The Cube Root of Pi

Dear Friend, as I may now address you,
Life, they say, is a manifestation of memory and time. Funny thing about time, as Einstein put it, has different speeds of operation. But this time, neither did I touch the hot iron nor did I sit near the hot girl. 13 years seemed to pass so unbridled, yet so full of life, as it has done for many others who faced a day of reckoning that was built up on those solid 13 years. Time it is. 13 years. Every time. And then there comes memory. The title gives you an idea of black and white memories. But I hope you wont get me wrong. The memories that are buzzing in my mind are far from black and white. They happen to be far more colourful than the cold November Rain. Still, the black and white parts of these memories seem to stand out for me much more significant than the rest. I better move on. Your time is precious. Time waits for no one, let alone man.

Its not the worst of ideas to put yourself into the shoes of another. Try mine. Take a step out of your house to the good old Sreekariyam junction like I’ve done for almost every day of my life. Forgive me. I know the stench is unbearable. The good things in life, fortunately comes to those who wait. Even more fortunately for you, the wait is just close to 10 minutes. Just about half a kilometer away, is the 10 acres which gave everyone who stepped in like us, 20 acres to grow. The site of those black and white memories you came across in the title. Take the walk. The college gates will be open at this hour . Follow me in. I don’t think you will regret it. I havent yet. You may feel the energy. I do already. Look ahead. Its not that time of the year when everyone is packing their bags. So, you might not get to see the buses lined up at the starting and ending point of our excursions. But having seen it every year for the past 12 years, I can say that it is that day when the 40-year old has the unbound excitement of a 10, and the 10-year old has the overwhelming satisfaction of a 40. Memorable, in every meaning of the word. Look a bit further down the road . You will see a brick structure which we call the Sutter Hall. Built by the architectural genius that Laurie Baker was, the Sutter Hall played host to almost all the youth festivals since my first. The place always seemed to have a life of its own. It sure does speak to you. Magic. I haven’t seen anything close to it anywhere else.
Move on. You will come to the hockey ground. Keeping aside the fact that I’ve probably seen every other sport other than hockey being played here, this ground was our only solace in our younger days. It used to be our means of broadcasting ourselves when it got impossible to do so, without getting trampled upon, in the Football Ground whose major portion was taken up by our seniors. Now that I’ve mentioned the Football Ground, you got to know that its huge. It stands out, vast. I bet you can see it now. The Football ground that doubles as the cricket ground, the ground that has been set by the stampede of 50 years of loyolites. Jose uncle sure knows this ground inside out. Probably, as much as the ground knows us. It has given us everything we ever wanted. The sweet smell of victory, the bitter taste of defeat, the march past on sports day, the inter-house football clashes and going back to class coated with brown are memories which have sweetened with time. Apollo Pioneers, Gemini Giants, Jupiter Jetsetters, Sputnik Spaceman. I feel the words shoot past my vision. Look a bit further and you will see the new Children’s park with the Noah’s Ark. And then, adjacent to it, the puzzling Pandit’s House. A thousand stories of the apparent ghost in it and its exploits which used to give us nightmares, when we were carefree, young and as full of life as we could possibly be, flash in my memory for a second. Surely, you can get this feeling back. Or can you?

Take the steps down my dear friend. Now your steps are your own. You will realize that you can’t stop. You don’t need me to guide you now. Time is passing. The memories are far from over. Infact, it probably hasn’t started yet. I don’t expect you to understand. Follow me if you shall. Every day, we found ourselves rushing into the canteen on your left to fight for a non-existant space in the ‘queue’ to grab at the random bun from the random buyer’s hands while trying to defend ourselves from the resistance of the buyer and of course, fellow snatchers. If I were to explain every exploit at the canteen, it will probably turn out to be stranger than the last sentence. It may not make sense to the rational mind. So, turn away. Open your eyes. The trees are beautiful, aren’t they? Abdul Uncle sure made fashioning the 7th heaven look easy. The wizard he is. Truly Amazing. Capture it in your mind’s eye. When you’re done, move into the big school block. The Principal’s parlour floods my mind with memories of every phone call my parents got, because of the geography outline maps I failed to submit and the number of stories we cooked up pointlessly knowing that the cane was going to be the end result. Never had this seemed sweet than at this time of goodbye. Fr. Joseph Edassery , every loyolite’s best friend. His office was a mere 10 meters away too. I suggest you take the stairs. Now, looking at the corridors which housed us without complaint, before every class, during every recess and occasionally between classes, the whole scene starts to blur before my eyes. Take a look into one of those classrooms. For the teacher, it was the haven for 40 odd rod shackle teenagers. For us, the classroom transformed into whatever we needed, ranging from a warzone bombed by chalk-pieces to an airport to crash-land random paper planes. Fights have broken out, food has been shared and friendships have been renewed in this small place where we found ourselves in for 13 years. Take the stairs yet again and you will come to the Berchman’s hall. Flunking a chemistry exam never was sweeter in any other room. Come to think of It, it never happened in any other room. Time did pass then. Luckily, for most of the time, so did we. Move on to the room where silence is insisted and never really attained. The library has evolved from the stereotypical peaceful place of worship for the avid reader to the polar opposite when the case comes to this specific room. Paper-balls, magazines and occasionally bodies, flew. The protagonist, silence, ironically, never got a chance to make its presence known. No one gave it a chance to steal the show.

