To Laughter, and to Friendship!

It is every parent’s dream to be someone their children look up to, to be their source of inspiration, and a pillar of strength. Well, we failed.

I can explain. One day, his teacher informed that all the students were supposed to submit their most recent passport size photograph for school identity card. Unfortunately for us, all photographs were used for various purposes and digital copies saved in pen drives were missing too. There is this weird thing about pen drives in our house. When we want it, it vanishes into oblivion. However, when we are travelling and our hand baggage goes through the airport scanners, all the pen drives we ever bought in our lifetime miraculously appears out of thin air and places themselves into various little dark corners of the bags. We launched a “pen drive search” operation and pulled out every single thing out of every wardrobe, drawer and shelf like how the Income Tax officials raid wealthy homes in movies. Finally we lost our time and energy trying to find the needle in the haystack and drove to the studio with our home looking like it had been hit by a violent tornado.

At the studio, my son wearing his school uniform looked crisp and cute. Fortunately he dint have to wear his earlier identity card for the photo, as that was also missing. Basically all things are missing except the three of us. He sat on a chair they asked him to, with a white screen behind him. He looked quite smart and gave a very decent smile at the camera. Not a laugh, or a sarcastic grin, just a small decent smile. Meanwhile, we were standing near the camera admiring him and the spouse broke into a wild laughter for no reason. Usually if I crack the most hilarious joke and laugh uncontrollably, he doesn’t budge and stares back at me stone faced. This man couldn’t control his laughter for no apparent reason and as contagious as laughter usually gets, he passed on that crazy laugh to me also. The photographer had other clients waiting and impatiently gestured my son not to smile and look straight at the camera. The poor thing couldn’t put up the serious face he was asked to, however hard he tried, as both his lunatic parents were holding their stomachs and laughing their heads off. 

The photographer had now reached his limits and told us ‘Will you both please leave?”.

We both slowly walked out, laughing louder than we could when we were inside. I actually saw the photographer looking at my son pitifully and he was embarrassed. After the clicks were taken he came outside and asked us: “What was so funny?” Well he got satisfactory answers.

“Ask your Dad”

“Ask your Mom”

Well laughter like such is rare and far between now, but there were times I used to laugh like crazy every day. Those were my school days. That’s where I got this non-stop laughter from. 

I remember a similar incident that happened when I was in the tenth grade, when my friend cracked some stupid joke during class and we started laughing. Then we looked at each other and laughed more. Soon enough we could not control our laughter. Actually the joke is not relevant and surely was not so funny that the laughter which started could not be stopped. Initially the teacher was writing something on the board so we tried to stop it before she turned around, but when she did, tears started coming out of our eyes and it just wouldn’t stop. Inevitably, we landed outside the classroom for the rest of her session, holding our breaths and stomachs with both hands in laughter. Before she sent us outside, she interrogated us with questions like ‘Can you both please explain what is so amusing in this lesson?’ and it was physically impossible for us to form words between our peals of laughter and my friend somehow managed to blurt out ‘ Just… you know… jokes..”.

 “GET OUT BOTH OF YOU!”

Punishments are harmless as long as the Principal was not doing the rounds exactly at that time on that floor. And she wasn’t, so we were saved. I couldn’t begin to think of the consequences if the Principal walked in on us and then we would have to bring our parents all the way to school for the simple mistake of laughing. Explaining to my Mom, who unfortunately is also a teacher, about why we laughed is more horrific than explaining to the Principal. If at all our parents came to school, this laughter episode wouldn’t be the only thing discussed with them so it was a very dangerous situation which had ripple effects. It was indeed a big-time save and a priceless memory.

On Friendship Day, here's to all my school friends and the innumerable memories we created at Holy Angels' Convent. Each and every little incident was a lot of fun, and I cant go down the memory lane of school days without a smile on my lips!

To all the amazing girls who defined what friendship is and trust me, till date, I compare anyone I meet, with you guys and there is absolutely no comparison!  "We had joy, we had fun, we had seasons in the sun" dint we !

Thank you girls for being there even today, recreating the magic from different continents. Don’t know what I’d do without all of you !

Happy Friendship Day!

Holy Angels' Convent ISC Batch of 2001