A walk back in time

I could not return to my school — Yadavindra Public School — in Patiala that recently completed 74 years of its existence, after passing Class 12 in 1994. Not even for the silver jubilee batch reunion in 2019, but when I stopped over in Ambala on my way to Jammu where I was posted, I could not resist a detour to Patiala.

Advertisement

The school was closed due to Covid-19. I took the bursar’s number from a schoolmate whose sister taught at the school and called him to ask if I could visit. He not only permitted me but also deputed a teacher to take me around.

When I reached YPS, my heart was overwhelmed with the joy of returning after a long gap of 26 years. I first went to the hostel block. I wanted to show my family — wife and two daughters — the dormitories, beds and cupboards. Like a sprightly schoolboy, I walked with a bounce in my steps.

But Dhani Ram House, or DRH as we called it, was a ramshackle building. The teacher accompanying me told me that it was to be knocked down for some new construction. MH, the other hostel facing DRH, was to meet the same fate. PH, the third hostel, had already given way to a modern, three-storied building, which had one house on each floor.

The old charm of dormitories with sloping, tiled roof, held together by timber beams would soon be gone. I wanted to say grace and have a meal in the house mess with students and the housemaster. But the mess lay dismantled. Even if the school wasn’t closed, I could have eaten only in the new mess in the modern hostel building.

‘This is the banyan tree,’ I said, pointing to the giant tree near the squash court, ‘which we feared at night. Even if it was urgent to go to PH, we wouldn’t, unless accompanied by a friend.’

The mango trees in front of the dormitory, the garden hose, which doubled up as a giant sprinkler during Holi, the quarter of the headmistress, the bathroom area, the wall which we mounted to slip out at night for paranthas… I was hysterically showing everything to my family.

‘You are lucky, sir. If there was no Covid-19, the building would have been demolished by now,’ the teacher said.

Lucky I surely was, and happy! That I could visit my memories in their original avatar — maybe for the last time!