Dedicated to My Preschool…..

Ramabai Paranjpe Bal Vidyamandir, Vile Parle (E)

Long ago I had written a small post about my preschool here and a classmate Aniruddha saw it. I had promised him long back I would come up with more posts….. Sorry Andy I am quite late.

Now that I see Ananya go to school, I really miss my Ramabai days…And the lovely time we had there

1. They would teach us, apart from usual studies, to shell peas, to make imaginary “chaas” out of soap water (which would bubble up, a task I REALLY loved)
2. For one of the annual days, I was in some play and I remember how delighted I was to know that the “princess” costume which was tailor made for me was all mine after the gathering!
3. I remember faintly a day when we had gone to school with our parents. And there was an “exhibition” of sorts. Probably a science exhibit. Mom was showing me a pair of binoculars, a magnifying glass, and many things which awed me to no end.
4. I was always the slowest one to eat. I would finish my tiffin the last. And teachers would always be beckoning me to eat faster. My friend Srushti would be second lo last to finish. And she would alwasy tell me “Saavkaash kha pan Pat pat kha“(She probably meant bite your food well, but eat fast. Till date I’m not sure what it means, nor if she herself knew what she was telling me.)
5. We had a system in Ramabai; in case any kid by chance forgot to carry his lunch box, everyone would give a bit of their tiffin to him, like maybe a quarter chapati, a slice of your bread. Mom always packed my lunch in the ‘Day care center bag’ (where she droppedme and my brother Vineet before setting off for her work) and I would diligently take it to school. One day I forgot to do that, and I got to have a little bit of everyone’s tiffin. Since the quantity in the surrogate tiffin would be small, that was probably the only day in Ramabai when I finished my tiffin before anyone else’s!

Thats all I remember from my pre school days at the moment…..