And I learn some more

Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan celebrated Regional Youth Festival 2009 today, under the National Adolescence Education Programme in the Jabalpur region. There were four KVs participating, and we had four events : Role play on Gender Ratio, Debate, Essay Writing and Poster Making, out of which I was a participant in the role play and the debate, representing my school.

We reached our school and were standing outside as our escort teacher had instructed us, but our principal ma’m didn’t believe us when we said we are going to another school for the youth festival and forced us into the assembly and by the time we somehow got out of there our escort teacher LEFT without us. We had to walk upto the school where the competition was being held. A day which starts bad doesn’t leave much hopes for the rest of the day.

Anyway, in the role play I was to play the role of an oppressed rural housewife who is being forced to abort her female fetus by her family whcih wants only a son. I was to wear a saree which was really annoying (I don’t understand why the dress was ever designed, u can hardly walk or do anything without feeling highly uncomfortable). My role didn’t really consist of many dialogues since the rural wife wasn’t allowed to express her opinion, I just had to act upset and depressed (which wasn’t very difficult since it was really embarrassing and depressing being in that saree). We were the only ones who had slogans and had an original song composed by our music teacher

The role play got over and I was just about to go out of the room when it was announced that next was debate. I had to get out of that saree in 2 minutes somehow (God I hate sarees) and prepare for the debate. I was absolutely certain that I was going to mess it up by not being able to utter a single word after I heard the first contestant speak, and I couldn’t help staring at the back door wondering if I could run for my life. But then, “…and now we call upon stage, Roohani Deshpande from KV No. 1 GCF, who would be speaking for the motion Growing up healthy is the only way to develop a well rounded personality. Please come forward, Roohani Deshpande.”

Ok, I thought, I’ll just go and say I’m sorry I want to quit, and run for the door immediately. I went on the stage, breathed thrice (as one of my supportive classmates had suggested to me), and decided to give it a try after all, and so I began “I firmly believe…”
I wish I could say once I began I started to gain confidence and ended up speaking really well, but what really happened was that I forgot what I was talking about every 15 seconds (but I kept speaking nevertheless) and I repeated the same thing thrice. My face probably looked like I haven’t eaten since a week because I did feel that way.

And when I became to come up with points which my ‘worthy opponents’ had said before me and ideas on how to counter them convincingly..  “BUZZZZZ Your time is up.” I was so taken aback, I just left abruptly. I couldn’t even begin with the brilliant points whcih had suddenly cropped up into my mind, and I didn’t even say a polite Thank You at the end, or even give an indication that I was about to leave, I just left.

It’s amazing how many things start to come to your mind the moment you leave the stage. The sudden flow of “I should have said.. I shouldn’t have done.. Why didn’t I .. I could have…” statements flooding your mind the very instant you take your seat again is really amusing. I guess what went wrong was that the reality around me caught up long before I reached there in thought.

From 12:45 pm to 2:15 pm, we roamed around the school where the competition was held. I criticised my own school comparing it to the one we were in, calling my school things ranging from a war-prison to a potential zoo. Honestly, my school is suffocating, jail-like and really unbearable.
The Essay Writing and the Poster Making competitions were going on in the other rooms and we had to pass our time till 2 pm somehow. I talked to the participants from other schools and soon became their friends.

At 2:15 we were given lunch (it was more than the amount of food I would eat in an entire day) and finally at 3 pm the results were announced.

Role Play: First prize goes to… Kv No. 1, GCF!
We won Rs 500 for first prize. (See, the depressing saree made me act depressed so well, lol)

Debate: First prize goes to.. Somebody else!
(Of course, I wasn’t even listening to this one)
Second prize goes to.. Somebody else!
(I wasn’t expecting it either, just heard out of curiousity)
Third prize goes to.. Roohani Deshpande!
(Omg, that’s me!) I won Rs 300

So this way the Youth Festival was celebrated in the Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan. The debate didn’t go as I imagined it would go, but yes my mistakes taught me many things I would always remember. For example, I will remember that I was congratulated by the Education Officer today, not for the prize I won, but for the spirit with which I participated.

And in all these events, I absolutely forgot about my approaching half yearly examinations which have hardly 10 days left to begin, and I haven’t started with the course yet. *rushes to study table*

What Commerce Taught Me

Six months ago, I was just another kid who neither knew nor cared about Accountancy (I did care, but I was stuck at IIT classes those days studying things I had no intention whatsoever of understanding). I didnt know back then that I would be fortunate enough to break out of those classes and score the second-highest marks in Business Studies some day.

I didn’t know that simple things like few 500 rupee notes in my dad’s wallet could be referred to as Cash In Hand which is one of the five types of Assets i.e. fixed, fictitious, intangible, current and liquid assets. I didn’t know that the 60 rupees my friend borrowed from me ages ago and never returned could be termed as Bad Debts, or that I would know the meaning of Debentures which is a Fixed or Long Term Liability. I used to joke about starting a business someday but I didn’t know I would have had to choose from Sole Proprietorship, Partnership, Cooperative Society or a Joint Stock Company etc. each of which have their own merits and limitations.

