The happiest moment.. for life..

I remember my first day at school with high-definition clarity. It was an extremely sunny, ‘Madras-ish’ Wednesday morning. The school was a 5-minute walk from home; the distance of the walk on that day however, was about a few light years. There had already been two postponements and my father had made it clear, in extremely precise terms, that any plans of further postponement had been postponed, indefinitely.

I vividly remember the way I was dragged to the place that had given me nightmares for almost a week before the day. Not one face looked familiar. The sight of two elderly women disciplining a bunch of confused kids terrified me. The thought of being a ‘yet-another’ addition to the already helpless group turned me numb. The atmosphere made clear indications of the fact that I was in the process of meeting the first disaster of my life.

As minutes passed by, things did seem to mellow down. The two elderly women who looked hell-bent on disciplining helpless creatures had shown the class some funny pictures and I had actually considered the option of smiling, at least on a couple of instances. I had not completely succeeded in smiling, but I was proud of the fact that I had given it a try. The very thought of my mother coming back soon, to take me home was a decent tranquillizer.

The first sight of my mother after 3 long hours away from her still remains the happiest moment of my life. I can recollect that moment, etched in memory; the first and only occasion in my short span since birth, when I felt like the happiest boy on Earth, yet cried inconsolably. I was too little to understand the emotion, phenomenon or even the cause. All I could do for the next twenty minutes was cry. All the sobs of previous occasions needed just a little bribe to cease – a toffee for minor offences and an ice cream for the slightly major ones. This time however, I was clueless about the classification; I perhaps began to understand the fact that there was life beyond toffees and ice-creams. The place I dreaded the most had already started teaching me lessons!

As years passed by, the typical three-hour spell only grew longer, from 5 hours in the very next year to 8 hours at high school and college; the distances grew too. Now almost nineteen years later, living about 25000 meters away from home, the spell is almost 120 hours long. The precious moment though, has not lost one bit of its sheen!