The second term had begun. It was time to gear up for the many intellectually gruelling tests coming up. K.K.Anand sir had started pushing us towards the final stride in the olympiad subjects. Life was moving at a frantic pace. We were losing time like money now. Every moment seemed precious. The day of submission of our computer science project was the day after our olympiads in physics and chemistry. So the project did take a huge setback in our eagerness to clear the olympiads. It was a planned, systematic approach of bunking classes and studying. Twice a week were holidays, or rather, were taken as holidays. If we already had a holiday that week, we bunked two other days, thus making it three holidays. In fact, one such week we had Navarathri. The school had given us four days of holiday that week. So we could bunk only once that week, so we bunked thrice the next week to compensate for the loss of bunk. In effect, we had to BUNK two days per week, excluding the obvious holidays which we had. It was quite an experience, a thought-provoking experience too, because you had to search for new reasons every time you bunked. Having a good name among teachers didn't hurt, as you were generally let off, because the teachers knew you wouldn't waste your time bunking. I was never caught for my bunk, NEVER! But Pradeep was, not once, but twice! Both times, when we had studied together. The first time he bunked, he told the principal that he had to go to Tirupati that night. Then came the obvious question, why did he have to bunk in the morning when the trip to Tirupati was only in the night. He then said, a few relatives had come from Dubai and he had to go to the airport to pick them up. The principal wanted to meet his mother the next day, and when she came, was asked why he was sent to the airport when he had school, and morever the people who were coming were adults and could manage to come home on their own. This pissed his mother off. The next time he was caught, she told the principal clearly that he bunked to study for the olympiad as he felt that was much more important to him than the classes at school. Even I was questioned once when I had gone to my grandfather's death ceremony in the outskirts of the city after having bunked school. My math teacher asked me why I had bunked, when I told her that I bunked because I didn't know how to cook. The sent peals of laughter across the class and the teacher promised to come home the next month to have food, specially prepared by me, which meant I had to learn cooking by then. Fortunately, or unfortunately, she never turned up.
Then it was again time for the serious stuff that olympiads were. I was working my butt off with physics. Learning all the physics which I didn't know, from Pradeep, who was known to be king in physics, I badly wanted to clear the olympiad. Chemistry was never a possibility as far as I was concerned, and I just gave it a try, a wild try. I attempted all questions, in spite of negative marking being there in the objective paper. It was a funny experience indeed.
As far as physics went, it was a real learning experience and in the mock test which Anand sir kept, I topped! After a string of failures, this was some sort of a success. Suresh and I used to discuss a lot regarding olympiad stuff, and it looked like we could easily make it in physics given the preparation we had put into it.
Finally the examination arrived, and went. I had surprisingly done better than most of my friends, including Pradeep and Suresh, and that was some sort of a real confidence booster for me. Chemistry was more of a joke, and so I rushed through the paper, before rushing to a hospital where my mom had been admitted for a hernia operation. I had to study for the chemistry practical examination for half yearly from there. But there was another mountain to surmount, I hadn't even started my computer science project. I remembered this only after I reached the hospital. I didn't know what I was going to do. But God had an answer to this too...
Thursday, 26 June 2008
Chapter 3
Those were the best days of my life!! The quarterly examinations coincided with the World Twenty20 Competetion. I was rooting with all spirit for India. Morever, I was to go to Malaysia for a small trip of 5 days and hence, the exams were getting less importance from my side. But still, I managed to scrape through them with an above average performance. But then, the twenty20 tournament was reaching its ending stages. That was when I started getting particularly close to Vidya. We used to discuss matches ball by ball through messages and it was an experience in itself. That was when she apologised to me for have not voted for me at the beginning of the year. I had almost forgotten it, but when I heard this, I felt really bad about having made a big deal of the vote earlier. This drew me much closer to her and made me feel extremely comfortable in her company.
At this juncture, our IIT classes were also on in full flow. We were having a great fun. Other than the time we were exposed to some awesome physics, chemistry and mathematics, the remaining time used to be spent in some fun gossip. There was also some real fun had during this time.
