The Rock Flower (Post 3)

It was the last day of my 12th board exam and the last paper to be attempted was Math II, I had an aversion for math from my school days can’t help it, and it still hasn’t changed a bit. Well I attempted the paper and there I was out of the examination hall feeling relieved.

All my friends including me were supposed to go for a movie on the last day of exam, but I had to give them a silly reason about attending a pooja so that I could be able to go for an interview in an international call center. It was more than a year that I and my family were staying without my father. No one to earn in the family and two siblings and a mother whom I had to look after, this was the reason for attending the interview.

I got through the interview and then after that day my life completely changed. The Call Center, this term was new to me, I only knew that we still were working like slaves for the British. The British outsourced their work and earned profit, also had to pay the Indians in rupees and get all the work done in time. Well they knew from a long time back how to rule and get things done from us, it was not new for them. Working in the call center I learned a lot. The British accent was one of my favorite. We had to give mock calls to the team leader and my mock call was the best of all the recent new joiners. I was the youngest of all the people working in the call center. And my general manager appreciated me a lot for putting efforts and getting very good sales for the company.

The company had arranged a small function where the employers were supposed to be appreciating their employees I thought I wouldn’t be getting any appreciation because I was just a fresher, the team leader was hosting the function with loud music on the floor, everybody enjoying to the max, working in call centers you hardly get to enjoy apart from parties and appraisal functions. The team leader was about to announce the next award now and that was the Best Agent Award of the month with the highest number of transaction clear sales, which means that the agent who’s sales were quality check clear and the agent who’s given the highest number of sales in that month. To my surprise it was me who won that award. I was extremely happy that day, because I was rewarded and appreciated for my work which I was craving for. It was difficult working in a call center, the agents work at that time when all the rest of the people are fast asleep in their bed.

I would recognize the noise of our sumo car that came for a pick up at my house from a long distance away because I was so used to listening to that noise everyday. It was 3pm and time to go to work. The same old briefing of the team leader everday and she warning us if there are no sales no dinner break for you guys had become a daily routine now. I cleared my 12th standard and had to take admission not knowing what I want to learn ahead. I got myself an admission in the college where I applied for a bachelor’s course in Information Technology as I thought it was an emerging field. It had become a lot more difficult now. The college in the morning and the call center in the night. This is how my day began..

I woke up at 5 am to get ready for college as I had a morning college and a 7 am lecture to attend. The college got over by 1 in the afternoon, I always had to miss the last lecture because I had to reach home before 3, have lunch, rest a while and then wait for the sumo car to arrive and go to work. My call center shift ended at 12.30 pm sometimes it was even 1 am in the night, the time was not fixed as sometimes I had briefing sessions with the team leader after the shift also. It was almost 5 hours I slept at night everyday. It was becoming difficult day by day the night shift and my college studies everything just messed up. The Situation was getting worse in the call center, very less sales now. I thought as if my life was just coming to a standstill. The tension of clearing the math paper in the exam and whether I would get a sale today at the call center were the thoughts that wouldn’t let me sleep even in those 5 hours that I slept.

Well I cleared my math paper and it just got worse at the call center. It was a year and a half at the call center now and while I was working I was promoted as a Sr Agent and then as a Team Coach with more responsibilities followed by more stress and also working under a lot of pressure. One day when I was at my college attending a lecture, I didn’t sleep well the last night just thinking about how my day was going to be at the call center. I just went unconscious in the classroom , all my friends gathered around me to see what happened to me. A friend of mine had to come home to drop me as I was feeling weak, it was a horrible day I had at college, but I still had to go to work because I couldn’t afford to loose that day’s pay at work. It was a long nightmare I was just waiting for this nightmare to come to an end and yes it did come to an end after a year and a half. This 1 and half year nightmare ended when I decided I am not continuing anymore with my job because it was impossible for me to study and work. I had to be serious with my studies because I had to appear for my IT final exam and it was not a cake walk. I left my job when I was to appear for my 4th semester exam, just a week later I had my 4th semester exams and I ranked first in the college. I had a lot of time to study as I was not working anymore and was extremely happy that the nightmare had come to an end.

