When I Lost my tiny wings….

When I Lost my tiny wings….

“You should always be very obedient to your parents and elders” said my moral science teacher in my fourth standard. As she went on with her other morals, which went above my tiny-little head, my mind was still stuck to the word OBEDIENT and its meaning.

Foolishly or cleverly I always wanted to be a good girl, whether I succeeded or not, is left to your judgment( and I am sure you will be able to pass, a quick judgment in the half way of reading what happened next).

Earlier that day, as my mom was dressing me up for school, she told me few words which felt so important and the probability of that happening was way too high. She said-“today you’re going to get your mid-term exam results, if you fail in even one subject, don’t come home, stay back at school!”(obviously she did not mean it).

I don’t blame my mother for such words, as I was such a good student that I never missed studying at home everyday and mostly never missed forgetting what I studied. Poor mommy used to get up at four am during exams and teach me but as soon as I see the question paper, I tend to forget even my name at times. Memory is not one of the things I am good at.

I wanted to be such a good student that till third standard I used to purposely fail in Hindi exams ( not that I would have passed otherwise). Our Hindi teacher always used to say the same attractive words that always caught my attention every year-“Whoever finishes the paper first, gets to mind the class first”.

 I thought minding the class was one of the most important things ever as I always noticed only first rankers mind. I didn’t want to leave that golden opportunity behind so I used to submit my answer sheet first every year( how long does filling the name and roll number take??)

Excuse my random flow of thoughts. Coming back to my moral science class.

The hour just before my moral science class was ‘results hour’. As I shivered at the thought of it, my class teacher called out our names and handed out our respective papers.

At last, one by one fell bombs on my tiny hands, my answer sheets felt so heavy, even if it had only two pages of each subject. I had, not surprisingly, failed in almost 5 out of 6 subjects, the passed subject being ART( extra information: I failed in moral science also).

So when I heard the words obedient in my moral science, I thought I have to prove my myself to that teacher and myself that I rock at moral science.

So as soon as the junior school was free to fly home, I lost my wings behind a big tree and hid in the corner. I did not want to be spotted by any known person and especially not by my two high school elder sisters as their classes got over an hour late.

The whole school in the front gate was empty; I couldn’t hear a tiny noise except for the traffic roaring outside the gates. It is then that I realized that I had fallen asleep for many hours behind the big tree. I immediately got up and wiped the mud off my face and recapped my mom’s precious words.

So yes, there I was standing almost 3 feet tall, ready to face the roars of the city jungle. The distance to the gate was really 20 small steps ahead but it was one of the biggest steps in my life. As I dragged myself outside the gate, my heart beat quickened, the fear of getting caught was more than the fear of running away from my school, home, family and especially my mother.

oh yes!! I succeeded in getting out of the gate but did not succeed in going further. As I was asking the rickshaw guy to take me somewhere, THUD!! fell heavy hands of the school watchman on my shoulders and he asked me where I was going.

Oh brave me ! I told him, the rickshaw guy takes me home everyday, so I will have to go with him. But the innocent side of me did not understand the difference between a public rickshaw and a school rickshaw. To my tragedy I was dragged back into those hell gates, straight into the principal’s office.

They immediately opened my bag, traced my phone number. Gave a quick call to a place I wanted to run away from, 'A Heaven called Home'. Innocently I felt a sense of relief when I saw my sister and uncle, entering the hell gates just to take me home.

 I hated the watchman that day but there has never been a day when I have passed by my school and never thanked that watchman for saving my life. If he hadn’t saved me that day, may be I wouldn’t have ever written this post today( but yes, you would have been saved from reading my post).

Life has so many small and big events; the big events are not always the important ones. Sometimes the most smallest events have the biggest morals. Whether we lose or win is secondary, never quit from trying. Even if you quit, life wont let you quit so easily, you either have to pay a price for quitting or you have to keep trying to live.

The big tree behind which I lost my tiny wings is actually the smallest tree in my school. Every time I look at that dwarf tree I laugh, thinking .... today it might feel like you are stuck in the biggest problem ever, but tomorrow when you look at it, it would have almost disappeared from your memory.

So all you lovely people out there, just relax, don’t panic, no matter how big the problem is, for there is always a tomorrow to make it look small. There is never a problem without a solution, just respect what you have and make the best use of it. 
 Keep trying till the problem gets bugged of you and tries getting rid of you.

Never fear.

Never quit

Always smile

You will be surprised by how high you can fly!!

Happy reading

Rashmi Raj