school premises I learnt that all the other kids had been subjected to the same torture. And now we all looked like copies of each other.
• Anyways when I entered grade one section D (which I have to admit I always thought was never right cuz of my name I should have been in section A... my naive days) at my primary school the thing that hit me was "Oh no. That is what we need to sit on. Those ugly, brown things covered with a top so much so that it almost felt like a prison. And then came anotehr shocker. Not only were we supposed to sit on them but we also had to allow someone else to sit beside us.
• I was apalled at the idea. How could I let someone else come within my own personal space? Afterall space is one of the important things that matter to a young kid (Well it mattered to me). While contemplating my future seat partner I was thinking whether it would be a girl who could not stop talking or a guy who loved to show everyone how strong he was by beating the person who came in reach of his arm.
• As it turned out most of my fears were just that.......fears. The next few days were spent by everyone trying to find that perfect someone with whom you were ready to share the next 1 (or in some cases 5) year. Trust me it wasn't all that different from the modern tactics of matchmaking. Every move you made was carefully measured and referenced by your prospective seat partner(s). It was like a stage play with much higher stakes. Eventually we all settled down. My seat partner for that year was a girl. She was alright but compared to her I felt like a midget. I had to turn my neck all the way to 90 degrees if I wanted to talk to her. I wish I knew that this would be something I'll be doing for the rest of my life.
• The next problem I encountered was strange. When our English teacher (whose name completely escapes me at this point in time) told us to write a small paragraph on our very first day, I thought to myself....This is easy. I jotted down my thoguhts in no time but when I went to the desk so that Miss So and So could assess my effort I did not know how much trouble I was in.
• After giving my essay a fleeting look she gave me such a dismal stare that I thought someone had died. On full inquiry I found that according to Miss So and So my life ahead will be fraught with difficulties especially in the art of English language. She said that my writing was completely illegible and instead of letters I drew shapes which resembled the whole animal kingdom (according to her). Now if someone told me today that my writing is bad I'd laugh and forget about it but to a 5 year old this was serious stuff.
• And now my poor soul is crushed after reminiscing that sad sad fact and from that day onwards there began a legendary hatred between me and most of my English teachers. So now I'm going to skulk off in the secret and let anyone (if anyone is actually reading) tell me what that 5 year old should have done in that situation.
• What I actually did is a story for another time.....another day.

When Is It Enough? Part 1

• Life is a rapid and fast paced journey through time.
• This seems like a sentence one would hear in our dear Logic class, (which by the way I'm being forced to take once more by my dear institute) but it sadly carries the world of truth behind it.
• There was a time once when we were barely conciuos of this world. We were happy to play with our toys, cry when hungry and sleep whenever we wsanted. Then came the time when our parents decided to send us all to that horrible place which we later came to know as "The Kindergarten."
• Each day we were waken up from our comfortable beds, we tried our best to plead our case in front of mommy and daddy and appeal to their better nature but it was all to no awail. Some of us were shipped like cargo to these places through cargo loaders aka mini vans while others were lucky enough to be driven their by their parents.
• As someone who was fortunate enough to be ddropped by his father to the "Terrible place" I know how dreadful it all felt when I stepped out from the comfort of the car into the "Real World." All the while thinking to myself what use could possibly come out of this. Why am I being forced to go to a place where all the teacher wants you to do is sit there and color stupid drawiings (which by the way I was never able to do. Somehow the color always went well past the borders fo the picture in consideration)
• But even though all this may have been a terrible ordeal for some, for many others it became the first time where we met some of the first friends of our entire life. Some of those lucky among us even hold these old friendships to this date. This was a time when we first experienced that "classroom culture", the "studious group which later came to be known as the nerds" or the "ones who had whatsoever no interest in whatever was put infront of them to look at or even consider putting any effort", some later became the soprty ones, some the cool kids and some well some just didn't fall into any group and were left out of the "Esteemed social circle of the dear old Kindergarten."
• For me this was probably the first time to see how a person looks like when he or she is bored. It was customary to see a boy looking completely blank and staring at a picture of a bear with brown color pencil in his hand and drool dripping all over him. Or maybe a girl who wants nothing more than to go back home and play with her toys but is being ruthlessly forced to stare endlessly at those mind boggling things we later learnt to call numbers and alphabets.
• This was also the first time for us to realize that there exists such a thing as competetion in this world. We have to compete in obtaining praise from the dear "Miss" (the title bestowed to our teachers) or we have to fight to be the one who gets all those goodies and prizes (usually a storybook or a coloring book) by coming first in the class.
• Slowly and gradually we all go through those first three years of Kindergarten and on various stages of this phase we realize "Man, I'm stuck with this for the rest of my life." We all probably knew this beforehand but Im sure none of us gave up hope that one day dear mommy and daddy would realize their own mistake and tell us "We don't want you going away from us to that jail each morning anymore" but alas those wishes never came true.
• What happened instead was that one day it was announced that now we were old enough to move into the next phase of terror and go to someplace called "school."
• Uptil now life had been full of colors, laughter, songs, games, and hours and hours of doing nothing in the classroom but just playing but now was the time to be someone else.

• What was that? No one could imagine? What would be the new horrors? Will it be better than this or will it be worse? Who knew?
• But that is a story for another time, another period...............................