Idyllic Days

All the cadets were in high spirits, contributing in one way or another to help their house win the Cultural Competition Trophy, which, in turn, would boost their chances in the Cock House race. But before taking you guys directly to the cultural fest day, you need to have a peek behind the scenes(BTS) of the journey till the big day. The auditorium was segregated into four sections, providing practice space for each house. These sections were systematically rotated to promote fairness, as a few practice areas had strategic advantages over the others. Now, coming to the practice sessions, Hari Prasad Sir closely orchestrated our skit rehearsals. Every now and then, he would tweak the dialogues and even change characters to make the performance even more humorous. Along with the skit, he took it upon himself to oversee the other activities of our house as well. For the dance category, he selected a high-energy dance number from the movie Style, which was well-known for its c...

The residential area of each house consisted of three rooms for a batch and a large corridor in front of them. Each room accommodated anywhere between seven and nine beds, depending on the strength of the house (the number of cadets assigned to it). The fewer the beds, the more space we had to indulge in our extracurricular activities. Most of the time, that corridor became our second playground. And trust me—you wouldn't believe the amount of fun we had there. We played all kinds of games, but cricket was, without a doubt, the undisputed king. Of course, it wasn't cricket as the rulebook intended. Our version had its own ever-changing, gloriously chaotic set of rules, depending entirely on who was playing. For instance, in Krishna House, a batsman was declared out if the ball was caught after bouncing exactly once. In Penna House, however, that rule didn't exist. Every house had its own "official" version of cricket, and arguments over the rules were ...

"Hey, how you doing?" I hope everything’s great. If not, don’t worry — you’re getting there. Enjoy the process. Now, getting back in the game, let’s roll the dice. (Dice rattling) What have we got this time? ‘SCHOOL IN THE TIME OF CHICKEN POX’ — a fantastic anecdote awaits your reading. But for a change (and of course, my selfish wish), let’s roll it one more time. Okay, back to square one. (Dice rattling) We got ‘THE 5G SCAM’ — an absolutely nail-biting anecdote. But you know what they say: omne trium perfectum. Let’s go for it one last time. (Dice rattling) And behold! I present to you — ‘INTO THE NIGHT (THE CONCLUSION)’. Yay! That’s what I wanted (I mean, what you all wanted, right?). So here we are, stuck in this blog, to end what we began. As I mentioned earlier, our daring act of jailbreak had motivated many. The first among them were my roommates — Jayachandra (Nickname: Bandra (Monkey)) and Prabhaditya (Nickname: Kappa (Frog)). They planned it out impeccab...

We got back to our daily lives after the isolation experience. Players from our school even travelled to another school for the South Zone competitions. Everything was pretty much normal—until bad luck knocked on our doors. No rocket science here—you guessed it. We were sent back into isolation. Again. This time, however, the management changed its strategy. Instead of isolating students room-wise, they segregated us class-wise according to the infected cadet's class. The funny part? The person who had contracted chicken pox from our class wasn't even among us when we were sent into isolation. He had already been diagnosed during the South Zone competition. Doesn't that sound a little funny? Anyhow, let me introduce you to the only patient who managed to get chicken pox outside the school premises: none other than Anurag Kumar (Alias: Nakka, meaning "Fox"). By now, isolation wasn't exactly a new experience for me. In fact, I had become quite ...

Well, no dice roll this time. I made the rule (to roll the dice), and I break the rule. Anyways, rules were meant to be broken. Coming straight to the point, I want to shed more light on the Prep Time of our school. The fundamental rule of Prep Time was simple: revise the concepts taught during the day and complete the homework in peace and silence. But we used to do quite the opposite. It wasn't just a time slot in our daily routine; it was a world of its own, where countless events unfolded. It was during Prep Time that we truly got to know one another from the inside out, without any filters. For some, it served as an unofficial therapy session, where they discussed their problems with unprofessional therapists—otherwise known as friends. These unprofessional therapists would usually laugh off the problems instead of being an emotional pillar for their clients. But what more could they do? That was the only treatment method they knew: laugh at the problem, tease ...