Chronicles Of Poochatty

I remember my 1st day at Poochatty Bhavan's vividly. Though there were some 20 school buses that stood like elephants at Pooram, I and my chechi were to go by a private van, Vikas. It was in it that I met Anaswara(Her cousin Abhimanyu was also in the same bus). Anaswara was very tall, incredibly thin, wore braces and had short hair reaching just up to her ears. She was, as I was to learn soon, a perfect Bhuji. She hadn't heard the word 'alavalathi', hadn't seen a film at theatre except 'Magic-Magic', copied down notes through telephone if she became absent one day and did all her homework regularly. But she was not dull at all, she was always bubbling with energy. She literally pulled me into the seat beside her in the van and bombarded me with all sorts of questions. She was a Harry Potter fanatic. The only aquaintance I had had with that book was a feature published in Children's Digest and Aparna's recent letter in which she'd said that her Vallyachan had bought her HP & PS. Anaswara was shocked to learn that I'd never read a single Harry Potter book and gave me her 'Philosopher's Stone' the very next day, 2nd of June.

At school I met Megha Ann Jose, Anaswara's best friend and from then on, we became a trio. Poochatty was entirely different from IJK. Here, the girls ruled. There were no Nikhil Mukunds and Vishnu Menons here; all the padippists were girls and there was an army of them: Anaswara, Amala, Anisha, Elizabeth and now me. We called teachers 'teacher' here instead of 'miss'. I remmeber Elsy teacher, who took us SS. During her first class she remarked "Entha aarkkum oru shraddhayillaathe? Shraddhayillatha kaaranaano?" Everyone laughed and Anaswara explained to me that 'Shraddha' was a student and that that person was absent. What I hadn't expected was Shraddha to be a boy; but he turned out to be a boy, full name'Shraddha Chohan', but he's a Malayali, I dunno where he got his name from.

I also remember Sandya teacher who taught us English. I once promised to give her edited photocopy of 'Bishop's Candlesticks' (Aparna's previous year's work) to play but I forgot it.

Our Hindi teacher was Vrinda teacher and once during her class Salu fainted. Vrinda teacher was never a good teacher, but that was not why Salu had fainted. She was a very delicate girl and usually fainted atleast once every week.

Anaswara pointed out Elizabeth to me the first day and said 'See that Chinese girl, she's Elizabeth.' I wondered for almost one week how Elizabeth spoke Malayalam so fluently, until she herself explained that though she looked like a Chinese girl she was a Malayalee. Elizabeth was an allrounder; she sang well, danced well, studied well, ran well, talked well, was cute and friendly. She had a tiny sister, Rebecca. Elizabeth's best friends were Roshini and Chandini. Roshini was, according to me, the most beautiful girl in the class.

There were no groupisms among girls here. Everyone were friends, though some were best friends. No one would point out anyone else as enemies. It was from here that I learnt that more than two can be best friends; like me, Anaswara and Megha, like Roshini, Chandini and Elizabeth.


Our Principal was Mrs. Shanta Murali. She had bobbed hair and wore lipstick. Everyday we had open assemblies and instead of National Pledge,we said Bhavan's Pledge, with our palms unfolded, which ran as 'We, the students of Bhavan's...'. Everyday we had different prayers along with the Bhavan's Anthem. On Fridays' it was a Christian prayer, I think. I've never understood anything of it, except the 'Adam & Eve's' bit and the 'Amen' at the end. The assembly ground used to be a mystery for me for many months. You see, the school was on a hill and the various blocks were at different levels. Above the assembly ground was sky and then we'd go down a flight of stairs and emerge onto the basket ball court and Lo! above it was also sky, when, I felt, it should be underground. We had 'Om bhrammau..' befor lunch and 'Om poornamitham...' before the National Anthem. There were no restrictions to bringing non-veg, though nobody usually brought non-veg. We could sit wherever we wanted in the classroom during lunch. Anaswara usually brought Maggi noodles for lunch and she'd lick her fingers later, a habit that irritated Megha tremendously.

The singer Jyotsna also used to come in Vikas. Once she drank water from my chechi's water-bottle and another time we put 'Karuppinazhaku...' in the van when she was in the van; she smiled when we cheered. But she was a very normal girl, then in 12th, only very tall, with no 'jaada'.

At Poochatty we had SUPW classes, we used to call them Work Experience (WE) period. We had to go to another room in another block for that. Our PT ground was vast and we had separate places to play badminton (me against Neethu, a tall,dark girl), and Dodge ball and the boys played football in the big outdoor stadium. There were no furious competitons here, we played to enjoy. We hated the mass PTs in the stadium during Wednesday Zero Periods, in white-and-white, when the whole school was forced to work out the 'Display'.

We were supposed to have music classes in a small block by the side of the stadium, but those periods usually ended up as PT periods too. We had dance classes in a room by the WE room, but we were never taught anything, we usually practised for the Youth Festival.


Apart from all these, the air was thick with romance. There was Mohammed, who'd carved Elizabeth's name in his forearm with a compass, Arjun who was caught writing a love-letter to Roshini, Merry Henna who droned on and on about her secret line 'Golden', and Lakshmi chechi in Vikas who used to assume 'Ananthasayanam' pose across Anaswara and the other girls to reach the window from her seat in the van to talk to her boyfriend, Sachin. It was here that I first came to know about rumors too...