The Principal's principle.

Sitting in the many exams we wrote during an year in school, there was nothing new about this one. Except we wrote it outside the classrooms and in the corridor. The reason being simple. There was no power that day in school, because of the torrential rain. This is how the North East monsoon dictates its arrival in Pondicherry, the land of Pi.

I remember the school principal standing outside the school, dressed in a white flowing gown, holding a black umbrella, his face stern and eyes dead serious. He wanted to get the exam completed that day. Typically, my school, always has a history of defying all these natural or man-made interventions. Many a college bandhs or strikes as we also know them, didnt really have an impact on our schooling. It was all down to one person's conviction and thinking. If he said 'no' and he would do it many a time, everything around him supported him without a whinge or a frown.

He owned the world around him and there was nothing more fascinating for a student of age 13 than to see one man dictate all that he could within his powers and do it very well. He was a very young man, and could slap a student real hard. He was known to remember faces/names very well and it was always thought to avoid meeting him in any kind of 'grey' or 'dark grey' light.

The streets in Pondicherry tend to get swollen with water, but faster than the current of the water on the road, used to be the message of a school closed or open that day. Having to cycle nearly 5 miles, it wasnt very often that I got to school finding it closed. This wasnt exactly the time of the internet and broadband, nor was this the era of the mobile phone and sms. The black telephone with its cyclic rotars, to dial the numbers. Thats where this time belonged to. The new fancy rectangular phones were slowly appearing in some remote houses.

What stood out, in all that rain, in all that adversity for every student, deep in their heart, was the fear of not being the 'odd one out'. No one wanted to be seen as taking advantage of the 'drops from the sky', lest they have to take it up 1-on-1 with the principal, the very next day morning. So no rain, thunder or storm - and Pi land had its share of these fancy 70 kms/hour speed winds - came in the way of the 'road to school'. It, from the principal's point of view was always free and safe for every student to come, as was ideal.

The corridor was unusually cool winded, and the rain drops were occasionally landing on the guys sitting in the front of the three rows. But the spirit of the school was 'at par' with any exam. The students were laboriously writing sheets after sheets, especially for those 10 mark questions. I think this was a 'Science' exam.

The exam got over, like any other - but to be fair to this one, I can remember it many years later and still manage to live it today. A testimony to the power of determination. Not mine, but that of my school principal. The Principal's principle - thats what this is all about!.