The year that wasn’t there: Inter-cutting point of views of a tree & a kid, writes Shuktara Samkalpa

April 17:  CBSE Class X Examinations are cancelled. Higher Secondary Examinations are postponed. While the second wave of Covid-19 is looming large on our country, Shuktara Samkalpa, a 13 year kid from St Capitanio, Silchar writes on “the year that wasn’t there”, and the last word in her mind is how to go back to school. As of now, they are supposed to start their new classes from April 19.

“The wind is blowing the dust and sand from the playground, settling them on my sister and me, making us dustier. My sisters and I were already full of light brown sand. The sand always covered us, and every year, the students used to water us and sprinkle water on our leaves with the left over water in their water bottles after their school ends. But this year has been different. I haven’t seen the students since March last year, when they used to leave the school buildings after their exams. I heard them gossiping and exchanging their answer sheets, their worries of the next exam, the plans they made for holidays, how hard the next grade might be, all of it. But one day, it stopped. Word spread about a deadly disease – ‘COVID-19’ or as I heard the kids call it, ‘Corona’.  I had heard about it, and all their jokes about it. It was a topic of puns and memes for the children. Little did we know that it was going to change our lives forever. And it wasn’t a change for the better.”   

                

Another school year has gone by. Another grade completed. However, this session was different. With COVID 19 taking over our world, Covid cases spreading, more deaths being reported, our schools, clubs, malls, parks and everything shutting down, and everything going on full lockdown – quarantine mode, this has been one hell of a year.

Yet, here we are, one year later, collecting our exam results, healthy and alive.
Even though we had our exams, classes, and studies, I felt that that something was missing.
Then I realized it.
We missed us in 2020.

“One Monday morning, the children stopped coming. There used to be a duo- two girls- who used to stand under my shade, wait for their parents to pick them up and gossip about everything under the sun, sometimes joined by a few boys and other girls. Their futures, the present, their pasts, others, they seemed to talk about everything. Sometimes they pulled a leaf or two off me, and it hurt a lot, but I stayed quiet, not wanting to speak up and disturb them. And even if I wanted to say something, I wouldn’t be able to do so, would I? After all, I am just an object to stand under, an object which will just produce oxygen for the benefit of the humans and animals. They were annoying; I had decided that the first time they stood under my shade. And their long talks gave me headaches. They talked too much.”

It may not make any grammatical sense, but if you try to see it emotionally, you’ll know what I mean.

We had to take leave for a year from our lives for the pandemic. Just one year when everything in our lives was put on hold, a year wasted. One year when we didn’t have much human interaction, a year in which we grew closer to technology and digital devices.

We never got to wear our uniform, pack our bags, go to school, meet our friends, attend our classes, have lunch, exchange our snacks and have the fun we have in normal school sessions. We never got to meet our new classmates, new transfers, and see if we have any new teachers. We never got to play in our fields, borrow books from our library, and bother our games teacher for supplies from the Games class supply room.

“The playgrounds were different, special in their own ways, and the kids loved all of them. They laughed, ran and played in the sand. I never understood the fun in kicking up sand. It just made us all dusty. Those human kids yelled a lot too. They were noisy and annoying, I had decided.”

We used to have different ‘houses’, sub-units, in our school. Sometimes, they use to shuffle us up every year and change our houses, other years; we used to repeat in the same house. We could earn points for our house through house activities and at the end of a year, during Christmas celebrations or Sports Day prize-giving, the house with the most points would have been declared the winning house, and then the second and then the rest. They used to be so fun, and I missed them a lot this past year. We weren’t told anything about our houses because they didn’t really matter, so we’ve been ‘houseless’ for a year. That’s when I realized how much those days meant to me, and how much I longed for just another announcement of a house wise competition! I never thought of it otherwise, and this realization quite surprised me. I missed our house activities and results.

“The students used to have yearly Sports week. They also used to have their houses. Houses, I ask you! Of all the things they called it! Of course, I see where they are coming from. They wanted to make it a second home thing. But they do not realize that they cannot even try to compete against Hogwarts. The fun the four houses have at Hogwarts is nothing compared to what these puny muggle, mortal humans try to imitate. Their ‘house’ points mostly depended on the performance of the house mates in the yearly sports competitions. The children used to clap, and yell and cheer and switch sides every minute. It was annoying, I had decided, and very dramatic.”

We used to hold Exhibitions or Parents day alternately. We couldn’t hold our Parents Day program last year for scholastic reasons and had more fun on Sports day. In this session, we were supposed to have an Exhibition, our yearly Sports week, more competitions and clubs. But, we couldn’t, didn’t have them this year. I missed our school programs.

“They had this special program every year where the parents of the pesky kids would come and watch them make a complete fool of themselves on a huge platform. What was it that they called it? Ah, a stage. My brethren have told me that it is very amusing to watch them dance around pretending that they are someone else. I wouldn’t know what’s it like, I only hear the news carried by the wind- and the gossips of the talkative kids of course. They put up some human technology speakers and it was too loud. I didn’t enjoy it much, I decided, other than watching the amusing costumes the kids wore and the parents who were the guests for the show.”