Once while having a break, three of us, a guy called Anirudh Narasimhan from our class, along with Karthik, was narrating to me a story for which he wanted me to be hero. I was unsportive at first and then decided to listen to the story. They brought in the name of Priya Raman to be cast as heroine and slowly shifted to that of Priya Rajan, which was actually the name of our ex-chief minister. There was a guy walkin in front of me, who I didn't know was a party labourer of the ex-CM's party. He came to us and started blasting us for have used the party leader's name in bad light and he told us that he would have killed us if we weren't kids. He picked on Anirudh, and a scared Karthik ran for his life. Then, I spoke to the party guy to get Anirudh out of trouble. Then, we discussed this in class and had a hearty laugh.
At this point of time, I started realising that my chemistry was absolutely pathetic and that JEE was going to be all trouble unless I did something serious about my chemistry. Life was getting more about studies and I was slowly getting used to all this. It was at about this time that Sailesh Shivakumar, a really dear friend of mine was losing track. Till my class 10, Narayan, Sailesh, a guy called Vasanth, and I were dearest of friends. Vasanth had moved to Halebid, as his dad had been transferred there. Sometime around the 10th holidays, Sailesh had lost his dad. He had changed schools, but was still an avid student of Mathematics and Computer Science. But sometime around this period, I started recieving some sort of a negative report about him. He was losing concentration, something that was extremely vital for him at this juncture of his life. He had fallen into bad company, and there seemed nothing which could get him out of the company he had made. Suresh and I tried a lot of speaking to him, but there was nothing we could do about Sailesh.
At around this time, there was a physics project we had to do at school. Initially Vishnu's team had taken me in, but when the submissions had to be done, he kicked me out of the team. I realised then that it was just a trap to get me into trouble, perfectly engineered and executed by Vishnu. Now, when I was in trouble, Suresh told me to get him two creative articles and those were enough to get me into his team for the project. I did two articles on Robotics olympiads, and the chemistry behind robotics within a day, and Suresh had me into his team list for the project. That just shot the amount of respect I had for Suresh, and then he became one among my best friends of all time.
My interest of music grew multifold in this period. I used to listen to a lot of music, be it Carnatic, Hindustani, filmy, everything in this period. I had developed into a huge fan of A.R.Rahman in this period and even started collecting a lot of trivia about him in this period. The interest grew more so thanks to Rajesh, who was a really good singer, and used to every now and then hum a different song. I started listening mainly to a lot of filmy stuff only due to him, and the interest generated by his humming. In this juncture, I have to mention, Karthik was a huge fan of Himesh Reshammiya's nasal twang, and this made him a constant object of ridicule amongst us. He used to sing Himesh's songs with a nasal clarity which even Himesh would not have been able to achieve. Such would be his dedication to his songs!!
Our quarterly practicals were a total mess, as the guys like us who hadn't come all that prepared had a field day. We had made a fool of ourselves, especially in the chemistry lab where making a fool of yourself wasn't anything new to all of us. It was a lot of fun flunking together, but still we did somehow manage to scrape with practical scores of above 25 on 30. The theory papers were even worse. A 40+ in Chemistry, and Computer Science seemed an achievement and a 50+ in Physics was out of the world. But these were forgotten quickly, as a short and sweet second term was awaiting us, and so were we awaiting the hectic test schedules, the bunks for the olympiads to follow, the olympiads themselves, the various subject projects and then the JEE practice tests.
At this juncture, our IIT classes were also on in full flow. We were having a great fun. Other than the time we were exposed to some awesome physics, chemistry and mathematics, the remaining time used to be spent in some fun gossip. There was also some real fun had during this time.
Once while having a break, three of us, a guy called Anirudh Narasimhan from our class, along with Karthik, was narrating to me a story for which he wanted me to be hero. I was unsportive at first and then decided to listen to the story. They brought in the name of Priya Raman to be cast as heroine and slowly shifted to that of Priya Rajan, which was actually the name of our ex-chief minister. There was a guy walkin in front of me, who I didn't know was a party labourer of the ex-CM's party. He came to us and started blasting us for have used the party leader's name in bad light and he told us that he would have killed us if we weren't kids. He picked on Anirudh, and a scared Karthik ran for his life. Then, I spoke to the party guy to get Anirudh out of trouble. Then, we discussed this in class and had a hearty laugh.