I completed my graduation and I am working at a software firm now. You must be wondering why I have named the blog as “The Rock Flower”. Its because my name means a flower and a flower is so fragile and so was I, but I became as hard as a rock after going through this phase in my life where I had to struggle for living and feeding my family. Its not easy for a girl who’s just 18 to live without a father, take responsibilities at such a young age. I had to work my ass off when all my friends enjoyed their college life, watching movies, hanging around with friends and all I did was just sleep for 5 hours at night , take calls, hear bad words from the British people on the calls , ruin my health. Life was just hell but being in hell was when I learnt the lessons of life. How hard it is to survive in this world, but I am thankful to my mother and secondly to God who gave me the strength to survive. That fragile flower became a flower but it was no more fragile but as solid as a rock so that explains my story and why I named the blog as
“The Rock Flower”.

Thanks And Take Care..and no matter what happens in your life..be strong and face it!!

D Dayzz I Remember D Most II (Post 2)

Well in my first blog I spoke a lot about how me and all you people miss school, but now let me share how I felt as a child being in school, how was my mind reacting to the things happening around me. In this blog I am going to talk about myself, ofcourse  you will find incidents that relate to how you were in school.

School was great fun and an adventure too!!! I loved it when the school began after the summer vacations, the smell of the new books, the uniform, the pencil box stuffed with pencils and pens..n all the necessary and unnecessary things. It was time to go to the next grade and a new class teacher, I always had that excitement of which division I would go into and will I get a good class teacher same was the excitement with you I suppose. I was an average child in the beginning, learning a lot of things, so many that I felt my small brain wont be able to take that much knowledge and would busrt out one day! Trying to figure out why I am sent to this place everyday except the weekend for like six hours a day. My school was my second home. Waking up early and getting ready for school was how my day began and completing the school homework is how it came to an end.

My most favorite subject in school was Science and the least favorite was Math, I know people wont agree with me on this. It’s the other way round for most of them. Some don’t like science but love math. I was an active child in school, always attentive in class except the math period.. just kidding, a first bencher always, the padhaku types actually.

I was a lot involved into the extra curricular activities in the school like Singing, Dancing, Speech, Drawing, Science Projects, participating in almost all the competitions in the school. My fear for stage was gone when I was a child. I was a school vice captain of the blue house and also a class monitor several times. Ohh it was difficult managing the students because they never kept quite!! When there was no teacher in the class it was more like a fish market than a classroom, and I had to write names of the most talkative one’s and let the teacher know about them, this was very difficult cause I was friends with everybody so it was a war between friendship and the duty given to me!!

The best time I had fun in school was between the lectures or the off period’s that we got because the teacher was unavailable. It happened a lot of times that all the ten periods were free, because there was no teacher or the teacher had finished teaching their subject. Bas aur kya chahiye bacchon ko..pure das period dhamaal hi dhamaal!!!! The Games we played in the classroom were Antakshari which I felt was very boring, Fish Pond, which was interesting and the most favorite Truth or Dare which was simply amazing.

Our talks between the lectures or when we had an off period were interesting they were about the teachers, what’s going around in the school premises, which teacher is being partial with whom and last but not the least a little about boys coz I am the opposite sex and vice versa if it’s a boy I guess. The games period was the most awaited period of all and the one everybody enjoyed to the max. I still remember we use to keep a check on our time-table in the calendar to know which days we had the games period. Girls had their own games to play and boys had their own. We played dodge ball most of the times. I don’t know what boys did in their games period, but could see them running after each other through the school fence.

“Exams” this word created a lot of tension, not only for me but for everybody I guess. The unit tests were easy but the semester and the final were the one’s I worried about, as I was an attentive child in class I never wanted to flunk in any subject and spoil my impression so I prepared for my exams a lot before than studying at the last moment. Some students just opened their book like a day before the exam paper, the tension they had on their face while writing the paper was an expression not to be missed. And after we wrote the paper the discussions whether the answers were correct or wrong!! I wonder how I remember so much in detail and I hope I am able to put it across to you all in the best way possible.

The higher classes were more fun than ever, we were almost mature now to understand all possible things there were to be understood. The facts about the human body as we learnt science were amazing . As we were kids earlier and knew nothing about the so called stuff that you start to understand only when your in the higher grades. Well I don’t know how you guys will react to what I have just written above, but when you write about things you have to be clear about everything that you faced and that’s why I mentioned it coz that’s a fact, isn’t it? The class was more noisier now with students becoming more adamant and stubborn day by day or was it that they had just grown up.

