I recently reconnected with an old classmate of mine from my school days. We chatted with boyish enthusiasm and it was wonderful to catch up with some of the memories of school days of 45 years ago.
One abiding memory I have of school is recollections of a boy named Rajeshwar. His smile, stretching from ear to ear, and a huge mole just above his cheek stood out. Rajeshwar was in the same class of 1974 as me. He was an active participant in all things naughty, from bursting crackers during assembly to ‘nicknaming’ teachers based on their mannerisms.
The ‘free period’ that was meant for games was a hands down favourite, mostly because it was the least costly. Those days, we played something called ‘offense and defence’ in football, with some of us defending the goal against repeated onslaughts from the team that was in ‘offence’. The roles would be reversed after a while. Rajeshwar, with his speed, deception, dribbling skills and a thundering left footer, was a star.
Time flew and all of us moved on. I think it was two or three months after graduating school that disaster struck Rajeshwar. While travelling close to the door in a crowded train from Ghaziabad to Delhi, a sudden jerk made him lose his balance and fall onto the tracks. His famous left foot and his right arm had to be amputated. I remember going to visit him in the hospital soon after the accident. He was devastated.
The next time I met him I was happy to see that he was back to his old cheerful self. He had got himself fitted with artificial limbs which allowed him to live as normal a life as possible. He went on to complete his graduation and got employed in a bank. I proceeded on my first foreign assignment. Rajeshwar managed to keep in touch with my parents.
My foreign postings kept me out of India most of the time. One day a few years later, I came to know that Rajeshwar, who used to teach maths to Class 12 students after his office hours, met with an accident on his way back one evening. He was returning home after celebrating the success of his students in the Board Examination. It was a wintry Delhi night, and he lay stranded on the road, unattended, his specially customised scooter—what was left of it—lying close by. He was hit by a heavy vehicle and this time, unlike the last time, he succumbed to the cruel vagaries of life.