At this point of time, I started realising that my chemistry was absolutely pathetic and that JEE was going to be all trouble unless I did something serious about my chemistry. Life was getting more about studies and I was slowly getting used to all this. It was at about this time that Sailesh Shivakumar, a really dear friend of mine was losing track. Till my class 10, Narayan, Sailesh, a guy called Vasanth, and I were dearest of friends. Vasanth had moved to Halebid, as his dad had been transferred there. Sometime around the 10th holidays, Sailesh had lost his dad. He had changed schools, but was still an avid student of Mathematics and Computer Science. But sometime around this period, I started recieving some sort of a negative report about him. He was losing concentration, something that was extremely vital for him at this juncture of his life. He had fallen into bad company, and there seemed nothing which could get him out of the company he had made. Suresh and I tried a lot of speaking to him, but there was nothing we could do about Sailesh.
At around this time, there was a physics project we had to do at school. Initially Vishnu's team had taken me in, but when the submissions had to be done, he kicked me out of the team. I realised then that it was just a trap to get me into trouble, perfectly engineered and executed by Vishnu. Now, when I was in trouble, Suresh told me to get him two creative articles and those were enough to get me into his team for the project. I did two articles on Robotics olympiads, and the chemistry behind robotics within a day, and Suresh had me into his team list for the project. That just shot the amount of respect I had for Suresh, and then he became one among my best friends of all time.
My interest of music grew multifold in this period. I used to listen to a lot of music, be it Carnatic, Hindustani, filmy, everything in this period. I had developed into a huge fan of A.R.Rahman in this period and even started collecting a lot of trivia about him in this period. The interest grew more so thanks to Rajesh, who was a really good singer, and used to every now and then hum a different song. I started listening mainly to a lot of filmy stuff only due to him, and the interest generated by his humming. In this juncture, I have to mention, Karthik was a huge fan of Himesh Reshammiya's nasal twang, and this made him a constant object of ridicule amongst us. He used to sing Himesh's songs with a nasal clarity which even Himesh would not have been able to achieve. Such would be his dedication to his songs!!
Our quarterly practicals were a total mess, as the guys like us who hadn't come all that prepared had a field day. We had made a fool of ourselves, especially in the chemistry lab where making a fool of yourself wasn't anything new to all of us. It was a lot of fun flunking together, but still we did somehow manage to scrape with practical scores of above 25 on 30. The theory papers were even worse. A 40+ in Chemistry, and Computer Science seemed an achievement and a 50+ in Physics was out of the world. But these were forgotten quickly, as a short and sweet second term was awaiting us, and so were we awaiting the hectic test schedules, the bunks for the olympiads to follow, the olympiads themselves, the various subject projects and then the JEE practice tests.
Wednesday, 25 June 2008
Chapter 2
It was the last day of election campaigning. The height of campaigning. A day when there was more jeering than cheering for me. Half my class was jeering me, the part of the class which belonged to the same class as Vishnu in class 10, was in full flow to jeer me. The other part of the class, with either newcomers into PS in class 11, or the people who had come in from other classes in class 10, or Karthik and Narayan, who were with me in class 10 too, was cheering me. I didn't mind the jeers, because I expected nothing better from Vishnu's friends. But I really felt I could make a good Headboy, because I thought I could lead by example, from the front. But no one was ready to look into such claims, it looked like what one needed to win the elections was style, and popularity. On the second day, with the way the campaign was going, I was getting more and more pissed off. I had already lost out on so many many votes thanks to lack of charisma, lack of style, and a lack of popularity among the non-studying group of juniors. A lacklustre practicals session in the chemistry lab with our crazy lab assistant JayaSharadha ma'am. She had a hoarse voice, and the very entering of the lab, got you the feeling of entering a cemetry at around midnight!! The experiments were the rescuers, and we used to rush out of the lab with the joy of having won a lottery, as soon as our experiments used to be over. This day, our lab session, I felt was even more bad. Following it, we came back to class, and after 2 more class sessions, we could leave. Before leaving, it was another wicket to fall. Another friend of mine, Vidya Sharma wasn't voting for me, I heard. I went and asked her to vote for me. She told me she was voting for Saurabh. I couldn't face her, and with a nod, I turned away with an eye of tears. Tears, for two reasons, one being the vote of each dear friend of mine mattered a lot to me, and secondly because, I had reserved her vote a week before the elections. Vidya was actually planning to stand in the elections, but then pulled out because she didn't want the school commitments to affect her studies.
