Remember the time in junior school when "essay writing" was introduced to us? It first started with Festivals, historic leaders (in my case one hundred words on Mahatma Gandhi), Seasons and then slowly moved on to a little more subjective topics which made us as young children express our thoughts and tastes; MY favourite teacher, MY mother, MY best friend and so on. I remember my experiences as a seven or eight year old girl with bulky handwriting , trying to balance my newly sharpened pencil in between my index finger and thumb, I found it rather flattering when asked to write about MY opinion (a word I used a lot to sound smart) on things.
As I was ransacking my old carton boxes I found one such essay jutting out of the lot : "The Day when everything went wrong.... by Sandhya Sriram, Class 3 B, Roll number- 46". I am sure this was a common topic given to the students of that age across all schools. I remember walking out of class with my friends that afternoon as we unanimously agreed that this can never be possible and the topic is by nature flawed. To quote my friend: "I have bad times, sometimes badder times but I am happy. You are also happy. I am sometime sad. But not full day. Only sometime." She spoke what was going on in our head as the three of us nodded in agreement. When I read my essay almost after fifteen years now I could not help but laugh at the innocence in the thought process. This is just a gist of the whole essay :
'I woke up late. I forgot to have my brekfast (underlined in red with the correct spelling on top of it). I missed my school tempo because I woke up late. I was hungry. My father dropped me to school and my teacher shouted at me for being late. I saw I forgot my water-bottle in my car. Now I was late and hungry and thirsty.... In Anitha ma'am's class I did not remember 6 tables and my partner called me stupid. Now I was late and hungry and thirsty and stupid...... '
The list of adjectives with the conjunction went on for a while before I religiously ended the essay with "...it was INDEED a day when everything went wrong."
I wonder if I now pick up a paper and pen and was asked to write the same essay, what would my day consist of. The point is that I won't. I won't write an essay with this topic cause either I would end up with nothing to write about or have a surfeit of incidents that will be too hard to pen down. Each of us have had such days where we tuck ourselves into bed at night and sigh : "Today was a horrible day. Just NOTHING went right." But did everything go wrong? Fifteen years now.. Not so innocent .. and yet the same belief. Sometimes I think our eight year old selves had the truth of it..
As I was ransacking my old carton boxes I found one such essay jutting out of the lot : "The Day when everything went wrong.... by Sandhya Sriram, Class 3 B, Roll number- 46". I am sure this was a common topic given to the students of that age across all schools. I remember walking out of class with my friends that afternoon as we unanimously agreed that this can never be possible and the topic is by nature flawed. To quote my friend: "I have bad times, sometimes badder times but I am happy. You are also happy. I am sometime sad. But not full day. Only sometime." She spoke what was going on in our head as the three of us nodded in agreement. When I read my essay almost after fifteen years now I could not help but laugh at the innocence in the thought process. This is just a gist of the whole essay :
'I woke up late. I forgot to have my brekfast (underlined in red with the correct spelling on top of it). I missed my school tempo because I woke up late. I was hungry. My father dropped me to school and my teacher shouted at me for being late. I saw I forgot my water-bottle in my car. Now I was late and hungry and thirsty.... In Anitha ma'am's class I did not remember 6 tables and my partner called me stupid. Now I was late and hungry and thirsty and stupid...... '
The list of adjectives with the conjunction went on for a while before I religiously ended the essay with "...it was INDEED a day when everything went wrong."
I wonder if I now pick up a paper and pen and was asked to write the same essay, what would my day consist of. The point is that I won't. I won't write an essay with this topic cause either I would end up with nothing to write about or have a surfeit of incidents that will be too hard to pen down. Each of us have had such days where we tuck ourselves into bed at night and sigh : "Today was a horrible day. Just NOTHING went right." But did everything go wrong? Fifteen years now.. Not so innocent .. and yet the same belief. Sometimes I think our eight year old selves had the truth of it..
