Bad Boys: Part 1 – Too Cool for School!
A high-school confession from Salem — biryani, bikes, and questionable life choices. (Hope my parents don't read this.)
Hot take - Will Smith and the makers of Bay Boys read this 2-part series and decide to remake the entire Bad Boys franchise. The original ones were pretty crappy after all. On a serious note though, I think I've come a long way from the idiot I was (still am – hopefully much lesser) back in Salem and my early days in Delhi.
Enjoy reading!
After Class 10, I decided to change schools. I was really tired of the only school I had ever attended (pre-KG to Class 10, a total of 13 years). It wasn't a bad school (still one of the best in Salem) - produced some of the brightest kids in the town, had good sports and debate teams etc., but I was tired on being picked on. Picked on for being my mom's son. Yes – you heard it right. My mom used to be the junior school principal at the same school and then left to achieve way more success by starting her own chain of Pre Schools (pre-kindergarten). No fault of hers ofcourse, she was doing well and as a result, we as a family were doing very well too.
As I grew up and went up grades in school, most of my teachers had been colleagues of my mom used to know her well. They weren't happy that one among them had left and was doing very well outside. So, I was constantly picked on – 'Kavitha's son this' and 'Kavitha's son that' I would constantly hear. I didn't have my own identity and I always got special treatment – not the good kinds. Anything I said and everything I did was subject to extra scrutiny. I was very young (early teens), happy-go-lucky and was trying to balance academics, tennis, quizzing and having to watch my every move was talking a toll on me. I was waiting to complete Class 10 to change schools.
I got my scores – 5% higher than what my teachers projected but in line with my expectation. After all, they didn't realize that the neutral paper checkers wouldn't be as partial as they were. I was so done with the school - the day my results came out, I filed the application for a school transfer. It came as a surprise to a lot of people – after all I had been with the school for 13 years! Teachers made an attempt to convince me to stay but I stood firm. The only people that matter were my parents and I got them on board. Dad agreed that a few years in an all-boys school would do me good – rough me up perhaps. So, I completed formalities to join a rival school in Salem, the Holy Cross Boys School. This Catholic all-boys school was going to be such a different experience from my first school, a protected co-ed environment. Holy Cross was a rowdier atmosphere where you were on your own; professors would just do the bear minimum - no spoon feeding.
The first few months at Holy Cross were difficult. I had to find 'my people' in a much larger setting (4x number of students). Everything was new – professors, style of teaching and the overall atmosphere. Eventually, I settled in – found a group to play football with (yes, soccer!), a much larger and more competitive quiz and debate team, a group of friends in my school bus and generally became popular. I also became a core part of another key group at school – guys, I would grow to become very close to. More on them later! I'm sure we had a name for our 'group'/'gang'. Don't remember it now. Let's call us the 'Social Beasts' (a term I coined for my group of friends at Kellogg).
Holy Cross had a unique system where House Captains would choose newcomers into respective houses. The Green and the Red houses (had more interesting names ofcourse) fought hard for me. I'd generally been a red guy all along and was hoping I'd be chosen into the Red house, but the greens wanted me more. Traded 3 students for me and made me feel quite special. I repaid their faith by winning several points during 'Kalothsav', the annual cultural festival of the school and probably the biggest school event in Salem. It's funny, how one becomes a big fish faster in a bigger pond!
So – now to the social beasts (again, just a placeholder name – we were probably beasts but didn't have it in us to be social). It was a bunch of 8 guys. A few of them were friends from before Class 10 and continued to stick together. I had bonded with one of them during the house selection process and the other during a conference were we the only 2 from our school. We spent a long weekend with 100 other people we didn't know, and I learned a lot about the school and the gang of friends from him. As a group, we had a lot in common – mainly our love for food. Everyone was surprised by my appetite for… No, just my appetite. How did this scrawny North Indian kid eat and know so much about their South Indian food? What surprised them even more was I took them to local/ authentic, tiny restaurants they had never heard of before. I remember this one time I bit into a huge chicken leg bone to suck the marrow out and I saw them beaming with pride. I was one of them now!
I added Deepak to this group of ours. Deepak was in my section, lived close to my place and we would often hang. His mom used to feed me the most delicious Mutton Biryani and Chicken and Fish fry. This became a weekly routine and sometimes even more than once a week under the pretext of studying together. The others loved Deepak too and they soon started showing up at his place. Every weekend we would show up around 11, have a massive meal, play cards and then eat more. His mom enjoyed cooking for us but my God I must have been a task feeding 8 gluttonous boys and a family. Like Deepak's place was the 'adda' (the location or nest of a group or community) for gluttony, my place became the spot for all the groups' dance practices. No – I am not a dancer but many in the group were great dancers and used to be a part of the school dance team. My mom used to run a pre-school and our house was one of the branches for the school. So, there was a big hall and plenty of open space. So, it became the default dance practice center. My friends would show up announced and start practicing dance. There were many times they came home and started practice when I wasn't around – they use the computer to record songs, use my speakers etc. and maybe even cook themselves a meal for all I know. At one time, they probably had keys to my house!