So the next afternoon had the elections being held, and the results were out the morning after that. As the principal announced the names of the Headboy, and his assistant, I was not only shocked but also disappointed, not to find my name in both the lists.
But then I got over it soon, and it was then time for the cultural seceretary and the wall magazine editor elections. I supported Vishnu's opponent Chinnu in the cultural seceretary elections because Vishnu had opposed me in the headboy elections, and not because of any personal affinity for Chinnu. But, you generally don't bark back at a dog when it does bark at you. I decided to bark back, and I paid for it. Vishnu was the cultural seceretary. In the meanwhile, Sandhya, who was also a good friend of mine and Suresh's, was standing in the wall magazine elections. We engineered her election strategies. Karthik was looking for a license to get closer to Sandhya, and as a friend helping in need, I provided him with the necessary help. I got him to do the domestic jobs like pasting Sandhya's posters in school and the so. With this, she was impressed with him, that they soon became good friends. Sandhya won her elections by more than 350 votes, and had an outright majority.
Now, that the elections were done, we moved on to the next most enjoyable part of our school life. Saurabh, Vishnu and I were a quizzing trio till class 11. We had rocked the city-wide Iliad quizzing contest in 10th and were the most happening quiz trio in school. At this juncture, we had attended a culturals quiz in 11th. I misspelt 'irreparable', which lost us the quiz. Not that Vishnu would have done everything right on his day, but he just wanted me out, and now he had a reason. I was chucked out. Saurabh didn't bother to fight with Vishnu regarding this, because 'they were best friends'. I mean what is best friendship when you can't even try to influence your best friend out of a folly of his. I lost half the respect I had for Saurabh after this incident, and our friendship took quite a beating. Vishnu, now that he was cultural seceretary was over the moon. I had found a new quiz team in Suresh and Pradeep. We had rocked the Iliad in 11th, but still were made the second quiz team. You couldn't have done anything about it because he was the boss, and he decided things there. But after a few victories, we couldn't be ignored, and with the pressure mounting on him, Vishnu had to send us to quizzes now and then. The culturals were an enjoyable experience. But for stuff like fashion shows in some culturals, the rest were all fun events. The loud cheers, the O's and many other experiences were stuff everyone had to experience as students.
Parallely our school was also rushing with stuff. We barely managed a pass in the chemistry and physics assignments, when the only people who comfortably managed a clean score in these too were Rahul and Vidya. We enjoyed our time, even in the little time we used to get in school amidst all the culturals. We shouted out 'O Raghupradeep' whenever someone entered class (in memory of Raghu, a classmate of ours), and made gestures of 'Adhu Try' every now and then. It was a rocking time we had at school then. The happiest times of our school days.
In the meantime, our JEE classes were also on in full flow. We were having a gala time there too, with an awesome professor in K.K.Anand sir, and a group of dedicated friends. The greatest thing about my IIT classes, was that more than the stuff I learnt, I made really good friends. Suresh and I slowly became the best of friends. Raghav was getting close too, but everytime he got close, he irritated me and got down in my eyes. In the meanwhile, Jayakant, Rahul, Krishna, Rajesh and Karthik had also become an integral part of the team. So was Nishant Rajkumar, a guy from PS, but in the D section.
Then we had the culturals we hosted 'SCINTILLATIONS'. It was truly a scintillating experience, and Vishnu finished it off in style with a group of students giving him leg-butts, and Sandhya rightly ending up with the blasts from the vice-principal for this.