We would have gone to a new classroom, claim new desks, and were supposed to have a normal school year. We were supposed to laugh and have fun in our favorite classes and get bored during our least favorite classes. We wanted to cause mischief, go to the library to read in our Library class, shout and play in our games class and learned how to march properly in our physical education class. I missed our classes and all the fun we would have had together.

“And according to the students, the classes were the most boring part of school, except perhaps for the few classes taken by their favorite teacher. After the day was over, they used to stand under the shade provided by me and my brethren and talk about how boring their “Hindi” and “Math” class was, but also about their interesting Science and English class. I never paid much attention to this. After all, how will I benefit from it all?”

We wanted to have laugh and panic together for exams. We were supposed to share our notes face-to-face, help our friends learn another chapter of Political science or how to draw the map of the old India or what 17 times 3 is. We needed to hear those whispers of “Good luck” and “All the best” from our friends before we went our separate ways to our own exam halls. We longed to hear our classmates ask “How was your exam?”, “How did you do?”, “Do you think you got that one right?” or “Do you know the answer to that question?” after we exit the battlefield, tired of our war with test subjects. I missed our offline tests and exams.

“And then they had their examinations. Over the years, I have heard too many hateful comments on examinations. How difficult they were, why they didn’t want to take them, etc., etc. The students seemed to be nervous before their exams, sharing some papers and ‘copies’ and ‘books’ and quizzing each other. I found them boring. They also started discussing what they got wrong the minute they were released from their classrooms. I never understood why they did that. After all, what’s done is done! Their nervous chatter always made me unnerved too.”

“But…”

We wanted to go to school. We wanted to experience everything to its fullest possible extent. We wanted to hold real-life classes, where the teacher and the students can freely interact with each other. We wanted those normal days back. We missed them.

“I missed those days. I may complain about how annoying and noisy and unnerving and dull they kids be, but without them…it wasn’t the same. The wind blew sand over us; there was no one to water us, no gossip to listen to, no clumsy to watch for amusement. It didn’t feel right.”

We all saw school as a burden, the place which takes away our happiness (and sleep.) But most of our memories are made at school. We made new friends, learn so many new things, and get ready for the world outside. We are made; we become and determine the person we are going to be at school. And while we might groan and grumble at the mention of studies and school, it is also the place where we want to go to the most, and in the depths of our heart, we know it.

“My brethren and I always saw the students as a burden, and wished them away sometimes, but now, we realized that without the students, it didn’t feel like home. We missed them, and we wanted the human schooling system to be back on track.”

We missed the old, yet new looking school building. We missed our precious playgrounds and fields. We missed causing mischief in our classes, chatting, and gossiping in the breaks between classes. We missed playing with our friends, and even the occasional minor injuries we received while being high on laughter. We missed asking unnecessary questions to delay our boring lesson and teasing each other for those. We missed the voices of our teachers reprimanding us for our improper uniforms, for forgetting to tie our hair up in ponytails, or for wearing the wrong shoes. We missed covering for our friends when they forgot their identity cards, or their water bottle or their books or their copies. We missed sharing our lunch with others and messing about with our special lunch boxes. We missed walking along the school corridors to explore every other inch of space in our school, all for the sake of bunking our boring math class or to get some more time to soak in the latest school gossip. We missed our boring, long lectures on our least favorite classes and the exciting, life-like sessions of our most favorite class.  We missed running in the corridors to playfully punch the annoying classmate who ran after teasing us. We missed cheering on our home teams during matches, and trying to figure out how to cheer them up if our team lost. I missed everything we could experience in our school, and I missed it all more than anything else.

“I missed the girls who eagerly discussed their future and talked about the ways they might keep in touch, even if they were miles apart. I missed the boys who teased the girls, and the times when the girls sassed back and vice-versa. I miss the athletic students of the games classes and the sports week, the hullabaloo and the cheering. I missed the proud parents who came to visit their children on the Exhibition day or the school program. I missed those who stood under my shade and shared their own notes before their exam and discussed their answers after they finished their test was over.”

We lost one year of our normal lives and things still haven’t have gone back to the old normal. But we have to settle for the new normal. An entire year has gone by, and it felt hollow without one of the most important parts of our childhood, our school. A whole session over and the only time we had to go to school was to collect our grades.

“I missed the regular schooling system for the past one year which was lost while fighting Covid-19.And things haven’t gone back to normal yet. The wind has carried news of a “second wave of COVID-19’, and I know that things are far from being completely normal. An entire year has gone by, and it felt hollow, empty, without the students of the school. A whole session over, and the only one time I got to see the kids were the day when they collected their results, and none of them stayed long.”

Next year, I hope, we can do this the old way, the better way, our way.
Next year though, I hope, everyone would come back to school, back to us.
Back to the most memorable and most exciting part of a human’s life, our school.