The Pensieve

With just 5 days to go for my departure to Texas A&M University for my graduate studies, I was in the process of looking some of my old files and books and clear the unwanted stuff so that I can relieve my mother of the pain to maintain them. It was then that I stumbled upon a notebook collection of mine which is atleast ten years old. Its been quite some time since I have browsed through them and ten years is quite enough to knock my knowledge about the collection out of my poor brain.

As I browsed through those collections, I came across some articles and poems of mine which were published in the school magazine. I got to say it came across as a magical moment to me. It is amazing how memories of the past can come flying back into your mind the moment you see an object that belongs to that period.

In school, it was a real privilege to have your works published in the school magazine. You can hardly wait to get your hands on to the school magazine. As usual, we would first browse all the photographs in the magazine, trying to see if we are there in any of the photographs. In case you happen to be in any of the photographs, then you HAVE to get comments from your friends (‘Hey, you look great in that photograph’, ‘Don’t you think that I should have combed my hair properly? I never knew they were going to publish this photo. Otherwise I would have taken care of my looks a little more seriously’)

Once the photo section is done, then the attention is drawn towards the essays, short stories, poems and paintings / sketches that have got published in the book. Even though no one would admit it, each of us would secretly count the number of times our names have been printed onto the magazine. And each writer would also know that the kind teachers would have edited their works, correcting the grammatical and punctuation mistakes, thereby polishing off each article.

In an age where Internet was hardly used and computers were still very expensive, the school magazine proved to be an effective canvas which portrayed the various hidden talent within each student. I am thankful to myself that the ‘me of the 1998 – 2001’ had the mindset to preserve such a canvas. Because, whenever the ‘me of present’ may get bogged down with problems, all he has to do is get back to this canvas and derive inspiration from it.

-- Written on a rather hot August midnight
as I was wrapping up my stay in
Coimbatore to leave for Texas
02/08/2008