Following that came the school's annual day, where yours truly hogged more limelight than many other friends for absolutely no reason whatsoever. I was the best student in the Science stream!! For what?? For loafing about, after bunking a few classes in pretext of JEE preparation, for having wasted all the time on the net when I ought to have been studying, for having watched so many adult movies illegally, when I ought not have watched even children movies, and what not!! But finally, I was the best student in school, for once in my lifetime!! So, I was glad to recieve it, and that made my annual day special. There was my favourite ex-principal on the dias when I recieved and nothing was more satisfying. Then, another old friend of mine, HariRam, came about to the hall and Sandhya, one of the co-hosts of the programme with Saurabh, went off to flirt with him, while Suresh and I were having lots of fun backstage. But post the Annual Day, it was back to serious stuff. Sports Day was a dampener due to the rain, and hence there was nothing stopping us from facing the Quarterly examination practicals and the theory papers. But considering the amount of preparation we had done for school, and the amount of hard work that had gone into JEE, there was no question about how our quarterly was going to go. We had to live and experience our fate going awry in the next few days to come...
So the next afternoon had the elections being held, and the results were out the morning after that. As the principal announced the names of the Headboy, and his assistant, I was not only shocked but also disappointed, not to find my name in both the lists.
But then I got over it soon, and it was then time for the cultural seceretary and the wall magazine editor elections. I supported Vishnu's opponent Chinnu in the cultural seceretary elections because Vishnu had opposed me in the headboy elections, and not because of any personal affinity for Chinnu. But, you generally don't bark back at a dog when it does bark at you. I decided to bark back, and I paid for it. Vishnu was the cultural seceretary. In the meanwhile, Sandhya, who was also a good friend of mine and Suresh's, was standing in the wall magazine elections. We engineered her election strategies. Karthik was looking for a license to get closer to Sandhya, and as a friend helping in need, I provided him with the necessary help. I got him to do the domestic jobs like pasting Sandhya's posters in school and the so. With this, she was impressed with him, that they soon became good friends. Sandhya won her elections by more than 350 votes, and had an outright majority.
Now, that the elections were done, we moved on to the next most enjoyable part of our school life. Saurabh, Vishnu and I were a quizzing trio till class 11. We had rocked the city-wide Iliad quizzing contest in 10th and were the most happening quiz trio in school. At this juncture, we had attended a culturals quiz in 11th. I misspelt 'irreparable', which lost us the quiz. Not that Vishnu would have done everything right on his day, but he just wanted me out, and now he had a reason. I was chucked out. Saurabh didn't bother to fight with Vishnu regarding this, because 'they were best friends'. I mean what is best friendship when you can't even try to influence your best friend out of a folly of his. I lost half the respect I had for Saurabh after this incident, and our friendship took quite a beating. Vishnu, now that he was cultural seceretary was over the moon. I had found a new quiz team in Suresh and Pradeep. We had rocked the Iliad in 11th, but still were made the second quiz team. You couldn't have done anything about it because he was the boss, and he decided things there. But after a few victories, we couldn't be ignored, and with the pressure mounting on him, Vishnu had to send us to quizzes now and then. The culturals were an enjoyable experience. But for stuff like fashion shows in some culturals, the rest were all fun events. The loud cheers, the O's and many other experiences were stuff everyone had to experience as students.
Parallely our school was also rushing with stuff. We barely managed a pass in the chemistry and physics assignments, when the only people who comfortably managed a clean score in these too were Rahul and Vidya. We enjoyed our time, even in the little time we used to get in school amidst all the culturals. We shouted out 'O Raghupradeep' whenever someone entered class (in memory of Raghu, a classmate of ours), and made gestures of 'Adhu Try' every now and then. It was a rocking time we had at school then. The happiest times of our school days.
In the meantime, our JEE classes were also on in full flow. We were having a gala time there too, with an awesome professor in K.K.Anand sir, and a group of dedicated friends. The greatest thing about my IIT classes, was that more than the stuff I learnt, I made really good friends. Suresh and I slowly became the best of friends. Raghav was getting close too, but everytime he got close, he irritated me and got down in my eyes. In the meanwhile, Jayakant, Rahul, Krishna, Rajesh and Karthik had also become an integral part of the team. So was Nishant Rajkumar, a guy from PS, but in the D section.
Then we had the culturals we hosted 'SCINTILLATIONS'. It was truly a scintillating experience, and Vishnu finished it off in style with a group of students giving him leg-butts, and Sandhya rightly ending up with the blasts from the vice-principal for this.
