Finally, I've reached the age when periods and durations seem long, and I, therefore, feel nearly adult. "I studied in HPS for ten years.", I say, and feel instantly gratified. But do I, only for the aforesaid reason? Hardly is it even a factor if I were to think about how much the school has meant and given to me.

I remember the day I took the test to be admitted into the first standard. I had finished my paper early and started to talk to the girl sitting next to me. It didn't seem to matter to inconsiderate-little-me that she was still writing. I asked her to guess whether or not I had a dog. She indifferently muttered, "Yes"; I triumphantly said "No!". The invigilator told me to shut up, and I did, thereafter. This memory I can do without, but that day is among the most important in my life.

I did join HPS, twenty days late, after studying in Bharati Vidya Bhavan - Jubilee Hills for a short while (their results were declared far earlier, and I joined BVB only for backup). This was at a time when the city enjoyed believing, at the expense of the school's reputation, that senior school students in HPS were into drugs. It was painful, as a five year old, to be questioned on the truth of these rumours by every other stranger. In this way, I was made aware of the brewing conspiracy against my school, and rather early in life, I learned to hate and condemn all untruth.

Primary School, in HPS helped cultivate one of my biggest interests till date - writing. Composition was a regular feature among our home assignments, and the reason it appealed so much to me is probably that our teachers in HPS gave us topics far more innovative than the common (and often redundant!) 'My Country', 'Diwali', and 'The Cow', so we'd have no choice but to write them on our own. Commercially available 'Composition And Letter-Writing' books were seldom anybody's saviour, and never mine.

HPS students have always been known to speak and write correct English, and it is probably here that the Primary School teachers are most influential. I remember being taught in the fifth standard, to bite my 'v' s, and round my 'w' s, something that a majority of English speaking Indians don't yet do. Spelling and punctuation errors are unforgiven in the primary, which is why I was once given 99/100 in English in class 2, for missing a full stop. If only teachers remain as stringent about spelling and grammar in all subjects in all classes, there would be no exceptions to the 'HPS student = Good at English' rule.

By the time I was in the Middle School, I had come to respect our school immensely - simply because it was evidently different from any other school I could think of. Among less important differences, the sections of classes 1-9 were named with letters from J to V rather than the common A,B,C,... (rather sadly, that's changed now!), and the annual functions were given names as classy as 'Investiture Ceremony' and 'Annual Concert', rather than the common, cheap 'Parade' and 'Parents' Day'! More significantly though, the ambience, infrastructure, and the fact that HPS students are not screened from taking the ICSE, unlike in most other schools, made me look up to the school as one with commitment and values.

Also, beginning in the Middle School, I started to settle down with my classmates since we would no longer be shuffled every year, like we had been upto class 5. It made me see how wonderfully my school had gotten me to know all my peers in five years, and stick with some for the other five. This gave me over a hundred and fifty acquaintances, and over thirty friends - some to remain so forever, some to be forgotten, but nevertheless, everyone to share special memories with.

The greatest gifts HPS gave me are my friends - Anirudh, Avijit, Deepak, Dheeraj, Harishankar, Prashant (names in alphabetical order!), the people I've known the longest, and best. I understand that it's going to be hard to keep in touch, but every day more that I can rest assured that they're still reachable is more than worth its price. Prashant used to insist, when we were in class 7, that he would leave school after the end of the year, and I prayed he wouldn't. I treasure every day in the five years I've gained. I've had the privilege of closely knowing him through all of twelve years, and with no one have I spoken more, shared more, or argued less. I love all my friends just the same, but the friendship between him and me is the most meaningful I've ever known, and no backdrop could have been better than HPS.

Perhaps the greatest tragedy about leaving school was losing touch with my teachers - the best that one could ask for. No further step that I climb will have been possible, if they had not taught me to walk in the first place. Everything that I am, I owe to them. So, beloved teachers, if today you're proud of me, all I can say is that your pride ought to do a full circle and you ought to be proud of yourselves.

And leaving school brings me to my biggest grievance against life, namely about human relationships tending to work by the First In First Out rule. Career choices scatter, rather than just divide. If I once found it ordinary to speak to a friend for hours everyday, why should I feel rewarded later in life to manage two hours in a month? When life can no longer use loss of communication as an excuse, why should it turn to the attachment itself, and try so relentlessly and untiringly to weaken it, and to tell us to 'move on'? The phases in our lives are not disposable, unlike the stages of a rocket, yet they seemingly work towards becoming disjoint mathematical sets, friends being their elements. Life imposes a restriction that childhood can only be remembered and cherished, rather than rekindled and relived. So while that limitation holds, I can reconcile only by saying that my years at HPS will be dearer to me than any other, for all my life to come.

But for all that HPS has given me, have I returned enough? Not enough, but a bit anyway, I like to think. At least I never disgraced it. On the contrary, I was on the team that represented HPS to stand second in the All-Asia Bournvita Quiz Contest in 1996. I gave the school no reasons to be ashamed of me, unlike the few brats who give HPS a bad name and break all the rules and flout the law, in uniform. If the school can be likened to a country, then John F. Kennedy's words are the last that they want to live by. I hope those that didn't 'belong' enough to the school get the message and get a life. The rest of the city is looking for children like these as a basis for bad-mouthing HPS, and it's our duty to starve them of such reasons.

HPS, however, still needs to grow and become an internationally acclaimed school. I will always say that I am an alumnus of HPS with the same amount of pride that I will say, four years hence, that I am an alumnus of IIT Madras, but we have yet to give the world enough reasons to see our pride as justifiable.

I couldn't sing the school song to sign off, but I could dedicate these lines that I originally composed as an email signature, to every student and teacher I've ever known in HPS. Forgive me if it ends abruptly - Yahoo! allows only seven lines of text!

Maybe the tears that I cry for you drench the greater part of me,
Maybe I don't really miss you so much at all,
Maybe the number of miles in sheep, could put Mighty Big Apple to sleep,
Maybe I could have said what I did over the wall,
Maybe I'd fight and hurt myself, who knows even die for you,
Maybe it's what I'll say until the hour of Judgement befall,
The only holy certainty is that I'll be proud I ever knew you.