School of Joy

Kunal Mithril – BMS Class of 1993

Well, BMS had assembly every day (I think except Saturdays, can’t remember that though). And on each day it was a different theme, Wednesdays were music(i think), where Mr. Deb would play some classical music (Beethoven,etc) ( I remember very vividly once Nandita akka played Scott Joplin and my heart jumped with the music, another time it was Ravi Shankar playing some sort of jazz fusion. Even as a 9-10 year old I was stunned into the magic) Anyways, this was the other kind of assembly, where a family group ( F.G) would read out something from either a book, or a newspaper which was of interest either to the individual or perhaps a teacher ( I didn’t read a single book in all my beautiful days in BMS).

So I was given an article to read. And I took it without so much as looking at it. I was first up to read. So I opened the article and found myself staring at words that make KOLMIVAIHEVAIHTOVIRTAKILOWATTITtUNTIMITTARI look common place ( this is a word by the way and it is a common cuss word that does not need translation or so I’m led to believe and I can’t pronounce it, but can certainly cuss at it:). Anyways, words such as this (not cuss words, just long ones) floated all over the place. I could not make head or tale of it. The whole assembly hall was silent, of-course it was an uneasy silence, with me moving my lips this way and that trying to gather a single word. When I realized that I could not. I looked straight at our principal, Mr. Deb and said, ‘sir could you please help me out here, and I spelt each and every word that I could not pronounce, and heavens how many there were. This whole process of K stopping even three words and then painstakingly spelling a word out went on for twenty minutes ( our whole assembly time was between 20 and 25 minutes), when I was through, there was a audible relief.

But you know what was beautiful? Really ,really beautiful.

No one laughed, or sniggered or made fun of me. NOT ONE did. Can you imagine that? As I write this I am quite emotional on how beautiful everyone was to me that day.

Truly a school of joy.