Following that came the school's annual day, where yours truly hogged more limelight than many other friends for absolutely no reason whatsoever. I was the best student in the Science stream!! For what?? For loafing about, after bunking a few classes in pretext of JEE preparation, for having wasted all the time on the net when I ought to have been studying, for having watched so many adult movies illegally, when I ought not have watched even children movies, and what not!! But finally, I was the best student in school, for once in my lifetime!! So, I was glad to recieve it, and that made my annual day special. There was my favourite ex-principal on the dias when I recieved and nothing was more satisfying. Then, another old friend of mine, HariRam, came about to the hall and Sandhya, one of the co-hosts of the programme with Saurabh, went off to flirt with him, while Suresh and I were having lots of fun backstage. But post the Annual Day, it was back to serious stuff. Sports Day was a dampener due to the rain, and hence there was nothing stopping us from facing the Quarterly examination practicals and the theory papers. But considering the amount of preparation we had done for school, and the amount of hard work that had gone into JEE, there was no question about how our quarterly was going to go. We had to live and experience our fate going awry in the next few days to come...
Chapter 1
It was Day one in Class twelve. My eighth year in school. We, the lastbenchers were at our usual places. I was in the second last bench, with Narayan Vasu, my friend for more than 5 years, and behind us were Suresh Shastri, and Raghav Krishna. Next to them, in the adjacent final bench, was Karthik Balu, Rajesh Ravindra, Pradeep Seshadri and Rahul Ramesh.
This was more or less our group of backbenchers. Not backbenchers in the true sense of the word's usage, but here backbenchers because our focus was less on school, and more on JEE preparation. We were fun-loving guys, but focussed all the while.
Narayan had come to P.S in class 7. Ever since, we were the best of friends. We had started our JEE preparations together, but due to his inability to cope up, he had shifted JEE preparation base, and started concentrating more on AIEEE preparation.
Suresh was a head-strong guy, with a lot of attitude. A fun loving guy, highly focussed, but at the same time, a big pervert. He complemented me to a 'T'.
Raghav was one heck of a padips. With a baby-like face, he was fondly called 'baby' by the others.
Karthik was this guy who streched beyond even the skies, a guy who had been trying Sandhya Ramakrishnan, the so-called hottie of the school, for more than a year then, but was failing miserably, slowly shifted base towards JEE preparations.
Rajesh Ravindra was a childish character, who turned to tears every ten to twenty minutes for some or the other reason. He was called Right thanks to some ad imitating Rajinikant.
Pradeep Seshadri was what you would call the height of goodness. Fun loving, but had everything within the limits, except his studying. That alone streched beyond boundaries. But was a good quizzer, thus making the third quiz partner to Suresh and me.
Then there was Rahul, a last addition to our group. Known better as a king of chemistry, he could do anything and everything in it. Plus, he watched a lot of movies like me. He got into mainstream JEE preparation a bit late than the others, but had coped up very well. He had placed himself among the main contenders for a great JEE spot.
Morever, our group consisted of Jayakanth, from DAV, another chemistry thala, and Krishna, from PSBB, who were part of the group from our JEE classes.
At this point of time, I was just back from Mumbai after the IMO training camp there, just missing the cut off by around 5 marks. There obviously was some disappointment, but there wasn't any time for me to brood as school began almost immediately. We were waiting to see our new English teacher, as our old one had become principal. Then entered our class teacher, who was to be our English teacher as well, the person all of us knew as 'Peter', and he was R.Subhash. I initially for a few minutes didn't know why he was our class teacher, because he seemed to like the adjacent class better. Only then was I told that he had been their class teacher the previous year and had been promoted to become the class teacher of a section in class 12. He then asked for the names of the ones who wanted to be nominated for Head Boy of the school. I had been nursing ambitions of leading school for over a year, and hence, I got up, and I found another classmate Saurabh Rangarajan. He was probably equally popular, but he worried me about getting my votes split. So, I had to be on my guard. Saurabh's best friend Vishnu Vinayak, was a guy who hated me, and he was actively campaigning, not for people to vote for Saurabh, but for people to not vote for me.
Our names were given to the principal, and the nominations were to be announced the next day in the assembly. There was Priya Raman, a friend of mine, pumping confidence into me that I would be definitely nominated, and that she would vote for me, and would campaign for me as well. That was when I started becoming a good friend of hers.
