My first day in school

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First Day - A rainy day in mid June 1989

After a year of shouting, screaming, writing on all conceivable places in the house "Rishi Valley" because my friend joined that school, it was finally decided that I will be joining a school called Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan in Bhimavaram in AP. No screening or entrance test, packed with all necessary things that I would need, we started for Bhimavaram in a Matador van that my grand father owned.

Reaching the school the first thing I saw was a mini zoo with deer and peacocks, a huge 25 acre campus with lovely buildings with plenty of mango trees, we were then directed to the principal's office, Mr. G.S. Negi was the principal then. The first question I was asked was "Why do you want to be in a hostel?" to which my answer was "I like being in a hostel" and a small test by a maths teacher followed. The maths teacher conveyed to the principal that I was OK; the principal also asked me a few spellings and gave his consent for my admission.

As my parents completed the paper work I was taken to the dining hall where I was introduced to a few boys from my class whom I vividly remember till today, they were Appaji, G.N. Suresh and V.V.K. Rajeev. In their company I ate tomato bath and I was then taken to my hostel dormitory, it was for the first time that I saw bunk beds and I was allotted a bed on top. The caretaker was a middle aged lady called Chandramma who hailed from a near by village but surprisingly could talk fluent Hindi. My things were moved to my room and my parents started to leave and suddenly I was feeling sad, my eyes were filled with tears just about to roll down. Suddenly there was so much of hustle in the hostel building, what I saw was all the boys coming back to their rooms from the sports area and changing into towels and running in to the huge bath rooms at the end of the corridor and coming back all of them changed in to white kurta and pyjamas.

All of them gathered in the TV hall for the evening prayers “Asthachal” which

Meant praying the setting sun, the TV hall was full of excitement, for some time I did not understand the cause for such excitement. A boy sitting beside me told me that it was a Thursday and Giant Robot will be on TV. The Giant Robot show on TV made me feel better and the day ended with dinner and introduction to all my classmates.

Will keep posting all the incidents that I remember from my 6 memorable years of stay in Bhavan’s Bhimavaram