Finally I was in standard ten now and thought that it was nine years I was in the school and just one more year to go and I will be a free bird then. No uniforms, no discipline to follow, no strict rules and no more school. Ofcourse everybody has that fascination of going to college, because its time to live your life your way. And Again the tension of the so called board exam crawled my mind. Just one exam more and I will be out of school to enter the college life where I will have to study even more than school. I felt sometimes its almost more than a quarter of our life we spend just learning stuff!! After I gave my exams and the result sheet in my hand I felt like I am the most happiest person in the world. I am sure you also must have felt that, some of them must have felt chalo jaan chooti school se!! And that was the end of my school life but a beginning of another..

Thanks for reading my blog. Take care all of you.

Prajakta Mali

D Dayzz I Remember D Most I (Post 1)

Hiee everybody this is Prajakta Mali. I am writing my first blog. Just thought of sharing some thoughts and feelings which always run across my mind whenever I think of my School. I am writing this blog because I wanted to thank someone. It’s not a person but many people I want to thank and all these people are my teacher’s. My pre-primary, primary and secondary teachers thank you for all that you have done .I dedicate this blog to them and my A.I.M.S Batch 2003.

I have named this blog as Dayzz I Remember the Most and I am sure everybody must be remembering these days and must be feeling like they should come back to school once again because they miss school life a lot.

I still remember the first day of school. It was scaring, staying at a place where you know nobody. The school bench, the books, the school bag, the water-bottle, the tiffin box, the playground behind the school, the school bell, the chalk dust, all these things are still fresh in my mind as if it was just yesterday. It was a place called “School’ were I was and I had to learn some of the most important lesson of my life here beginning with A,B,C..

“Learning” is a process that never stops, I am not in school rite now but this process has still not come to an end. This is what my school taught me “Learning never ends”.

Science , Math’s ,History, Geography, Languages, Drawing, Craft, Sports, Extra Curricular Activities, so much to do and just one soul. I loved school, those six hours were so tiring but we still had that energy to go out and play even after we came home from school and also complete our homework.

There was the school assembly which was almost half an hour and our body ached standing in the assembly carrying that school bag which was like 5 kilos in weight, the beginning of our day and we use to feel when the day in school will come to an end. The school bell, the talks between the lectures, the laughs, the giggles, the jokes, the comments, the mass bunk, the red remark in the calendar, the punishment, the teases, the favorite games period, and the most favorite Value Education period where almost every child completed their books or their previous days homework, the p.t period where we had to do yoga and meditation even if we hated it the most, the fish pond, the school picnic, the paper balls and chalks which we use to throw at each other  and then clean up the whole classroom as it looked no more like a classroom but a dustbin. The school mirror in which every student had to look into and see if their properly dressed, frankly speaking no one bothered how well dressed they are just concerned about one thing may it be a girl or a boy, whether their hair is alright or whether they look fine or not. I miss all this so much and I am sure you too miss it a lot.

Ohh School was so much fun! Fun but with discipline. We don’t understand the meaning of being in discipline when we are in school but once we step in this world where we need to survive on our own we understand how important it is to know everything that we learnt being in school. I remember my teachers telling all the students that you wont understand this rite now, but you will someday and you will thank us and that’s what I am doing now.

You must have remembered all those wonderful moments you have had in school while reading this. I know it was difficult for some of them but even they had fun, didn’t they? Some of them must be saying “Nai yar hum logon se kabhi padhai hui hi nahi”..agreed but you cant deny one thing and that is you have had fun when you went through this phase of your life which is called as School Life.

Well they are the most precious days of my life I treasure them and whenever all we school friends meet up we talk about all the fun we had in school, the incidents that happened, we talk about all the teachers that we had who taught us, they were all unique. Everybody had their own style of teaching. Some were funny, some arrogant, some who didn’t even speak English well, some who taught us very well, some who were very boring while they taught who ever they were however they were they were our teachers. You all must be doing the same I suppose.

Well there’s an end to everything and so is the blog going to end now. I hope I managed to take you back in time!!! Please excuse my writing because I am doing it for the first time. A kind request to all you people reading this never ignore your teachers when you see them walking down the street just greet them and thank them for what they have done and just see how happy they feel about this..alright alright enough from me now, I don’t want to take much of your time , Thank you  for reading my first blog please let me know if I made any mistakes.. all your comments are welcomed whether good or bad, because it will only encourage me to improve more, Take care all of you!! Enjoy n have fun!!! cya soon..coz I am going to write my next blog soon.

                                                                                                                        Prajakta Mali