Chinmaya Vidyalaya.. Layega Ekta..

There was a time when I liked going to school not because it was fun but more because I did not have anything to hate or dislike there. But after 9th std going to school, or specifically going to school before the morning prayer became a headache, and I didn’t have a choice of going late too. It was not the prayer which I had got used to, but the things we had to put up before the prayer. One of my favourite quit a few days back and just before she quit, she decided to write a song, she put all her poetic skills into work and wrote a song as a tribute to the school she was going to leave. The song itself starting with my school’s name “Chinmaya vidyalaya …” is really well written, but I did not understand why they had to put it out on loudspeakers everyday at exact 8:25, that was after the first bell ( you had to be ‘in’ before the first bell ). Come to think of it, it wasn’t the song which was bad, but it was the tone and the singers they picked, they picked out one girl with a very very high pitched almost nasal S.Janaki kind of a voice to sing that song, there were of course other similar people on chorus. Till date I don’t know which A.R.Rahman in our school composed to tune for the song!! I still doubt our music teacher in school; she was allegedly an M.A in music. We used to have 2 hours everyweek for one of Music/Mridangam/Dance/Drawing, and we all, that is most of the boys picked drawing as it was the only class one which you can bide time, complete homework, chat around while the poor teacher – an old teacher, she had no control over the class from 8th till 10th. She was a real artist, when asked she used to give a lot of tips and tricks for drawing and painting, but we lost interest in between. Coming back to the song, that girl was later named ‘nightingale of the school’ ( no one told the poor bird this info lest it kills itself). And to make matters worse, my school also started bhagavad geeta chanting after playing this song!!. By default all students of the school were participants in annual bhagavad geeta chanting competition, I too was :D !! Every class had to in a round robin way take up chanting geeta on the mike, but no one from our class showed up, none of the girls in our class (by 11th std they were only 5 of them) could spell bhagavad geeta let alone sing, while the teachers weren’t willing to let our baritones fill the school :D. Incidentally, I never reached the second round of that competition. After a few weeks our class was exempted from this routine, we had to be content with listening to it. Yesterday at 3 in the night, I suddenly thought of this song and all memories flooded back. “Chinmaya vidyalaya .. laayega sajeevtha.. chinmaya vidyalaya .. layega ekta ..
Bhakti gyan shraddha ke mahatve ko hum gaayenge ..” . . it goes on and on and on, really lonnngggg it was.