MONDAY BLUES (11)

MEMORIES FROM SCHOOL

Good morning friends,

It’s Monday again. Getting out of the comfort of our beds after a wonderful weekend is the most difficult thing to do and is definitely an accomplishment when we force ourselves to do it. I might be a homemaker but I can understand how the day begins for the office goers. Getting ready quickly to avoid the morning rush and dropping the children at their schools on the way to the office is such an ordeal.

As a child, I dreaded going to school and would try to find an excuse to skip my classes. The main reason was bullying by a gang of girls. They would wait for my arrival, make fun of the way I walked and my physical appearance. I hated the physical education classes where some boys also joined them to laugh at me. My PT teacher was very strict and caned me on my legs if I did anything wrong. I thought I was unfit to live in this world in spite of getting very good grades at school. It was then that I started my attempts at ending my life. Somehow, I couldn’t go through my stupid plan and I am grateful to God that He knocked some sense into my childish brain.

The bullying continued till I completed my eighth grade in Saraswati Vidyalaya, Nagpur. I don’t know how I managed to survive those cruel taunts and teasing. My self-esteem took a severe beating. I wished my mom deserved a better child than me. I sought loneliness and the company of books to drown my frustrations. I avoided interacting with people.

My brother and I lived a life of gypsy most of the time. We spent only a couple of years with our parents because our father and paternal grandma would often fall sick and needed frequent hospitalization. Our poor mother could hardly take care of us while she was constantly shuttling between two different hospitals in Mumbai. Our maternal grandparents raised us at Nagpur where both of us were victims of severe bullying. There was a pedophile neighbor who misbehaved with us and the incident that I described in one of my posts about the escape from a possible sexual abuse.

When I moved to New Delhi, bullying stopped for me. My classmates were so nice that I actually enjoyed going to school but my brother wasn’t so lucky. Seventy percent of the class ganged up against him, hatching conspiracies to get him expelled.

Once my brother suffered from asthmatic attack on his way to write the examination. Our English Teacher, Mrs. Laxmi was present in the school bus in which we used to go to school daily. She made sure he got back home safely. Unfortunately, he had to skip the exam.

The very next day, I had the shock of my life when his class teacher summoned me and asked for an explanation, as his bullying classmates had spread a bunch of lies claiming to having seen him around Laxmi Narayan Temple near our school, when he should be writing the exam. I explained about his asthma and Mrs.Laxmi, who was present in the staff room also supported me that he was indeed sick. I submitted the medical certificate issued by the doctor and his class teacher was satisfied. She even apologized for having believed a bunch of liars.

This incident forced my mother to take us back to Nagpur. So much for bullying! I wish there could be moral education classes in school to teach children how to behave in the society, respect their elders, be kind and compassionate towards all.

I had a sad memory attached to this school. One of my classmates, Kannagi, was diagnosed with leukemia in advanced stage. She was a lovely girl. She used to vomit blood frequently. I felt very bad for her. I don’t know whether she survived or succumbed after I came back to Nagpur.

Years of domestic violence where I got severely criticized for being too lethargic, slow and an incompetent idiot who got married into a highly Orthodox family and high doses of verbal abuses from everyone in my marital home, forcing me to consume pills taught me a great lesson. Don’t kill yourself for these reasons. Situations like this make you tough. Now I am leading a very happy married life with my husband who completely transformed to a very lovable, adorable, caring, affectionate life partner who helps me with my household work and treats me with great respect. Life can be surprising as well as wicked. Now, my brother is a victim of domestic violence and mental torture caused by the monster of his wife who married him only for the sake of money. She tortured him so much with her poisonous tongue lashing that he too followed me in attempting a suicide. My poor mother! What did she do to deserve such a cruel punishment!

Now I am blessed with a thick skin and a skull that makes me completely free from being over sensitive and an idiot. Whenever I am upset, which I am seldom these days, I look up to my mother and think that when she tolerated everything with a smile, I can do it and for the sake of my child, I will never ever let negative any negative comment to get the better of me.

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