Such was the close bond we shared. Very informal and very comfortable. Funny thing was we all came from different backgrounds and wanted to do different things. One was a top lawyer's son and was forced to follow in his father's footsteps; another was a top politician's son and he wanted to follow in father's footsteps. One wanted to become a Computer engineer, one wanted to take over his father's construction business, and then a bunch of us randos :P. Unfortunately, academics wasn't our forte (I think I did quite well, though). They would all meet quite frequently for detention. Our school had a mandatory extra class from 3-5pm and an additional one from 5-7pm for weaker students. I found the mandatory extra class a waste of time and managed to get out them citing practice for Tennis tournaments. Teachers fumed that I was given special treatment but every time they brought it up, the sports master and my parents fully supported me. I had decent grades to back me up too. My friends were not this fortunate. The only way out for them was to blatantly bunk and I often had them join me in my 3pm bus back home. Such a good life, going home at 3, they exclaimed! When caught in the bus they would face additional detention on Saturdays where they would have to either show up to school or a professor's home...yes, A PROFESSOR'S HOME! (clearly profs don't care about their privacy!). I felt bad I wasn't there for them during this period but atleast they had each other.
One of their outlets for this frustration was biking (think: motorbikes). Most of them had fancy, remodeled bikes and would often take them for a spin late at night. One of them would pick me up ofcourse. They would often zoom over 100kmps (that is very fast for Indian urban roads) and I was scared when I was a pillion. Not following speed limits, running red lights, risky overtaking and some death-defying maneuvering – I had my heart in my mouth many a time and was just glad that we didn't meet with an accident. A lot of close calls! Somehow, they got a thrill out of racing and cutting in between buses. After a point, I just didn't want to be a part of it but to be honest, on a bad day, zooming through the streets with the wind blowing into your hair can give you a mad rush!
Bad driving wasn't our only flaw. In a boy's school there are often issues between different factions. Let's call this gang wars. Yes – gang wars were a big thing. You'd have groups of 10-50 (yes, wide range) try to fight each other. This would normally occur late evening in a parking lot or in an empty plot. Imagine guys in bikes, arriving together, sometimes with sticks, ready for a fight. Yup – it was exactly this. Funnily, most times the actual 'fight' would not happen – no violence/ no broken bones. It would be just trash talking with an appointed mediator from each side trying to resolve issues. These mediators weren't one of us students. The mediators were generally the popular 'gundas' (hired thugs) of the city. They were big names people didn't want opposite them in a fight.
The mediation was a form of income for the thugs. In the build-up, they would be taken out to meals and the fancier the meal, the more involved they would back us. Winning a mediation would involve getting an apology from the other side and sometimes even a monetary settlement (small one – enough for a couple of dinners, bike servicing etc.). So, thugs had some work to do. I was involved in the build-up phase many a time where I wined and dined thugs. It is always important to show you care about them – never talk about the issue; first always start with wanting to get dinner/ drinks. They love being taken care of (invested in) and once they softened, they get emotional. When you hear 'you are my brother, ill do anything for you', that's when you know you are close to sealing the deal. Often, I got the bigger thugs (more credibility in the city) on our side and we'd win the mediation. A few times things haven't gone our way, yes, it wasn't pleasant, but we survived. Credit to my boys (i.e. the gang); they always stood up for each other and were never scared to take a beating.
All of this stopped closer to exams ofcourse – everyone was grounded at home busy trying to study. Most of them ranked in the bottom 10% of the class and I was nervous. The day the board exam results came out, we all showed up at the center where we file for a re-evaluation/ re-counting of papers. They weren't their usual jovial selves. Turns out, of the 8 of us – 4 failed atleast 1 exam, 1 didn't give a couple of exams because of a bike accident he met with, 2 had just about passed and me – I was there because I was unhappy scoring a 93% in Business Studies. They made sure I did not submit my application and I stayed away from their homes for a couple of weeks until things subsided.
Yes – once upon a time I was probably 'too cool' or rather 'too stupid' for school. The amount I've bunked school to chill with my friends, go on drives, I cannot count. It's funny I was scared I wouldn't settle in the new school, but I loved the experience of the other extreme. Felt like a fish in water on the dark side.
Let's hope my parents don't read this!