Just a minute!

On the advice of his friend Ch Javed, my father had changed my school. I was shifted to Beacon-house Jhelum from the Federal Government School situated in Jhelum’s

Nostalgia: The school as it used to be

Cantonment, where I studied from class 1st to 6th. FG (as it is commonly known) was like any other government school. Over-crowded class rooms, large play grounds, filthy wash rooms, rusted water tanks with tabs that would never stop dripping, library which was off limits for the students, teachers who looked more like clerks and less like teachers, staff room situated in the library, the cabinets in the library had perhaps more locks on them than the books in them. The only good thing in the school was naan tiki at the canteen.

I was a below average student in FG. I was good at nothing - not even at games. All I would do was talk with my other mediocre and physically weak class fellows. Beacon House was strange for me. I witnessed many of my firsts there. The co-education, airy and less crowded class rooms, the principle who knew names of all 400 or so students and the audio video resources.

In my class 10^th in Beacon House, we were 12 students and the most over-crowded class that I ever sat in had 24 students. Teachers were friendly. Library was a paradise for me. I did my first book theft in that library. I got issued a general science book and hid a children’s Urdu magazine Taleem-o-Turbiyat in it. When the library period was about to over, the tall and blonde teacher directed every student to show her his book before leaving the library. She was perhaps, taking note of our reading habits and tastes. My heart skipped many beats, while I was thinking that she was going to check the books.

I developed a taste for creative writing. In the beginning, the English was the most dreadful subject for me. The English book never made sense to me. I was giving the admission test. The teacher took me from the admission office to the library. She said to me, ‘’Just a minute’’. I could not understand it, thinking what kind of sentence is that which has no is, are, was, were, will, shall and verb in it.

I developed my first crush in the school. I later learned that I was also the first crush of my class fellow. We both could not express ourselves.