A bunch of voices screamed in unison. “SABSE AAGE LADKE KAUN?”, followed by another thousand that went “LOYOLA, LOYOLA”, followed by a whistle, a gentle rustle of a ball in a basket and the sweet smell of victory. The scene changed. The whistle sounded. Unlike the last case, the thundering of clapping was replaced by the stunned silence that reverberated off everyone’s mind. The Loyola BasketBall tournament. Three days every year in which a thousand hearts beat the same pace and prayed for the same result. The basketball court in the school quadrangle. Succesfully accommodating more than five matches simultaneously after school hours, this place provides a scene that no one who has ever known it can try to forget. The junior classes which moulded our mind and laid the foundation for whatever we built on it today, gets focused in your vision. Next to it, the teacher’s staffroom. Let me tell you now, that I have nothing but respect and love for every one of those teachers who moulded me into what I am, corrected me when I was wrong and encouraged me when I was down. I am surely going to miss each and every one of them. Move to the right. Joseph Uncle’s porotta canteen. The Alchemists need to look no further for the Elixir of Life which guarantees youth and immortality. It is right here, ever y afternoon on the very stage I made my first onstage appearance, back when I was a toddler of five.
Take your next step. Yes. It is colossal. It’s the biggest of its kind in this part of the state. And yeah, its majestic. You got to be blind to miss this one, my good old friend. The Loyola Indoor Stadium. The latest addition to my favourite place on this planet. Well, I know it, and almost everyone in the district knows this place. Two Words. Life. Arts. One name. LA Fest. The one thing we truly hold onto from our time in Loyola. LA Fest 2011. The spotlight was on. The sound system was too. The 9th of July of 2011. One day, where we put everything we ever got from our school into action. All the freedom, the space we got to grow and the responsibilities Loyola entrusted us with, came out in the best form possible at LA Fest 2011 – Your tryst with seventh heaven. And of course, I’ll not miss Fallacy of Isms, the drama we staged, the traditional drama put up by 11thies at every School Day. I can go on and on about this place. I can give you a thousand words about LA Fest without breaking a sweat. But then time slips like sand. And before you know it, it’s gone. I would know. Just like the 175 others who know it like I do.
There is a man in Loyola School. A man who inspired us all from the age our minds were getting moulded. A man who taught us the better values we now possess. He is none other than Fr. M M Thomas. He is, as I like to say, my most favourite person in my school. His office is at the CBSE block, which you must probably be staring at right now. This place used to be a beehive of activity, where I spent my first steps into teenage. The blood did boil. I can say that our transformation from the innocent to the Arrogant, Intimidating Champions began right here.

Your trip down memory lane with me is almost over. You must probably be looking at the watch and cursing my ancestors. Time is moving fast. You have been kind enough to kill some for me. But what about memories? Is it gone, just like that? Memory may fade, time may efface it. Time and Memory fashion this piece of art I like to call life. Its time to return, my friend, to wherever you came from. You have reached the big silver gates with the arch that gives two words that mean the world to me. I remember the first time, I passed through these gates. 5-year old me had sped past the open gates with my parents. My memory of that day is vague. Time has effaced it. One of the things I remember was three smiling faces interviewing me for my admission. Another one was the old ground which now housed the Indoor Stadium, and the forest behind it. Well, I spent my first 5-6 years in heaven playing in that ground and running around in the forest behind it. I also remember falling into depression in 5th standard when I saw the ground and the forest being replaced with the new Indoor Stadium. But, I do not complain, for old and beautiful things have to be replaced by the new and young. Someday, the Indoor Stadium will become old and beautiful and will have to be replaced by the new. Same case with us. We walked into this campus, new and full of life and are now at a point in life when we are going to be replaced by the new. But the old ground will surely lie forever in the hearts of everyone who has ever known it. And so will we, forever attached to every atom of this institution that has made us what we are today. The memories, white as snow, fades to black.