Those Twelve Years!

Dharmapuri District Cooperative Matriculation School.Palacode.April 1998.I was barely out of my third standard when the news came.My parents had got transferred to Salem.I told the news to all my friends.Extreme reactions ensued.A friend held my hand and told me:"Please do not leave us and go".Vino karthik cried("Why are you crying?!"-"Because you are flying away").I was not worthy of such precious emotions.So,I did not emote back.Rather,I was on cloud nine.Leaving an underdeveloped municipality(with 3 theaters) for a city (with 20 theaters) was fantastic news.I did not cry.
Salem became a laid-back heaven for me.I studied in a Catholic school for 4 years which taught me lots of things:from the Bible story of Nebuchadnezzar to Grammar lessons like "will be doing" has no form in passive voice.I was made to do bizarre things like act as a girl in a Bible-based play one year and act as a guy(wearing a Chudi) the next year.The locality we lived in was always a tower of Babel.I have seen only-in-movies dramas like:a thatched hut on fire,a drunkard beating up his wife,a drunkard who was like Jesus Christ when he was not drunk,a man brandishing a knife against his own mother and whatnot.
All weekends were rollercoaster rides.The day usually started with a session of playing cards with Rahman's songs in the background.Satish cried whenever he became the "Ass".So we moved on to playing Super Mario video games.Those were times when I was a good cricketer.(Now they warn me not to come even as a substitute.) We played cricket from 4:30 PM till sun got tired.We all tried innovative shots just to make "that girl" in the next house smile.Then it was time for hide-and-seek.Once that was over,all of us assembled in Satish's terrace and started rambling about anything and everything.(Ghost stories,boyfriend of "that girl",latest movies,cricket world cup etc).The days when it rained,all of us sat in the little space in front of my window and ate groundnuts roasted by Amma.
We shifted from that locality to a nearby place in 2005.This was a more conservative society.9-to-5 working people who came back home to watch TV serials.The silence in the night was deafening.Me and Omkar(brother) suffered a lot.Those three years (2005-2007) passed off in an instant thanks to Bala Barathi Matric School and a bunch of extraordinary friends.
This school was bliss and there were times when we never wanted to leave the campus.I used to play volleyball(whenever I touched the ball,applause ensued because I touched it once in a m atch),watch others play football,talk with Lakshmi Madam,chat around with Shanmuga Prasanna or "sight" junior girls.The distance from school to my house was a meagre 2 kms but still it took an hour for us to bicycle our way home.We halted every 50 metres,teased about one guy or the other,bought raw mangoes with the amount we had.Once we reached home,the long wait for the next day began.
After I joined PSG Tech(Hostel life in Coimbatore) in August 2007,Salem became a Vedandangal for me.After a month or two of intense workload,(PSG Tech is a pressure cooker) I came home just to take rest.I spent very few days of these three years (mid 2007- mid 2010) in Salem.Watching movies with Amma became a new obsession.(It is not often that a guy watches Vinnaithandi Varuvaya with his Amma).I spent quality time with parents whenever I came home.
Three weeks back,the shocking news came over a phone call from Amma that she was getting shifted to our native place Madurai.I was here in my hostel engrossed in some Students Union work and the news did not register.The atmosphere in hostel (with effervescent friends like Jeyavel and Kaushik) never made me realise that I was no more a Salemite.The laid-back life which I so much relished is suddenly history.Me and Partiban belong to different places now.Kick in the gut.
As I tried to digest the harsh reality in the next two weeks,my college friends were having fun.Endhiran songs were out.I was being pampered as the "Champion".(Equivalent of "Chairman"-according to one of my teachers).There were no extreme reactions.There was no Vino Karthik to cry.There was no friend to say "Please do not leave us and go".But I cried.