Let me start by saying that I'm not sure why I chose to write this. It may have been because I was too overwhelmed for the past 28 months to elucidate my feelings as anything coherent. Or it may, equivalently, be because I hold so much against the entire class that I felt that I just had to give vent to all of it before saying 'Adios, Sayonara, Au Revoir.' Well, you know I'm kidding about that last one. :)
"The years gone by." They have been two long years, haven't they? Rhetorical question. I know they have. Time usually flies like an ISRO Rocket diving upwards into space to launch the Mars Orbiter Mission when I'm in school. Now it just simpered through the space like a feeble paper-plane. It was exhausting, to say the least.
Yet, in many ways, I'm thankful that these two years happened this way. I couldn't have imagined them any differently, because COVID had killed my imagination. I'm being honest about this, one hundred per cent. The lockdown was stifling the life in me, and I owe it only to this bunch of people that I had the fortune or misfortune of being tied in touch with that I could make it through, hale and happy.
I don't think the sum of what I've written on the class-group (informal), or any other group, for that matter, measures up to even half of what I'm writing now. I was that quiet. Went incognito, so to speak. Well, that's me anyway. I like to watch, and I prefer to make uncanny and often embarrassing observations about everyone while they watch on, puzzled by my silence and likeness to a teenage Buddha. No offense intended.
Myth buster! I am not a teenage Buddha. I am usually thinking up witty things to say to all of you that I never end up saying. Today, I might. I have them up my sleeve all the way to the shoulder. But then again, I don't know whether my kind of bookish humor is in season these days! ;)
To start with, our class, whatever you want to call it (I know it has many names, so I'm not going to run the risk of calling it anything) was bound together right from Day 1. May 1st, 2020. I was rushing off to French classes left and right, so I wouldn't know too much. But I used to watch the recordings from end to end (even repeat-hearing some parts, I don't know why) and try to imagine how each one of my classmates might look like. So much for all that. Even today, I don't know what many of you look like, without the mask!
Anyway, we were forced, as the only students of 11th grade then, to work together, when we barely knew each other. In a week, we knew more about 'random' people than we might ever have expected, or wanted, to, in the first week of school. Too bad. Soon I realized that I was wrong about a lot of things, had misjudged a whole bunch of people, had created character sketches that were so skewed that many of you might laugh to think someone had thought of you that way.
(For the details, you can ping me, but you may not, for I will not answer. ;))
Our class was the most merry lot that could be constituted of an 11th-12th Grade batch. Which grade were we in, ninth grade? More like a jovial seventh grade, the way everybody used to perk up in online classes in the initial stint. I was mind-blown. The enthusiasm sapped a lot of life out of me, as I'm used to hearing mine and one or two other voices in the class. Here, everybody chorused answers at the drop of a hat. If you think I'm kidding, hit Rewind. This was you two years ago. Two whole years.
And then reality hit. I felt like things were dying down, just because we weren't meeting in person. Okay, okay, I knew all of you were. In clandestine. Secretly. Not very transparently, but I don't hold it against you. Not one bit, seriously.
But we weren't meeting every day like we usually do at school, and we weren't meeting every one. That was the disheartening part, at least for me. I wanted to be in the class and enjoy the senseless banter like I usually had, or just quietly listen to people while I made some very incriminating mental notes. Again, I'm not a stalker, or malicious, or overtly curious. I'm just very observant, if I may say so myself.
Yet, I don't know how you guys managed it, but you all made the class-group (the informal one, of course) feel like it was an actual class. I would visualize most of those conversations and feel like I was in school, listening to them taking place. You all became master communicators and social-media-ers (err- that's not a word, but bear with me) and wordsmiths and emoji-users, and I was mind-blown. Too cool, these people are. But I wish I could actually meet them. Man, I wish we had just one normal, regular, physical class in a normal class-room with a normal teacher on a normal black-board (or white board, at Orchid).
That didn't happen. Ever. Even when we did have regular-ish classes, they were anything but the 'normal' we had been used to pre-COVID. I was wondering if they had always been this way, this weird, hybrid version of a classroom where we all were separated by many feet and couldn't talk to each other much, and couldn't unmask, or even read each other's expressions as we spoke.
Coming to another very interesting topic- the first day of offline school. I would never have guessed that 'offline' would become a word in every day use. Well, it has, and it's here to stay. I don't intend any offense to any of you. Please pardon this (slightly) personal commentary on the class. When I first saw most of you, I was shocked. To say the very least. Especially the boys, if I may call you all that. The gentlemen, not so very gentle 'gentlemen'. You had beards and overgrown tufts of hair on the head, and some had trimmed it so fine I was rather taken aback at this strange, sudden metamorphosis. Were these the same people who'd shunned turning on their cameras claiming that they looked too bad? That they hadn't gone to the barber or the something-or-the-other in months? No, they couldn't be. Look at them! They were preening diva-like and I felt like they had prepared very intensely for this very day. Being dead serious here. There are no other connotations observed, intended, or to be interpreted. Thank you.
And the girls, well, all of you were very different in height than I had expected, had done different kinds of 'do's' to your hair, and were, to put it simply, not school-girl-like at all. Were these the people I had seen through the ninth and tenth grades often wearing long braids and dressed all prim-and-proper? I wasn't too sure. But I didn't know how it would come across if I said anything directly, so I just bit my lip (under my mask, so you wouldn't have noticed) and smiled through it all. To myself, of course.
It was like an 'online-lag'. You know, like jet-lag. Very un-original. But let's flow with this. I thought it was an online lag in more ways than one, because you all were very (I mean very, italicized, bold, underlined) different from your online personas. A good different. In most ways- because at school, you stole the 'thunder' I had for a brief while in online classes, to borrow a phrase from 'Friends'. (And maybe lots of other places that I am unaware of!)
It was sad that the 'offline' stint at school had to be so short. But I think it was good for the teachers, in a way. We would have been a rough lot to handle. Aha, speak for yourselves, I am just simply an angel, I know, I know. :)
I don't, even today, know too much about every one of you. But I know enough to know, and say with confidence, that each one of you is amazing- zealous, mischievous, determined, optimistic, kind-hearted and jovial- and I know that the paths that we all take are going to be special. Because of us, and the way 'we roll.' (Again a borrowed phrase.)
These paths may be starkly different from each other. Indeed, I know for a fact that they are. But they'll converge somewhere, I know. At some horizon, in some distant land. Okay, maybe at Netherlands or in Purdue, simply speaking. :) Or not- because most of us will be in entirely different cities, meeting new people and doing new and exciting things. Not that what we did in 11th and 12th was not exciting. I meant, exciting new things.
I know that we all will keep in touch. That's something we learnt how to do in even tougher times, so what really is normalcy to us? Nothing, as smooth as a bed of roses. We will jolly well keep in touch in one way or the other or in many ways. You know, more like a ring topology, not like a mesh, point-to-point, but through the next person with the next, and so on. The Human Chain. (Not to remind anyone of I.P. classes, but they were my favorite, so I had to drop that in. :))
Before I sign off, I must say that I love this class. And you will all always hold a very special place in my heart. For life.
Au revoir. I love this class. Three thousand. :D
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