Memoirs of my Journey to School

One of the sons, in our locality, has to stay attached with the parents and help them run the family, in a way grooming him to be the potential heir. This, however, has almost disappeared today down the shelf of tradition. Then, my parents thought of invoking the responsibility upon me. I was, hence, intentionally held back and ruled out the possibility of educating me. As a youngest son, I was loved, cared and pampered. It must have been because of these reasons, my parents couldn’t dare to loose me away to school for sending me school meant departing from their loved son. Many of my contemporaries couldn’t attend school because of these reasons.

The beauty of being a kid is the innocence. I was not an exception for I was as innocent as every child. The only thing I envied, then, was when I witnessed my parents sending my elder brothers to schools as early as six. I envied not because my brothers would be imparted education to live a decent life but because they were attired in new cloths when I had to retire, clothed in torn-rags, to thick jungles herding herds of cattle battling the ‘vampire’ leeches, battering the heat and adventuring the brunt of torrential precipitation where I only found bit of solace beneath the plastic sheet I was shielded by. Life as a Cow-herder was hard and it was indeed ‘yucking’ to always fade away into the thick jungles. To attend school, however, was not in the wildest of my dreams. I accumulated and mastered every skill a farmer would need to lead his life. I was young, pure and untainted farmer.

Destiny had its own mercy on me. Out of nowhere, a talk to send me to school cropped up. It was a month after having started the new academic year though. I faintly remember that my sister, who herself had nurtured grievances for having not sent to school, had spearheaded the idea. It was a blessing ‘u-turn’ to the life I was supposed to lead. Couple of days later, I remember descending down the hill along with my mother to Wooling Primary School. It was a barefoot walk. I could still recall how wild Hazelnut thorns pierced the callus of my foot. My mother ushered me to Headmaster’s office seeking my admission in PP. I remember her offering dozens of eggs and few Kgs of Butter and Cheese. Such offers were not uncommon during those days.

Headmaster quizzically studied me and outrightly rejected my admission. He was right. I was too old to be in PP. I was nine then. However helpless my mother felt, she was too tough to yield her determination easily. She sought the help of the then school Caretaker upon whose request the Headmaster accepted my admission. At that moment, I ‘childishly’ realized how things were working in this world, which still haunts me today. People who are similarly circumstanced as like me are bound to encounter thousands of injustices I  met with. Poor and powerless are always overpowered; no one is considering their voices considerately. This is happening not just round the globe but at an alarming intensity across the sections of GNH Land-DrukYul, even today. This is the brief memoir of my journey to school.