I am trying to recall what I did from June 1983 to March 1987 in PCK ...( Presentation Convent Kodaikanal)
I recall the weekdays Timetable quite well...
Will try to see if I can pull out how we spent weekends from my rusty brain.
6:20 RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRnnnnnnnnnnnnng
Wake up time .I think by 6:50 we had to complete our morning ablutions and report for breakfast in a line outside the doors of Dining Room in full school uniform including blazers /jumpers!
7:15 : Breakfast.
We start with a morning grace.
We are served two buttered toasts and one plain slice of bread.There was always a form of egg very often scrambled.A fruit - most days a dark colored banana which I still detest...then coffee/tea/milk...
We are out from the dining room for STUDY-
Study was about 45 minutes and we are to report for assembly inside or ouside Wellington Hall depending on the weather.
If you didnt know what study time was we had to sit quietly at our desk and chair and do homework or study the days lesson or read.We were not allowed to read story books unless we hid them in a text book and no talking to your neighbors!
Can you imagine your 8-12 year old doing that just now?!
After assesmbly we have classes till 12:15 - Lunch Time
We had rice almost all days.I specifically remember Rasam on Wednesdays and we had a desert or a fruit everyday.
Then we report back to our classrooms by 1:00 and had school till 3:30 -which was Tea Time.
We had compulsory Games from 4 to 5.I was never the sporty kind and was so lean that I could never serve over the net in throw ball...How bad is tat?
After Games we had to report for Study from 5:30 to 6:30 in our night uniform followed by dinner at 6:30PM.Dinner was again bread most days.
We had free time till 8 and lights off at 8:45 everyday....
That was a typical Monday to Friday for 4 years I spent there.
Point to Note:
No phone calls not even to your mom...No mobiles of course ..they didn't exist...no ipods mp3/mp4 players...though some children did have walkmans with cassettes....no television....at all.....
as the saying goes childhood days are golden days.
ReplyDeleteHi Vinoo, i remember the sunday walks past the temple along the pear orchards. we used steal pears and get chased by the caretaker!
ReplyDeleteI remember the midnight feasts, the Maggi noodles in a mug of hot water, all of us finishing a whole bottle of fish pickle in under an hour.. food of course was a major preoccupation then:)
ReplyDeleteWas there 10 years and loved it.. hey Vinoo, you forgot the awesome round meat we used to get for breaka.
When we were smaller Saturday morning breaka was usually followed by a lecture by Sr Carmel who always began with" Your manners are appalling! in her impeccable accent.
there was truly nothing i disliked in pck. life was too perfect. even when caught for faults, the black marks, the house meets, the punishments(so called but fun doing it) was all too good. i rem we were punished if we were caught wasting vegetables during lunch and then we were sent to dine with the srs at the TOP table for a week, by the end of those days we were proud to have become friends with 'em. everythign was too good!!!
ReplyDeleteI was at PCK much before you , I don't remember saturdays much, I do remember the Sunday walk, we assembled in the courtyard after breakfast and each class was assigned a location, Lower classes got nearby spots like the shooting range, others got to go to Bear Shola Falls and around the lake!
ReplyDeleteWe had so many traditions: I remember once a year, the house captains and vice captains were given a head start and could hide anywhere within set boundaries in Kodai, and it was the job of the rest of the school to find them.
Talking of Sr Carmel, once we planned for a mid night feast and had collected tons of stuff that we hid behind St Anthony's statue in a little alcove. Sr Carmel was taking a walk , saw something glinting and decided to investigate when we were all in class. She found our stash of course and left us a note saying : St Anthony thanks you, he was very hungry indeed!"
I remember cheese paste and something green that they gave that I hated.....its in pck that I learned to mash jam with boiled egg and eat it..... all the hindi movies we saw....the impositions we had to do while others watched movies on saturday..... the walks to kurinji andavar temple..simply unforgettable...
ReplyDeletenot to forget the markreading on weekends, and expelled frm the houses for more than 4 badmarks, which meant we cudnt wear our skorts, being punished for one/2 reels of movies according to the blackmarks, writing composition on "life inside a ttball"and the kind..wow..everything was so much fun.....i miss pck....the best place ever..i cud go on and on...
ReplyDeleteremember the boiled green beans we used to get for tea that always tasted burnt and we used to mash it flat and stack our plates hoping that it would go unnoticed but invariably some Sr on duty would catch on and make us eat it!
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