Jun 15, 2025 12:03 PM
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I went to go to school for a gruelling four years, and boy, those were the longest four years of my life. The first year, I cried every single day and couldnt understand a thing any of the teachers were saying. You see, I did not grow up in India. I was attending online classes, and these online classes were the first exposure I had to this miracle called Primus.
They were very structured, they said. They were a very reputable and well-managed school, they said. And like a fool, I believed them.
When I finally came to India, I had the honor of taking a tour of this sad, pathetic excuse of a school. Well, at first, they took me to the AV room, and the seats were lush. The floors were wood. They had a projector. They had AC. And I thoughtthis might not be so bad. Its not quite different from the classrooms I had in the US.
And then they took me into the real classrooms.
I wish I could have sunk into the ground and descended into hell, for even hell would have been more comfortable than the assault my back would face while sitting on those rickety-rack chairs and staring at the moss overgrown on the ceiling and the chalkboards cracked in 850 different places. The paint was peeling in the hallway. The grass was nonexistent. The field was dry, to say the least. And the food in the tuck shop? Well, lets just say Satan would frown upon it.
But still, my poor, innocent, unmarred heart decidedmaybe if the school filled with students, charm might return. If it ever existed in the first place.
And so came the fated first day of school. I put on the potato-sack uniform and regretted my existence. I looked like a rejected piece of messed-up biscuit and vomit from the oldest, ugliest factory ever. The specific shade of blue contrasted with my skin so much, I wanted to burn alive rather than ever see that abysmal color combination again.
Yet I persevered. I put on a jacket, put a smile on my face, and marched like a soldier onto the school bus.
Needless to say, the bus was crowded, shaky. The driver sped up on speed bumps and slowed down on flat roads. I think he might have been a little high. However, the attender was nice. She was calm, and she brought me peace. The little kids on the bus assaulted my ears for four years, and I think I might have lost 40% of my hearing due to them. They cursed and spoke like Vikings, and the things they saideven I didnt understand. But I knew they were wrong.
As an example: during Independence Day, a kid started shouting, Jolly, the British are coming! Theyre going to kill us! Where did they learn this? I dont know. Why were they speaking this nonsense? I dont know. All I know is that I wanted to jump out of the bus that day and prayed I wouldnt wake up from it.
As we turned into the primary grounds, I saw that, in fact, the charm had not returned. In fact, it had dwindled. It had gone into the negativesmaybe even become imaginary. And as I climbed up the steps with my 900pound backpack adn envisioned the seats I would sit in for the next 4 years, I knew that scoliosis was not a possibility but a certainty.
As a class, I thoughtmaybe if I made friends, I could ignore the faults of the place. I was wrong again, as was the recurring theme. Everyone ignored me, pretended I didnt exist. The boys and girls separated. The girls giggled and gossiped. The boys yelled and did pull-ups on the door and screamed racial slurs and made crude jokes about topics I cannot discuss here.
All I can say is that I was severely traumatized. My brain refused to process what my ears were hearing. Becausehow? And why? Why were these students making such disgusting jokes? And what were the teachers doing about this? What were they doing?
I found out they were doing nothing. Nada.
I decidedwell, I cannot change any of this. All I can do is try to change my grades, which were currently dropping into tartarus. I couldnt comprehend a single sentence coming out of the teachers mouths. The only thing that saved me that first year was my physics teacher. She was a god. She was a blessing. I love her with every fiber of my being, and she is the only reason I got an A in physics. I love her.
All the other teachers? Again, severely bamboozled me, traumatized me, and made me never want to step into an educational institute again.
Sometime during class, I decided to use the restroomwhich would again be a fatal mistake on my part. I would learn that anything I decided to do in this school would be met with insufficient infrastructure and an ignorant administration.
I made my way to the restroom, and I was hit with the waft of a stomach-churning stench from the boys bathroom. I wanted then and there to sink into the ground and disappear. I wanted my nose to vanish. I wanted to become Voldemort, even. But alas, magic did not exist. I was a poor Muggle. So I pinched my nose and made my way into the girls bathroom. I was relieved to find the stench was not as eminent, and I did my businessonly to realize my business would not be done because the flush, of course, didnt work. Courtesy of Primuss trademark brand.
