Blog 14 - Festivals at school



A new year has just begun with a lot of joy, hope and fervor. We have all had weeks of celebrating one festival after another in the last two months. This season was and is my favorite time of the year. Even in school, this was the best season of the year.

Our school celebrated all the festivals in a grand way. For Dusshera, we would have a massive ‘Golu’: multiple steps decked with hundreds of dolls brought in by teachers and students. Teachers would even take turns and perform the puja everyday and even make the tasty ‘Sundal’ and distribute to all the students. We would be taken for a class-wise tour of the Golu, a great way to bunk one period of study! They would also have fancy dress competition with a Dusshera theme for the nursery kids, who would come in costumes of all possible gods or characters from our mythology.

After Dusshera would come Deepavali/Diwali, the festival of lights. Diwali would be a school holiday, where we would celebrate with family and friends at home. However, in the days leading to Diwali, we would have endless discussions of what crackers we bought or will buy, who is brave enough to blast the ‘Lakshmi vedi’ or the ‘1000 waala’ or the dreaded ‘atom bomb’; or what dress and from where we wanted to buy it (Pothys was a favorite back then), for the festival. Thankfully, now the cracker bursting activity has drastically reduced due to environmental and child-labor concerns. Once the festival was over, and we got back to school, another one week of discussion would be about who did what for Diwali, and which latest movie they saw in the theatre or on Sun TV. Even in the local train, our teachers or other working ladies would discuss their family purchases of the season (a new grinder or a ‘sumeet’ was a big deal back then). Of course, there would be a massive exchange of all kinds of sweets and snacks, both home-made and from shops, among friends and well-wishers.

I was part of the school choir group, I think we were 5-6 girls in the daily school assembly along with our music teacher Mrs. Karpagam, singing different prayers (dedicated to different gods on different days). I don’t remember the exact order, but we sang everything from ‘Totakashtakam’, ‘Annapurnashtakam’ to ‘Mahishasuramardhini stotram’ etc.
Come December and we would have Christmas carols’ singing, in addition to the regular prayers. Every day was a different carol, but my most favorite ones include, “Joy to the world...”, “Silent night…”, “Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer…”, and of course the crowd favorite, “Dashing through the snow….” 😊

From the first of December to the last day before the half-yearly holidays began, we would sing these beautiful songs. The memory of 1000-something voices standing in height-order at the assembly singing “Hey! jingle bells! jingle bells! jingle all the way…” will stay with me forever.

Happy new year once again, everyone!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Blog 1 - My cycle(s)

The 1990s always remind me of a fun time of my childhood. An integral part of my childhood was my BSA champ cycle, a peculiar looking little cycle for kids below 5 th or 6 th standard: it had a long, narrow, mostly white colored seat and a long metal inverted-U shape rod for back support. I think it also came with a set of “ wheels ” , which were these small wheels that could be fixed to either side of the cycle, helping the rider achieve balance and preventing a learner from falling off. As the kid slowly learnt to balance and ride the cycle independent of the wheels, his/her confidence improved drastically. Unfortunately, I do not remember the day we bought the BSA champ or who bought it (must have been my parents). My grandfather ’ s employee, Prasad anna, a draftsman, lived in a portion in our house and was the person who first taught me how to ride my BSA champ cycle. I remember telling him not to let go of me, as he held firmly the U-rod at the back of the cycle and ask
Read more

Blog 16 - School elections

If you have been reading my other posts and feeling jealous that I went to an awesome school, you are going to get further jealous! In addition to all the fun extracurricular activities, our school also had elections! Yes, you read that right! We had elections every year to select the School pupil leader or the SPL, assistant SPL (ASPL), the treasurer and the cultural secretary (this was a coveted position that most contestants were after). The ASPL would step in if the SPL was absent or if there were many tasks to do. I think the treasurer managed the funds of the student union. Usually, it was a commerce student that was selected for this post. The cultural secretary, people thought had a fun job, as he/ she was in-charge of the interschool ‘culturals’, where we would go to other schools and vice-versa to participate in various, fiercely battled competitions. But the reality was that the cultural secretary was often running around trying to get everything done while being in the
Read more

Blog 17 – Lost and Found

When I was around 8 years old, my mother and I went to the famous Ranganathan street in T. Nagar for Diwali shopping. Chennai residents will know how crowded this street usually is and festival times are even worse. However, what brings so many to this street is the wide range of shops it has, where one could buy everything including electronics, kitchen vessels, toys, flowers and clothes. When we reached the street, my mother told me to hold her hand tight or I would get lost in the crowd. I held her hand firmly and we walked into the street, and made our way to one shop after another, getting the items on our list. Generally, my mother would plan our outings in the non-peak time of the day, which was usually between 11 am-3 pm, when the crowd would be minimal. On this particular day, we were delayed, and it was past 5 pm when we got out of our final shop. As soon as we exited the shop, the massive sea of people flowing into the street pushed me away from my mother, who also d
Read more