My School - K V Sabarmati, Ahmedabad

This one is about KV Sabarmati. This was my 3rd school after studying till 4th std. in St. Joseph High School and after spending around a week in Gyaandeep. Actually my Dad had a transferable job and KVs were the the best place for children of such people because they guarenteed admissions in whatever different places that the person goes to. After 4th when we shifted to ONGC colony i had to change my school too to somewhere close by. There were two options - Gyaandeep and KV Sabarmati. Gyaandeep was closest but was in bad shape. My Dad filled applications at both the schools to be on the safer side - as he always does in all his decisions, a backup. Gyaandeep's result came out first and i was admitted there. I must have gone there for may be a week when results for KV Sabarmati came out and after knowing Gyaandeep too well in those 5 or 6 days my Dad made an obvious choice to move me to KV Sabarmati.

So i started my tenure there when i was in 5th Std. and i remained there for next 4 years before my Dad got tranfered to Bombay (then) and Mumbai (now). KV Sabarmati was a simple school. Actually most of the schools in those days used to be very simple. The school was only upto 9th Std. when i joined it which later was expanded upto 12th Std. by the time i left it. The campus was shared by a Gujarati medium school as well. My classroom used to be in that other section of the Gujrati school. And my classroom was the only one which was in that section. Apart from the main building of the English medium school and the Gujarati medium school there were some rooms towards the rear end of the campus. Those were not operational at that time. That rear end section was separated by the main English medium school building by a small play ground which was nothing more than an empty space, not even levelled. In the coming years the rear end section of rooms became operational to accomodate expanding classes.

It was connected by the main building by a pavement made by just levelling the cement upto a meter wide. The need for pavement was arised because in rains entire campus used to become all muddy leaving no place to walk to reach the buildings without ruining the clothes. This pavement ran from the entrance of the school (right in front of the main building) touching the main building, connecting the rear end section and also running next to the toilet. Now this toilet, LOL. This toilet section was so far from both main building and the rear end section that i am sure there must have been many cases of early leak before reaching the destination. It was almost equilateral triangle with the 3 buildings on the 3 vertices. The toilet insides used to be very dark. These 4 buildings (main building, rear section, toilet and Gujarati school) were encompassed by the school boundary which was not very high. A rectangle with 1 side ending on the road, 1 was shared with the residential society and the remaining two sides were separating the school from jungle. The jungle was not big but in those days i considered it huge. I pictured it as a jungle of thorny trees, very dense, which was big enough to get lost with a small lake somewhere in the middle of it and full of animals like snakes, jackals and may be wolves. This picture was a result of those stories that were told by many students among themselves. I never dared to do anything which would have been considered silly at that time.

Story gets even better with passing years. Later on when the school was really on the expansion spree, they took some more rooms on rent (i believe) at a place which was good 10 minutes walk from the main campus. My guess is that place was supposed to be a market which was currently not established and the classrooms were the shops. So students used to travel between that market section and main building to attend some lessons. Our music class used to take place in another residential quarter of the railway colony which was not far but was surely not part of the school campus (again may be on rent). Oh i forgot, the school was in a railway colony and so all the residential quarters around were government quarters for railway staff. May be that's why school management could so eaily took them on rent. There was a big play ground which was of Railway colony which we used during our games/sports period. This was was again 10-15 minutes away from main campus opposite to the market section. Today i wonder how we never used to bother that much about the incovenience of travelling to and fro between different sections of the school. How we never complained. How we enjoyed everything about that school as much as we would have enjoyed being in some other great school. But this is how KV Sabarmati ran for years and this is how many student learned there for years.

This post might sound funny and pathetic but i loved that school and i still love it. That school had some wonderful teachers who did their duty very sincerely. I met some very good friends there, some of whom i am still in contact with. Many years later when i had just completed my 1st year of BE, i chose Ahmedabad for my vacation trip and i did visit that school again. It was as it used to be in those days. There was very little change. The thellewala was still there right outside the school selling the same stuff that he used to in those days. The education that i got there is still with me and will always be there. That school has a very special place in my life and it will always be there. I spent just 4 years there but the memories of that place are fresh in my mind. Everything about that place is admirable to me. There are many things that i have shared here but there are so many experiences that i have not shared. How can I? Each and every day, each moment of being there cannot be shared in words, but will be cherished by me.