School Run

I remember my first day of school. Well, to be fair, what I actually remember is coming back home, running a little ahead of my mother, ringing our doorbell, completely forgetting that there was a small beehive on it and getting stung all over. I remember the tweezers at the doctor’s after. And the ceaseless heat of Bhuj, Kutch.

I remember my brother’s first day of school. He dressed up and waited while my mum took his picture. His smile was laced with nervousness and the beginnings of what were going to be big fat tears. He was so big and so small, all at the same time. Going to school but not wanting to leave home or mama.

Today, I dropped my daughter off at school. In her new uniform and trainers, she couldn’t be more excited. She knew most of her classmates (she graduated from nursery class, which is across the corridor) and the thrill of seeing her friends after a grand break of 36 hours was palpable. The school bell rang, the class teacher welcomed everybody in and all the tiny humans walked in, in a single file. Not a single one looked back at their parents. A good sign. A decent heartbreak. The first of many for us, I presume.

Time slips by through my fingers. My brother will be 40 in a year. And yet it is so easy for me to go back to that day when he was being packed into a small bus to go to school for the first time. Or go back to my school in Bhuj of which I remember a big slide, a metal seesaw inside the class (!) and one lone tree. Yet here I am, watching my little girl take off into the future one little skip at a time. Time contracts, expands, folds and cartwheels.

Isn’t that something.