I didn’t know I would write about seven principles of Life Insurance and the five types of insurance policies in my second term examinations, and that the LIC advertisements on the television I used to casually ignore would actually start to make some sense. I could hardly cross the road those days by myself and I didn’t know that someday I would learn one whole chapter on types of banks and understand how they work, and help others understand what is remittance of funds and allied services.

I hated diagrams back then (considering the strange orbital diagrams of chemistry I was being made to draw, you can’t blame me) and didn’t know that I would be an expert at drawing lines and columns in few seconds and would automatically start writing Date.. Particulars.. Amount in those columns. I didn’t know that cheques issued but not presented for payment are to be added to the Cashbook so that the total matches with the Passbook while preparing the Bank Reconciliation Statement, or the fact that such a thing existed. When I heard the term the first time, it sounded like the name of some snake to me.

My mom keeps buying stuff from eBay.com but I never realised that the site was an example of C2C Commerce i.e. Customer To Customer Commerce where both the parties involved in the electronic transations are the customers. I didn’t know that “population” meant something other than general inhabitants of a country, and that in Economics it meant the entire aggregation of items from which samples can be drawn. I kept hearing the term Outsourcing but I didn’t know that it can be IT Based or Non IT Based having a Backend and Customer Facing part each, and that there are various types of it including factoring facility, merchant banking services etc.

I always loved the word Depreciation (there is just something in the way its pronounced) but I didnt know how much brains it requires and how depressing it can get when you just aren’t understanding it. I never thought I would understand why assets, drawings, bills receivable, opening stock and expenses/losses are debited in Trial Balance. I didn’t know that the preparation of Final Accounts (Trading, Profit&Loss a/c) can take upto an hour and sometimes you spend days trying to get your Balance Sheet tallied.

Six months ago I never knew I would write this post today. I am so extremely grateful to myself (not grateful to God because I’m a die hard atheist) because I convinced myself and people around me at the right time of my life and am now studying this wonderful subject where my interest lay.

School Rants Continue

Winter is approaching!!

… Which means my health is hardly fine – the changing weather always gets on my nerves – and I haven’t been able to write pretty much anything here since a month, and people are starting to actually ask me if I’m still alive. It’s high time I write something here and when I’m without a topic, what could be better than ranting about my school?

Continuing from this previous post, here are things which make my school unbearable:

8. The Economics Teacher
He is 5 feet, he doesn’t know what Economics is, he pronounces 55% as “phibty phaaib phershent”, he dictates from a guide which we can buy and read ourselves, he can neither speak hindi nor english in an understandable way, he cannot control 16 year old children passing comments and locking him inside our classroom, he doesn’t understand that the guys of the class are calling him on his mobile in the middle of a class and he keeps wondering why his phone doesn’t stop ringing, he doesn’t know any words other than “Silence!” and “Aap khade ho jaaiye” and “Copy nikalo” (he doesnt care which notebook, he just wants a notebook out). He is just.. I don’t have words.

9. The Maths Teacher
Brilliant, just brilliant. He makes time stop. I mean seriously, sitting 15 minutes in his class makes me feel like I’ve been sitting there since 15 hours wondering what on earth his heartbeat-like handwriting is trying to imply. He has shining white hair and he wears pink coloured specs (I really don’t understand the logic behind those). I hardly attend any class of his even though he knows me by my name and face (probably because I got full marks in first term but never submitted the maths project until he personally requested me to do so). He teaches in such a way that if even if he writes 2+2=4 on the board I’d keep wondering all day how he got it. His standard dialogues include “Are u a student of mathematics?” and “Aap serious nahi hain aap maths chhod deejiye” (in ultra slow motion tone). Attending maths classes at school has made me allergic to the subject.

10. The Weird Rules
The teachers have a problem with anything that doesn’t comply with their “discipline” – this includes banning high neck sweaters and mufflers which arent of the school navy blue colour;
If you’re standing in our corridor talking to a member of the opposite sex, you are automatically liable for a huge round of investigation regarding what, why and how much you’ve been talking;
Girls are to sit in the basketball ground and boys are to sit in the football ground miles “AWAY” from each other so that no interaction is possible, after which if two people are seen talking, the above rule gets implied on them. Why run a co-ed school at all if you’re so scared of interaction between girls and boys?

So that sums up the 10 things I hate about school. Now my attendance is terribly low too and that makes it mandatory for me to attend school everyday or they’ll ban me from the final examinations. The only things keeping me sane in my school is my superb group of friends and the superb Accountancy teacher. That’s it. That’s IT.
(bangs head on table wishing she was in some junior college at Mumbai instead of this place)