Along The Memory Lane.......The Echo Of A Battle Paean*........

 "*": paean is a battle cry, a cheer or a slogan. Take your pick

Shook from the golden bough of cobwebs high above in the dizzying heights of the ceiling, dust turbinated down and down, with a deliberate languor that spoke of arrogance and even a self styled Godly persona. In a sluggard pace that could have rivaled even the slowest of snails, it spiraled down and down. The crowd watched, fascinated as their mesmerized eyes followed the swaggering descent of the dust particles. But as the descent shifted their focus to a lower part of the X-large auditorium, the eyes of the 400 strong crowd as well as that of the few players on the court fastened on what was present to the rear end of the hall.

A fifty strong mob stood there.

 Silent and watchful.

 Bunched up together, their eyes and ears as one, strained intently for that blast of whistle that seemed not to be coming soon. They were a single entity. Not many. But one. A restless dog straining on his leash. A lion caged and bound, raring to pounce, seeking out the prime time.

Then a shrill blast echoed from the puny whistle on the hands of the referee. Simultaneously, with a co-ordination to rival even that of the best of choirs, a few voices rose up from the rear…..

“
Arre Sabse Aage Ladke Kaun??”

Almost as if on cue, five hundred voices battered the ear drums as one…

“LOYOLA…..LOYOLA….”

************************************************


This is cheering, chanting and requiem, the Loyola style.

In the last five decades Loyola has emerged as the undisputed best in this country of God. The rampaging lion, lord of the forest, the Manchester United in the EPL, the Illuminator who elucidated the untraversed trails to the ones who toiled hard to simply tag along from behind.

But why?

The question indeed has perturbed the greatest of minds all these years. Schools wondered, teachers gaped aghast and students, well, they just sat there swore out aloud,” What the FUCK is wrong with them??”(Least they could do, actually. After all one must always do what one does best.)

Well, this is us. This is our school. No, strike that. This is our home. The entity that made us the individuals who we claim to be today.

We belong here. No where else.

Here, as the fag end to my long yet so short stint in Loyola looms ominously closer and closer, it is the spirit Loyola instilled in me that I remember most today. Cheers and chants find the now-so-familiar path to my tongue even in the most unlikeliest of times( like the time when I was so kindly “requested” to grant audience to the principal and the time when I was writing a stupid exam with 150 or so other souls. Well, in the latter situation, I had nothing constructive to keep me occupied anyway. So I guess for once I could be pardoned). These battle cries of Loyola have become so tediously familiar to my family that they so conveniently tell me to shut my trap every time I get a bout of cheering. Well, easy for them to say. 

    

For they are so at ease, being blissfully unaware of that feeling of exhilaration we Loyolites receive, every time our voices are pressed to service for our school.

It is indeed this attitude, this spirit, this relation with our alma mater that sets us apart.

One distinction that took Loyola to the top of the food chain.

It was one fine morning in the eve of the grand daddy of ‘em all, La Fest, that the pride of being a Loyolite reached its peak. The days that followed helped us concrete that belief. But that is another story, eh?

It is a feeling so indescribably satisfying that we receive when we join in the cheering for our school. That inexplicable contentment. The feeling of elation and exhilaration. Nothing in my life that I have experienced has had this effect on me, or my friends, so to say.

It will be with the greatest amount of regret that bye the end of 2011, that 150 souls will step out of that seventeen acres of heaven on earth, past that wrought iron gates.

But we will not perish.

For,

Once A Loyolite, Always A Loyolite.


Coz till the end of our days, we will be able to call out thus:


"People Wanna Know,
Who We Are
So We Tell Them
We, Are The Loyolites"

The Ramblings Of A Young Mind

Who am I?

 One of the most far reaching questions ever. Adam asked it, when devil and his loved one tempted him with the apple(didn’t know till then that an apple could also be a temptation…..ugghh!!). And I ask it too, even today, even now. The question haunts me: In my thoughts. In my words and in my deeds too. Like A stalker with his victim in sight it has followed me all through….right from the time I learned to think straight.

SO WHO THE HELL AM I??

I searched far and wide. Deep and high.  And the answer dawned on my brain as I sat dreaming in the Maths class…. I jump up, bang my hand on the plank of wood in front of me (Oops!! Sorry!! It was just my desk….) and looks around jubilantly…… right into a pair of beetle-black eyes. Then a voice uttered: “GET OUT!!” Oops!! The teacher. Shit! Fuck the piece of inspiration and its awkward timing. Dragging my feet nosily (purposely of course!!) I make my way out. My head was bowed. But my heart thrummed with excitement. The hunt had reached its last chapter. Now all I had to do was to read the epilogue.

Transition: From the airy classroom, I walk into an altogether different world. Paradise, heaven,( Take your pick mate, do I look as if I care??) smote me full on the face as I emerged from the room. Loyola greeted me with its usual splendor. The sight of THE heaven that I have been seeing for the past seven years and one which never tires the eye ignited a warm glow in my heart( Sorry. I tend to go on like this. It is about Loyola after all, isn’t it… ). This was school. No. This IS home. The abode of 1763 souls(yup! Took the number!! ) who are groomed to take on the world. This is heaven indeed.

It was seven years back that I ventured into this tropical paradise. A puny youngster who was scared of school, teachers and even his own class mates. I remember the first day at school when a two-feet twenty pounds “giant” terrified me. Well, that was me. A cry baby. One who cried for his mother to take him home when she so unwittingly came to school. Soft-spoken and timid to the core.

But that was how things WERE. Not how things ARE. Time has evolved. And so have I. Years have passed since then and even as I stood outside gazing perplexed at the brightly(and recently) painted rail, I knew deep inside that some change had consumed me. It had always been there. I was just, you know, dumb enough not to acknowledge it.

 The puny youngster was engulfed, gagged and washed away in a wave of raw change.

In his place now is a changed person. A total stranger to the little young one of those past years.

The Abin Francis who ventured past the wrought iron gates one hot afternoon all those years back is not the Abin Francis of today. The world has changed. Loyola has changed. But it has taken its students along with it. For I am one of the thousands molded by Loyola. Like the many before me and the many after me, I am different. Unique to the point that what you see here, what you hear here, what you experience here, is not up for grabs anywhere else. Unique to the point of non-existence….

….As I stand there, I leg propped on the wall, reclining, feeling the cool breeze on face, into the periphery of my vision, a white clad figure walked in(guess who ):The Principal had come for me. Swearing profusely at anything and anybody I could think of, I spun around slowly to face disaster. But as I did so, the fucking realization dawned on me, once again, yet again displaying its lousy sense of timing, its total lack of consideration for me and its endless desire to dump me unceremoniously in crap holes….. But as one hand stretched out to my ear and a much revered(and equally feared!! ) voice questioned the teacher at length regarding the sudden stroke of inspiration that prompted her to so kindly exclude me from the class, my heart leaped joyously with triumph and these words blazed clearly in my mind, as if seared in the very fires of the purgatory:

I am Abin Francis and I………I am a Loyolite..