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Abdul Muqtadar Syed is a writer & speaker, works & lives in India & Australia, has a flair to write articles on Faith, Health,
Wealth, poetry, Spirituality, Wisdom and Diet. The views expressed are his excerpts from anecdotes, media, memorabilia, &
nostalgia. He can be communicated electronically over the web at: syed.abdulms@gmail.com
6 hours of detention at school
by: Sam Syed, M.B.A.
It’s a rare coincidence that while I am celebrating
the silver jubilee anniversary of graduating from
my first school, it is also celebrating golden
jubilee anniversary of imparting & educating
children. My journey of a thousand miles began
with few steps in the year 1978 after
encountering my rejection due to lacklustre in
accomplishing a toy task during the interview in a
missionary school where the alternate route to
admission was payment in the form of donation
towards building fund which was indirectly a
penalty but was a scarce availability with my
parents. My insistence to stay at home under the
homesickness and promise of making no
nuisance with my aunts by remaining as a mute
spectator to their gossips was rejected by my dad
who arranged self-pickups & drop offs on his
bicycle so as to save few bucks from a private
transport in order to quickly pay off the home
loan. The locality in which I grew was filled with
hype, hysteria, and hypocrisy by people doing
menial jobs having no intention to study or
enhance their future but to enjoy the life to the
fullest extent in a vernacular style & filthier way
even though it was not a slum but residents in big
estates inherited by uninterested landlords yet
few of them pursuing education with no clear
visibility of the future but embracing education to
tryst with destiny at the horizon of time.
My early childhood days were a natural
performance of the second out of the seven
stages of man portrayed by Shakespeare highly
reluctant to attend the school often marred by flu
or asthma. My first teacher was Mrs. Aparanji
who taught the alphabets of English & hindi
patiently with supportive colourful drawings on
the black board in the class room just beside the
headmasters’ room which housed draconian
administrators browbeating through facial
expressions to carry forward with their mission of
force feeding education to children besides the
tough gatekeeper manning the foot fall through a
fortified gate imparting the importance of
punctuality to students & their attendants. My
umpteen attempts of continuous crying to return
home prior commencement of classes earned me
thrashings by the stick of the
management which were
apparent bruises in black &
blue colours beneath my
navy blue knickers till my
socks. It was a strange
experience that a decade
later those juvenile incidents
ashamed me many a times during my eye
contact with Mrs. Charie during her teaching
sessions in class tenth. Some of the finest
moments which I still remember & emulate is her
skill to assort things, dates alongside her
inspirational slogan: “The minute you waste
would be a waste in your life”.
The transitions of my childhood to boyhood &
subsequently to teenage proved to be a sigh of
relief from asthma marred by emotional scars in
my memory evidencing heavily backpacked co-
students merrily climbing the stairs leaving
behind me. My dad even though was a civilian
but motivated me like a faithful commander to
stand up & climb on my feet. These
compassionate moments made my father - my
hero. He was the lone worried soul who was
behind my education & progress from
kindergarten till post-graduation beholding the
responsibility of paying my tuition fee on time.
We learnt the world by peeping through the
stories & lessons in the book. The personalities of
so many teachers, authors, great men & women
from the annals of history reconfirmed our faith in
a prophetic saying “Pen is mightier than sword.”
My tributes also goes to the school staff, ayas &
my respected teachers who imbibed discipline in
me and inculcated a feeling to rise & serve the
world so as to fetch compliance on par with our
school’s motto - love , service , sacrifice…. I
wonder that so many peoples’ efforts were
involved in making & raking of me: a student, a
denizen, a netizen all after the 12 years of
education by way of retention at Sujatha school
which was once my alma matter and whose
alumni I am forever !.
“We cried, we laughed, we learnt, we played, we failed, we thought, we practiced, we passed, we
progressed, we transformed all in the playgrounds & class rooms of our school.”