123. Memories!

School could have never been better with the exceptionally intelligent group of friends I had. We had so much fun together though I passed off as a daft nincompoop, taking ages to understand a strategy or a plan. 

Prarthana, the intelligent of the lot, would lead the whole lot of us into an adventurous game and get us thoroughly involved. Most of us (I for one) were petrified of her lest she lost her temper and flew off the handle, which she almost always did with me. 

Anita was deft at composing poetry, writing excellent pieces out of the blue, even while she was listening to something seriously important being taught by the History teacher.

Pragya was severely naughty, with pranks up her sleeve for every new day, much to the chagrin of the teachers, especially the physics teacher, who did an outstanding job with colour blocking as she waded into the class in blue, pink, orange, yellow, green, purple chiffon sarees and matching blouses. Pragya would tell us gory hair-raising stories of the room in her palace, which was invariably haunted (and where they had all locked me in on one of Pragya's birthday bashes.

Tabitha, Lisa as we fondly called her, was another supremely intelligent girl of the class, who sat next to the prim and 'propah' Seemtan, who was always neatly dressed to match her hand-writing.

Mala was the 'rich' friend who threw extravagant birthday parties at her home and gave away lovely gifts when we won the treasure hunt.

Manasi and Nabanita, with their hair oiled and combed perfectly, were the twins incarnate as they whispered in tones much lower than the word 'subdued' and acted as if we were all in for big trouble since we laughed more than we studied!

Rhea and Arpita constantly made it a point to make me shaky and wobbly about my Chemistry Exams, asking me if I knew about the lump of red deposit at the bottom of the beaker. Thanks to them, I never even had the wildest dream to study science.

Ambareen, wore the best blunt-cut in the class. Once, she was in a wild frenzy because Manjushree had copied her hairstyle and they had quite an argument over who was copying whose hairstyle.

Lal and Maria, the inseperable duo, were good at games just as great as they were with their studies! 

Nandini, my best friend, stood by me like a pillar, to support me in my inadequacies and foolishness (more often than naught!)

And Arpita took the crown for being the smartest, intelligent and fastest student amongst all the girls, as she grew from a below average student till Class 7 to a wiz-kid par excellence from Class 8 onwards, later going on to teach at MIT.

Quite a crowd of girls!! Love all of you!