I remember those assemblies of 8th standard in my school. Basically, an assembly was a weekly cultural hour, where we all used to gather in the auditorium and sing some prayers, poem, songs and if time permitted, some performance like a skit or a group song would be presented by some of the students.
To be frank, nobody liked to sing those poems or prayers in those days. As kids, we all loved the popular Hindi movie songs of those times, but performing such a song was a big no-no in school. We were all supposed to sing nice poems and prayers, so that we could have some good learnings out of them. (I bet that the different magazines, TV shows and movies of those times did not agree with the school’s agenda!)
Till the 8th standard, our music teacher – we called her Viju tai - had got used to ask us “shall we sing again??” after a poem/prayer was sung by us, approx 500 students. We too, due to the lack of courage to say “no” on any teacher’s face, had got used to say “yessss” and sing the poem/song once again, despite how-much-ever we did not want to sing it once again. (Of course, all of the above used to go on in Marathi, being a Marathi-medium school.)
But by the time we reached the 8th standard, we had gathered the courage to collectively say “noooo”… It felt so awesome when we said that for the first time!! And Viju tai (who was indeed a really nice and jovial person) and other teachers also took it so sportingly… (I think probably that’s the time the teachers must be realizing that the kids are growing up.)
But, however I hated singing some of those school-poems repeatedly, a poem called sarwatmaka shivasundara will always be evergreen in my memories. Whenever I remember that song, some unknown emotions of nostalgia just rise up inside me and try to break free.
“Sarwatmaka shivasundara
Sweekaar ya abhivadana
Timiratuni tejakade
Prabhu amucha ne jeevana”
(It’s a prayer to god, urging him to lift our lives from darkness to light.)
Well, right now I remember only these four main lines from the poem. One of my favorite teachers in school, Mrs. Shobhatai Parulekar had given a wonderful tune to it. Whenever I think of this poem, those 3 o’ clock assembly sessions just come alive in front of my eyes. We all sang this poem while ending the assembly. Afterwards we all used to go back to our classrooms in one single line, of course with some masti-mazak on the way. The time would be around 4 o’ clock by now. One last lecture would be remaining. I think it used to be mostly of geography or history. Everybody would be just waiting to get over with it and already planning the things to do after school. Soon the bell would ring and we all were free to go wherever we wanted to!
The corridors outside the school hall… Canteen on the 2nd floor… Typical wooden dark brown colored stairs, with metal plates on their edges... I can still hear inside my head the sound we used to make out of those metal plates while running up and down… Huge bell near the library on 1st floor that used to ring after lectures got over… The amazing third floor balcony… Those corridors outside the classrooms… Our crumpled white uniform shirts... Punjabi Samosas from canteen, which I loved so much that I would want to have them just for myself…
It’s so wonderful that merely four lines of a poem are greatly responsible to carve all the above moments in the memory. Even the very mention of the poem brings them back to surface as if they happened just recently. No single other thing stirs my emotions about school more than this one does. Although now I don’t believe in the concept of god like most of the other people around me do, this poem creates some holy emotion inside me. I find this emotion very beautiful. I don’t attribute it to the existence of god, but whatever it is, I definitely love this mix of emotions that I feel whenever I think about Sarwatmaka shivasundara… definitely one of my favorite memories!
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