Since the very first issue of The Dohnavur Post – back in 2009 – Karen has been the resident writer of ‘Down the Memory Lane’ column. With each sentence in her musings, she gave voice to our collective nostalgia. Even memories, with time they fade into oblivion, however with words and passion a writer may revive them and breathe new life into them.
Here below, are excerpts from the first article by the most prolific woman writer we know from school. It came out on 3rd March, 2009.
Picture this – a bunk bed and a wide open shelf- not very close to each other, but certainly in some close proximity, the geometry of which I cannot still decipher. That was our only personal space. Something we could call our own on that large campus with red buildings under bang blue skies.
The bunk was very personal to us. The bunk was almost a home. It was one thing that was private in that vast expanse of generality.
You could find anything in the bed. Some of the random things that come to mind are perfumes, tons of make-up stuff, a rack for letters from Mom and Dad and perhaps a dolly with special history attached to it. The mattress was a good storehouse. Anything and Everything could be stored under the mattress. From jilebis and chapattis to elastic bands and fancy looking candy wrappers, you name it.
Greeting cards, letters, unreturned comic books, posters stolen from magazines, polyethene bags – we saved them all, right under us. One of the girls found a raw banana, almost fossilized into rottenhood with months of forgotten abandon. On the last day they all had the same fate – they went in to the bin. It somehow seemed so worthless at that point that our small minds wondered why we ever put them there in the first place!
Books were my favorite part of school. When I was a little kid, I read and re-read my favorites like Enid Blyton‟s The Wishing Chair and others with a magical twist in them. I liked the library. I enjoyed the smell of the old books, I cherished the silence of the high-roofed room with tall open windows and the watchful be-spectacled librarian.
We also ‘famously’ read comics like Tinkle, Mandrake, Phantom etc. The only problem was, once you lent your comic book to someone, you had to kill the hope of seeing it again, because the book would be circulated to the entire dormitory by evening time and at night it would be on the pillow of the last person who fell asleep reading it. Every Sunday afternoon was compulsory nap time that everyone detested. So just before the clock tower struck 1, we would have stealthily looked under everyone’s pillow for books to read.
Life here in the city with a demanding job makes me long for the good ol’ Dohnavur days. Life was simpler then when Sunday’s worry was finding a book during the afternoon nap time, Saturday’s worry was finding space on the clothesline and the power cut was an event in itself on a weekday. It had simpler toys and more joys. Long live the school and its memories.