Sherwood College

Horsman Wing
To get started, Sherwood College is a boarding school located in Nainital, Uttranchal, India. It was started in 1869 by Robert Milman. It has two wings: Horsman Wing (junior school, classes 3 to 5) and Dixon Wing (senior school, classes 6 to 12). In short, Horsman Wing is where you are the protected little kiddies who look upto Dixon Wing in the same manner that a convict would look out of his cell at the free world. You are constantly looked over by teachers, matrons and aayahs. Your every action is monitored and you don't fuck around a lot. A bit of fighting, lots of tuck (goodies like biscuits, chocolates jam and tomato ketchup) followed by severe bouts of diarrhea. Sports are introduced early on (in my school before Sherwood, till class 7 you were only allowed to play carrom, ludo or chess maybe) and competition is cut throat (something that continues all along).

In Horsman Wing ('horsy' from now on), the first time you venture towards the small swimming pool, you expect lots of fun with splashing and screaming. Big blow to your expectations and happiness, the swimming coach is standing there with a 7 foot long stick shouting at a random kid to try and swim along the sides in an anti clockwise direction. The more adventurous and daring little brats were rewarded with a whack on the back, and all adventure and enthusiasm evaporated combined with an opening of the sphincter muscles. Ofcourse, very rarely did one come to know about a boy peeing in the small pool, but going by the number of times I did it (mainly because I was didnt want to miss out on the action by going to the toilets), I reckon 3 to 4 did it everytime we were in there.

Horsy also involved a lot of fighting, some detective work (you tried to figure out who crapped in XYZ's shoe in the night, and who ate ABC's chocolates) and a lot of bickering over the most trivial of issues (I can say that only now, at the time they seemed to be of more importance than anything else on earth). The heroes and champs of the class would be those who were good at sports, seconded by the teachers' favourites, these two groups invariable landed the plum jobs of class monitor and dorm monitor (positions of great importance, mind you, you got privy to staff politics, were allowed to come in late for dinner after locking the class rooms, and one word from you could earn an erring kid a sharp reprimand).

In class 5, our Math teacher, who was also the supervisor (I m sorry I forgot the exact title), started a 'Star Chart'. There was a big chart on the notice board with the entire class's name written in alphabetical order, with space to put in the 'stars'. If you did something good, like answered a difficult question, good behaviour or did your homework very well, you got a silver star. If you did something really good and outstanding, like topped a difficult test, solved a problem which no one else could, or something similar, you got a much coveted gold star. Now the most important part, if you fucked up in class, you earned a black star. These would be awarded if you used used foul language ('bloody' was the foulest it got, and none knew what the word meant), if you scored poorly in a test, were caught talking or dreaming and couldn't answer a question in class. Now, I don't mean to blow my own trumpet, but the guy with the highest number of black stars that year was me, with a grand total of 45 black stars. The nearest competitor was on 43 (whew!!), a fellow called Rohit Mohit Yadav, and we left the rest of the field behind, the 3rd highest being something like 21. The yellow star holders were, obviously, immaterial.

A tale involving Horsman Wing cannot be complete without 'Smiley Man'. We never got to know his real name, but this particular gent had been coming to Sherwood for almost the past 30 years (a very conservative estimate). With him he brought a box which contained packets of daal, candy, various namkeens and his famous smile. We'd get pocket money (a princely sum of 10 rupees) twice a week and his arrival was always eagerly awaited by almost 120 little boys. The chappus, who were the studious teachers-ass-licker types looked forward to the 'fruit man' s visits. They'd buy a bunch of flowers and gift it to Ma'am XYZ, ensuring a place in her good books.

In Horsy, I also got the roll number that would identify me for the rest of my stay in Sherwood. Your name is not as important as your roll number is. It is what you are know as, me, i was 'roll number 318'. Even today if someone were to shout out that phrase or even that number, i'd instinctively respond, just like you do when your name is called out in a large gathering. I also got allotted to a house - Little John (L. J. for short), our colour was yellow. For the next eight years, i cheered for the the LJ cricket, hockey, atheletics, badminton teams and was part of the LJ football and table tennis teams. Sometimes, it got so much that we'd be ready to strangle class mates from other houses.


Food
When we first came to Sherwood, the food was atrocious. I remember finding a couple of ants or the odd housefly, united in death with the butter on my slice of bread. My chosen diet was 'Veg with Egg'. That basically meant that me and the other veg-with-egg s got the rawest deal because when the 'Non Vegs' got chicken, we, along with the 'Vegs' got the bad kofta (since we were vegs) and when the vegs got the good paneer, we got the crappy egg gravy. Wisdom dawned upon me only three years later, and in class 6 i changed to complete veg. The most pissing-off part was that the man incharge of the dining hall was a tough old Punjabi (some said he was a Jat) who had served in the Royal Indian Navy. He had retired from the navy, but obviously the navy had not retired from him, and a couple of times i was at the wrong side of very sharp slaps when his eagle eyes had spotted the veg cutlets i was trying to hide.