Remembering high school days

MSVV 1983-1984

The picture above is me, likely in grade 11. Or, as Americans would say, during my high school junior year. Not only do I not remember posing for this picture, I also don't recall looking like this.

This picture was taken on school premises, as evidenced by the red brick half wall. But the occasion escapes me. Most likely someone brought in a camera (a rarity in those days) and offered to take a picture. I had just acquired an Agfa Click III (or similar) camera in those days (probably as a birthday present) but I doubt my parents would have let me take it to school without making a huge fuss.

It took me a while to believe that it was indeed me. I know I occasionally wore glasses. I despised wearing them but did so because my mom's incessant warnings had sunk deep into my psyche, "Your eyesight will get worse if you strain your eyes trying to read without your glasses!"

But I definitely don't remember having horn-rimmed glasses. The pair I wore then is long gone. Perhaps it broke during sports and I never told my parents because I didn't want it replaced. Or I purposely left it behind when I quit my engineering studies at IIT Roorkee and transferred to computer science in Canada. (Nowadays I have a few pairs, mostly rimless, which I wear only when I'm driving in the dark on a rainy day or on unfamiliar roads.)

I also don't remember wearing a black patka (mini-turban). My memory is that of wearing sky blue, which (along with steel blue) would have been part of the school uniform requirement. Possibly I was wearing black as a form of protest against the Indian government's 1984 military invasion of the Golden Temple (somewhat analogous to the Sikh Vatican).

Continuing the list of incongruous attire, I am surprisingly wearing brown shoes -- another school uniform violation! Maybe I was using the kill-two-birds-with-one-stone strategy. If you're going to be dinged for a uniform violation, you might as well go all out. It's a bit hard to tell but my belt also seems to be not of the sanctioned variety.

I was, however, wearing my kada (iron bracelet), which I habitually tended to push up against my arm so it wouldn't be dangling around my wrist like a bangle. I formed this habit to keep the kada from interfering during sports. Later in life I stopped wearing it for this reason among others.

Most of my trousers had big holes in them from acid spills during chemistry lab classes. Not sure what I was doing wrong but my acid spills were not of the drizzle sort. They were massive downpours that burned right through my lab coat and got to my trousers. Thankfully, the two layers of protection saved my skin from being burned. Therefore, I was pleasantly surprised to see that the pants I'm wearing in this pic seem spotless.

My former classmate, Asim Patel, shared this picture with me a couple of weeks ago. So, it was the first time I was seeing this picture since it was taken some four decades ago. Therefore, I hope I can be excused for having so much trouble recognizing myself.

I have less trouble remembering the others. L to R: Harpreet Duggal, Shashank Vikram (RIP, died tragically in a car accident driving to his honeymoon when his car rammed into a truck carrying steel sariyas or TMT rebars sticking out the back of the truck), unidentified, Amit Sinha (RIP, shockingly succumbed to cancer about five years ago), Sanjay Vatsa (crouching, wearing his prefect badge), Jagjot Anand (Maneka Gandhi's brother or cousin), unidentified, Sunil Anand, Prasenjit Basu, Inderjit Claire, and Milky/Rajeev (we called him that due to his fair skin but I forget his full name).

Oddly, some of the students who were top academic performers didn't amount to much (Vatsa, Claire). But on the whole ours was an exceptional batch. Vikram, Sinha, and I ended up at IITs. Basu and Claire got into BITS Pilani. Sunil got into DCE. If you're wondering why there's no mention of biology, commerce, or arts majors, we had separate sections (home rooms) for those and mine was the engineering section.