Transient Beginning

Tell us about your first day at something — school, work, as a parent, etc.

I looked at my notebook. I scantly remember what I was asked to write or draw, but what I do remember were the small eraser shavings on the open page of my small notebook. The head of the eraser was covered with graphite from the constant erasing of the lines made by the pencil.



The page of the notebook showed traces of what was written before. The surface of the paper at places didn’t feel the same anymore. Tears began to collect in my eyes, with no known faces around and no path which would allow me to run off.. away into the playground. But this was not my first day at school. It was a few days later.



I was one of those kids with vivid imaginations believing everything in the world was as happening as were things in the warmth of the home and neighbourhood. So, I was excited about the first day at school, I was told I was going to make new friends and have fun learning with them and I imagined it worlds apart from reality, with a room full of kids laughing and me laughing with them.



The first hint of realisation that things weren’t so simple was that my mother went away after leaving me there. ‘She is surely waiting outside,’ I initially thought, and I realised later that this wasn’t the case, my mother went back home and returned later, so in between I was all alone.



Keeping that aside, with a smiling face and bursting enthusiasm I entered the first day of my school life and the school premises, a completely different world than the one that I had been living in till now. But I was happy, there were other kids around and that also of my own age.



As I walked further, I saw a few sad faces of the kids around, some even crying. ‘Are they hurt? Or have they been scolded’ I thought at that time and when I entered the classroom, it was a disaster. It was far from the bright place of friends and fun my mother had described. Most of the children looked sad and like they had just cried recently, some like me were completely clueless and were thus rather confused at the moment. The only thing good was the smiling teachers and the bright and colourful walls on which various different things were made.



I looked at my mother standing at the door of the classroom and she smiled at me and I smiled back, as the teacher put her arms around me and took me to my seat. So, my first day went by in complete ignorance and only when reality dawned upon me later did I find my share of tears.

Written by Anuran Chatterji

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