One Last Summer!!!

Like every other cities, Coimbatore was also busy at 8 ‘o’ clock in the morning. Ishitha, a 10 year old is waking up as she has to reach her school by 9.30 a.m. She is an enthusiastic child with lots of ‘Why’ questions. Every time she goes through something new, her mind pops up with ‘Why’. To answer to her question is like winning a Quiz Competition. She sat upright in bed unable to open her eyes. Her mother Preethi called from kitchen for 15th time in the row. Now that Ishitha had got up, she went into the bathroom to get freshen up. When she came out her regular milk was waiting for her in the dining table. She drank it and went to get ready. After bathing, she is now in navy blue pinafore with white shirt inside and her hair neatly brushed. Something striked her mind and she is now searching her grandma. Ishitha shouted, “Ma, where is grandma?”. Her mother replied, “She is on the balcony. On hearing this, Ishitha rushed to the balcony. Her grandma, a 75 years old woman was wearing a red saree with black designs on it. She was watering the plants and when she saw Ishitha running, she asked “Why are you rushing chotu?”. Ishitha said, “You promised me that you and I will be seeing old photos together today evening GiGi, so I came to remind you. Don’t forget!”. She said and rushed back to get ready without waiting for a reply. Her GiGi smiled looking at her cute little granddaughter who is always excited to spend as much as her time with her GiGi.

When Ishitha came back from school in the evening, to her surprise so many photo albums was kept at the table as promised by her GiGi. Ishitha totally forgot about this because of so many troubles that happened in school. But this one lit her mood with happiness. She suddenly went and hugged her GiGi. She was asked to freshen up and to eat her evening snacks and then they will see this together. As asked by her GiGi, she did all those things and now they are ready to see the album. The albums have so many photos like the one where Ishitha celebrates her 1st birthday, the one where her family moves into this new house, the one with all the school dances, the one with their trips together and so on.

They now have seen most of the pictures and the stories were told to Ishitha whenever she asked her questions and when she asked her grandma and her mother what happened there. When Ishitha took another album a single photo from that album slipped and fell down. She bent down and took it and she couldn’t recognize when was it taken or whom were in the photo or where was it taken. None of it was familiar to her. So she showed her GiGi the picture and asked her, “Who are all these GiGi?”. The moment the photo caught her grandma, she wasn’t able to speak or react. Her eyes was glued to that picture. A drop of tear escaped from the corner of her eyes. On seeing this, Ishitha thought she did something wrong and she apologised to her grandma. Her grandma told, “No Chotu you didn’t have to ask sorry because you didn’t do any wrong. This is me and my friends so many years back. This picture was taken on the last day of our school and that memories came rush back to me when I saw this. I thought this photo was lost. I searched for this photo so many times but I couldn’t find it anywhere. But today seeing all this faces after long time makes me want to go back to my school days chotu”. She pointed out the girl wearing yellow colour salwar and said, “You see Chotu, this is me during my school days”. And named others in the photo one after the other. On hearing this, Ishitha wanted to hear that entire story of that day and their friendship.

Her grandma’s thoughts flooded back to her school days. She told, “Chotu, our gang had seven members. We weren’t the studies gang or the rowdy gang or the innocent gang. We were the mixture of all. ‘No one could ever match us’ – that was our thought when we were in school. We will violate all the rules of school, we would get scolding from our class teacher daily, we will study when needed, and we will always be in canteen whenever there is a break. The thing is we will be together all the time and do everything together. We have seen each other’s every version. We have laughed together till our stomach hurts, cried together, have scolded each other, been with each other in their toughest times, fought with each other and still we were together till the end”.

When her GiGi completed her sentence and looked at Ishitha, she was so much interested and excited to hear it. So her grandma continued, “The day you saw in that photo was taken on our farewell Chotu. Our school doesn’t allow any batch to have farewell but we consider ourselves the luckiest batch because we got to do that. The idea of farewell itself excited every one of us. We planned so many things like dress to wear, ornaments and slippers matching them and the things we are going to do the entire day. So many songs were planned and so many dance steps were rehearsed”. And then she continued after taking a long breath, “The day finally came. We all came early as we planned and started decorating the auditorium. The auditorium was full of balloons and papers and stickers and more importantly, laughter. As ours is a Christian’s school, we always start the day with prayer and our farewell day also started with a Meditation. We suddenly had a thought in mind that this prayer is going to be our last one and that one hit us hard. We have been studying in the same school chotu for nearly 14 years and each day for the past 14 years started and ended with prayer, this one going to be our last one started to make that day a difficult one. Then there was the speech of sister, teachers. Then there was this unexpected event that turned the happy day into a sad one. ‘Our journey’ – this is a video created by our juniors with all the photos we took in school, personally and everything including our achievements. Seeing that photos and recognising that we won’t be seeing each other hereafter daily, that we are going to enter a new world and these faces will not be a part of it, that the innocence part of life is over, that there is no such school uniforms, no school shoes, that we won’t be plaiting our hair anymore with ribbons, that there will not be any school bags that probably weigh more than us, that we will not return to this building anytime soon and even if we return we will not be students here anymore wasn’t that easy to digest Chotu. We always wanted to end the farewell with a smile on our faces but instead each and every one of us was crying. We don’t know when we started to cry, when we started to feel a heavy heart instead of a happy one but that thoughts was like a ball of fire melting all our hearts. We cried and cried and cried with hugging each other. We took several photos to keep it as our memories, we went to dinner together and that day ended with both happy and sad but that memories are still fresh and they cannot be forgotten ever”.

When her GiGi completed the story, Ishitha with tears blocking her eyes came and hugged her grandma and said, “You are lucky GiGi. You got such beautiful friends. Where are they now GiGi? I haven’t met them till now.”. Her grandma replied with a smily lips and teary eyes, “I hope they are somewhere telling their grandchildren this story as I am telling to you”.