Never mind. I called the akka and figured she would fix it. I went to wash my hands. I put soap in my hands. I lathered. I turned on the tapand to my surprise(not really), the water didnt flow out. However, the water from my eyes did.
Then I looked for tissues to wipe away the soap. Againnone. So I made my way to the staff room, embarrassingly, with soap-covered hands, and asked the teachers if I could borrow water and informed them that the water was no longer working. They threw me a water bottle and acted as if this was normal. Regular. Every day.
I told myself I didnt believe it. But I had to force myself to believe I could survive another four years.
Of course, steadily, I failed all my classesuntil I met an angel: my best friend. She helped me. And soon, my grades were not an issue. I was doing okay. Not wellokay enough.
And here my troubles should have ended, right?
No.
They were just getting started.
I graduated 10th grade with a heart of stone and a mind of something stronger than stone because I had to bear the insults of the teachers. Every time one little vermin from my class committed one little mistake, the entire class was yelled at. Pretty sure this is against the Geneva Conventionor maybe it doesnt apply in India because were just a barbaric society where older people are better than younger people. Simply because theyre older. Not because theyre smarter, stronger, kinder, more understanding, knowledgeable, or enlightened.
Nojust because theyre older, they are better. They are smarter. Even though they are not. We must listen to them. Bow our heads. Say yes to their every whim.
11th grademy class had been weeded out. All the others left due to the entrance exam for the course. I was doing a little harder course. It wasnt that hardthe people were just too stupid to have aspirations different from the ones that would be achieved taking my course.
I found my new class to be a little better. More tolerable. They didnt shout. They didnt scream. They were a little unhingedbut they were tolerable. They had brains. They had more than one brain cell.
And the teachers? Honestly, I could go on about them, but I dont want to name any names. All I can say issome of them were severely, bombastically, overwhelmingly underqualified.
I hated every second of my time in schoolbut I cannot say I hated the experience. As much as I wanted the ground to open and swallow me whole, I had fun at times. And I cant deny that. Because unlike the absolute hypocrites that run the schoolI am not a liar.
If you want to join the school, go ahead. Youll be fine. But you will never be the same again. The school will change youfor better or worse.
As for me, the adult world can thank this place for preparing me to deal with the bumbling buffoons that exist within it, and for teaching me how to keep my temper when every fiber of my being wants to explode someones skull with a sledgehammer. Or a regular hammer. Or a pencil. Or my fist.
Im sure, as I grow older, Ill look back on this school with fond memories. Because of coursetime heals all wounds. Afternoon P.E., the metal torture bus, classes where I genuinely wanted to rip my eyeballs out and die on the spot, and classmates who made me wish humanity would go extinct.
But as I saidthe experience is what matters. And the experience was anything but boring. Every day, a twist. Would I scream? Would I cry? Would I regret life? Would I regret coming here? Would I feel sad, disheartened, heartbroken, disappointed, disgusted?
Every day was a mysteryand I reveled in the chaos.
So go ahead. If you want to go to the school, now you know what to expect. But what I cant tell you is how youll turn outbecause only you can determine that.
Remember: if you go to this school, surrender yourself to the experience. Do not try to fight it. Embrace the racism. Embrace the bullying. Embrace the chaos. Embrace the disorder. Embrace the rudeness. Embrace the ignorance. Embrace the brutality with which the teachers will reprimand you if you so much as question a sentence they say.
Embrace it. Thrive in it.
Use your hatred as fuel and excel. Prove them wrong. Take your frustration and your anger and your fear and your disgust at this pathetic excuse of a school and put it into youput it into yourself. Work on yourself. And when you finally leave school, no matter how much you hated it, remember that you will miss it.
So be present in every moment. Surrender yourself to it. Dont think about the past. Dont think about the future. Just think about how youre going to survive this day. How youre going to survive the screaming kids in the bus. How youre going to survive the teacher who makes you want to slap them. How youre going to survive the tuck shop food that gives you untalkable diarrhea every time.
These are all things in life that matterof course, once you are no longer failing and are passing your exams and doing well. Because no matter how open-minded I am, I am, after all, Asian. And the fact that grades define my being is embedded deep into my DNA. I couldnt pry it out with a pickaxe or an excavator, even if I tried.
So join the school. Not for the school. But for you.
P.S. The school song and prayer will make you want to die.
