Hello everyone I hope you all are doing fine.

Today I am here to share with you all my experience in my

school. Well, you may think that what’s special in that. But wait…let me tell you I am talking about the
school where we have been thrashed and ragged harshly by our seniors but still the school and the
memories are really close to my heart.

Since childhood till class 5th, I also studied in the same school as most of us do. But in class 6 th I gave the
entrance exam of Sainik School Ghorakhal, Nainital. The school is a reputed one and is famous for
getting the Defence Minister’s Trophy for sending the largest number of cadets to the NDA eight times
since 2000. So I now you must have come to know that I had a dream of joining the armed forces during
that time. I somehow managed to get into the merit list, but I still think it was a fluke and my luck. So I
took the admission in 6th class and was somewhat sad but excited too as I had to leave my parents and
live in a hostel but I had listened many positive things about the school. But later I came to know that I
had only listened the positive things about the school, not the negative ones. Although every negative
thing has become a sweet and nostalgic memory now.

Now what I came to know about the school is that we have to live our lives as close as a life of a soldier,
if not the same. That is why we were not called students. We were called with the prefix Cadet, Cadet
Manish Bhatt for example. Now that’s makes you feel proud and over the top, isn’t it. But to take the
prefix Cadet proudly is easy, and to go under the sufferings of a Cadet isn’t. Class 6 th was getting tough,
because we hadn’t seen class 10th till then. We had to learn the names of all our seniors and the name of
the school as well as house appointments. And to add to our disarray, there were 10 houses in the
school with 5 appointments in each house and around 7-8 school appointments. You will always find a
paper with a newcomer to learn all the names, and to revise them as well. Because you may be asked
about say about the name of our NCC appointments, anytime and anywhere. Not going too deep into it,
we were punished a lot because of this issue. I was lucky enough that I hadn’t learned all the names
thoroughly, but was caught only a couple of times.

Talking about some other things, your uniform must be ironed, your shoes shining, and you cannot
argue or show attitude to your senior, even if you are right. These all were the punishable offences
including many more such things, and if one cadet did the mistake, the whole class had to suffer. So you
become a villain for the whole class; well, I have been one sometimes.

We thought that as we will move upwards to the higher classes we would not have to suffer all this.
Infact we as seniors would have all the liberty and power to do anything and rag our juniors. Although
the later thing happened, the former didn’t. We came to know that the punishment and ragging became
even harsh in further classes. The worst and the best phase of the school is said to be when one is in 10 th
class. We had two classes as our seniors in our house, 11 th and 12th. Everyday 2 of us had to become the
‘Kaamvala’. His duty is to do everything that is told to him by the seniors. We were in the upper wing
and our seniors from the lower wing would shout out ‘Class 10 th’. We had to answer him first as ‘Yes
Bhaisaab' within 10 seconds and then go downstairs to do the given task. We were asked to do ramp
walks and other indifferent things. It was really odd but we enjoyed doing these all things, because we
had no other option. But still we had a lot of fun in the 10 th class as we used to play cricket inside our
house with our seniors. During IPL, seniority-juniority would all disappear and we would cheer up for MI,
CSK and RCB. So during class 10th, I learnt to enjoy my punishments and I became really very tough
mentally. Earlier I used to fear from punishments, today I am not. But earlier I used to get punishment
for my mistakes (even without mistakes), today I don’t. But I am sure that it will surely help me someday
in my life and I can feel that many times. My school taught me to be united and supportive to my
colleagues. This has really helped me in my life. So that’s all for now. I missed many stories but I missed
them to leave something for the future.