I went to school with a speech prepared the next day, hoping I would be nominated. We were standing in the assembly, and we were waiting for the nominations to come, and the principal said 'G.Vignesh'. And off I was to the mike to give a short speech. I forgot half the stuff I had written down in the paper, but I didn't want to damage myself by reading out from the paper. So, I spoke my heart out, to realise finally that I had done a good job of it. Then we had to campaign in classes 6 to 8 that day. I did gather some amount of voters that evening and we did have some amount of fun campaigning. But being the smaller classes, it wasn't of much significance to any of us. The next day was to be a very significant day in my school life, and I was awaiting it...
This was more or less our group of backbenchers. Not backbenchers in the true sense of the word's usage, but here backbenchers because our focus was less on school, and more on JEE preparation. We were fun-loving guys, but focussed all the while.
Narayan had come to P.S in class 7. Ever since, we were the best of friends. We had started our JEE preparations together, but due to his inability to cope up, he had shifted JEE preparation base, and started concentrating more on AIEEE preparation.
Suresh was a head-strong guy, with a lot of attitude. A fun loving guy, highly focussed, but at the same time, a big pervert. He complemented me to a 'T'.
Raghav was one heck of a padips. With a baby-like face, he was fondly called 'baby' by the others.
Karthik was this guy who streched beyond even the skies, a guy who had been trying Sandhya Ramakrishnan, the so-called hottie of the school, for more than a year then, but was failing miserably, slowly shifted base towards JEE preparations.
Rajesh Ravindra was a childish character, who turned to tears every ten to twenty minutes for some or the other reason. He was called Right thanks to some ad imitating Rajinikant.
Pradeep Seshadri was what you would call the height of goodness. Fun loving, but had everything within the limits, except his studying. That alone streched beyond boundaries. But was a good quizzer, thus making the third quiz partner to Suresh and me.
Then there was Rahul, a last addition to our group. Known better as a king of chemistry, he could do anything and everything in it. Plus, he watched a lot of movies like me. He got into mainstream JEE preparation a bit late than the others, but had coped up very well. He had placed himself among the main contenders for a great JEE spot.
Morever, our group consisted of Jayakanth, from DAV, another chemistry thala, and Krishna, from PSBB, who were part of the group from our JEE classes.
At this point of time, I was just back from Mumbai after the IMO training camp there, just missing the cut off by around 5 marks. There obviously was some disappointment, but there wasn't any time for me to brood as school began almost immediately. We were waiting to see our new English teacher, as our old one had become principal. Then entered our class teacher, who was to be our English teacher as well, the person all of us knew as 'Peter', and he was R.Subhash. I initially for a few minutes didn't know why he was our class teacher, because he seemed to like the adjacent class better. Only then was I told that he had been their class teacher the previous year and had been promoted to become the class teacher of a section in class 12. He then asked for the names of the ones who wanted to be nominated for Head Boy of the school. I had been nursing ambitions of leading school for over a year, and hence, I got up, and I found another classmate Saurabh Rangarajan. He was probably equally popular, but he worried me about getting my votes split. So, I had to be on my guard. Saurabh's best friend Vishnu Vinayak, was a guy who hated me, and he was actively campaigning, not for people to vote for Saurabh, but for people to not vote for me.
Our names were given to the principal, and the nominations were to be announced the next day in the assembly. There was Priya Raman, a friend of mine, pumping confidence into me that I would be definitely nominated, and that she would vote for me, and would campaign for me as well. That was when I started becoming a good friend of hers.
I went to school with a speech prepared the next day, hoping I would be nominated. We were standing in the assembly, and we were waiting for the nominations to come, and the principal said 'G.Vignesh'. And off I was to the mike to give a short speech. I forgot half the stuff I had written down in the paper, but I didn't want to damage myself by reading out from the paper. So, I spoke my heart out, to realise finally that I had done a good job of it. Then we had to campaign in classes 6 to 8 that day. I did gather some amount of voters that evening and we did have some amount of fun campaigning. But being the smaller classes, it wasn't of much significance to any of us. The next day was to be a very significant day in my school life, and I was awaiting it...
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