The only sweet memory I have from my high school days is the smell of camphor that emanates when ping pong balls break. Puny little high for a puny kid with a unibrow and stout nose. If I failed to get a spot at the table, I would smash balls against the wall, playing crude squash. Liberate the bird-like whiff from the bouncing egg.
Cricket wasn’t for me. It was a health hazard once we moved on from chopped up palm fronds to the willow. And cork balls with seam stitches were always impishly aimed at my shinbone or crotch. Sharing abdomen pads was not my thing. So, I turned to the dark green ping pong boards in the hope that the tiny ball would crack open to deliver the manna.
The boys only school had many overlords, some in cassocks: sticklers of student discipline who liked to philosophise. A priest and head master, who always spoke softly with his right hand placed over the chest, once brought down his cane, pulled out of his white robe with ease, on my palms several times. A teacher clamped my nose with tobacco-stained fingers, for what felt like eternity, for a crime I am still in the dark about.
Caning was normal, hitting on the knuckles with wooden scales was normal, boxing ears was normal. Swish… thwack was our daily corporal erotica. We all laughed when a classmate, who in desperation packed styrofoam over his backside, was caned by our Hindi teacher. In 1990, the word trauma existed but none of us had heard about it. All we knew was flight and freeze when hit and some fawning to please.
Not sure if these repressed memories played a role but I stayed away from the hyper-active high school fraternity, even years after leaving the institution. Mates from my former school were common links but no one pestered me to join. It all changed a month ago when someone added me to a WhatsApp group that was in a constant state of boyish excitement.
The batch of 1990, mostly men of ‘74-vintage who had turned 50, were planning a reunion bash in a resort. I found two people in the group I had professionally interacted with for many years without realising that we had studied together.
One batchmate owned a restaurant called Sulthan, a short walk from my home, and had announced an Uzbek food festival in the group. I messaged and met him at the eatery, hoping that it would trigger memories. His face drew a blank. I realised there was nothing we could share. But the food was a consolation: it was excellent.
For weeks, I had remained sceptical. Should I or should I not? Most frat groups on WhatsApp, including the one I quit and later came back to, have numerous red flags, often reflected in the memes they share. Political polarisation in recent years has dulled the bonhomie.
But I was curious. Three decades and four years had passed. How dare I stay indifferent to a group that bonds so well? With a nudge from a friend who sent messages and a Google form, I dumped my guard and joined them on November 30 in Cherai. By evening a motley group of men with balding heads, grey hair, and paunches had assembled. Only one thing was common – none of them seem to have adulted and the regions in their brain where childhood memory is stored were in various stages of decay. Many, including me, struggled to link names to faces but no one felt shattered by guilt. We chose to laugh it off.
The reunion plan was meticulous. The core group of men who organised it had endless reserves of energy. So much that I suspected they had Red Bull or Monster cans as invisible IV drips. One of them with springy legs horsed around with a megaphone, adding to the group’s joie de vivre. True to its spirit, the meet had a Malayalam tagline ‘Chadi chadi nikkuvalle’, which meant ‘Stay with gusto’. No one seemed doubtful about the need to celebrate the moment and relish the years spent together. They wanted everyone in.
Part of the costume handed out on arrival – a dark green mundu, which was to be folded above the khaki Bermuda underneath – reminded me of Aadu Thoma in Spadikam. A half-sleeve kurta had R90 emblazoned on its sleeves. We were all in for an anti-social frat cosplay, I thought. The only thing missing was a faux Mohanlal moustache that could be twirled.
Was Spadikam an odd choice, I wondered. It released in 1995, while we were in the final year of graduation.
Off-coloured jokes floated around. There was a selfie point with the cut-out of Silk Smitha holding on to a rope flanked by school kids with white shirts and a blue neck-tie. A no-holds-barred homosocial blast was in the offing.
A cake was cut with a mock tug of war. A drone hovered over us capturing it all. Group pictures were taken twice because some turned up late.
Inside, signature music played as the meet’s logo flashed on a screen and we had our first drinks of the night. A video that compiled our souvenir photos began a slow scroll. It had students from all the three divisions, some faces unrecognisable even for those who owned them. A socialising game followed, picking name badges from a lot and pinning them to the person.
A tribute video played and I learned some of my tormentors had passed on to another world. I wasn’t geared for this. Was I happy or sad? I hadn’t thought about them for a long time.
A school senior and now a successful techpreneur later told me over phone that one of them had made him write one page from a text book repeatedly as imposition a whole year.
Perhaps not all students had to go through such trauma. There might have been random acts of kindness by the same men.
Last week, over a call, my daughter shared stories from the boy’s hostel of her college in Bengaluru. Some hostellers had cooked noodles in an electric kettle and were asked to write impositions as an apology. Another bunch of students were asked to leave their rooms and sleep in the common area. Their crime: one of them had howled during the night.
Spadikam homage might not have been a bad choice after all, I thought. The band of boys were in reality a band of rebels, the legion of Aadu Thomas who survived many a Chacko mash in school. The party floor had turned into a beast, a lorry with ‘Chekuthan’ emblazoned on the name plate. It was being driven in full throttle to the gates of the school where the heavenly fathers reside.