Back to School

Seven years ago, I was a senior in Woodstock. It was JSB (Junior-Senior Banquet), and I, dressed in what I assumed was my fanciest garb, had taken a seat with my date and three close friends (with their dates) on an extravagantly-decorated dinner table in the Quad. We laughed amongst ourselves and passed on secret notes to other friends at other tables.

Inevitably, our conversation swung around to the G-word. In a few months it would be Graduation. We talked about our Woodstock lives so far, and then we talked about what we were going to do afterwards, when we were going to be suddenly thrust out of the Woodstock bubble and into the 'real world'. None of us had much of a clue about it, but like every excited, rebellious, confused, ambitious teenager, we just couldn't wait to leave.

There was just one more matter to be discussed. When will we be back? "Not back to Woodstock, already?" I protested, "I can't wait to get out!" It was true: for most of us, several years of Woodstock life - the same hike up from dorms every morning, the same rice and dal for lunch, the same queue outside the Hostel boys' shower, and the same post-"Lights-out" hunger pangs had become a bit too repetitive, a bit too predictable. We didn't want to come back: we were the Class of 2003 - the 'Renegades', after all. We weren't going to be back, at least not too soon.

We decided on a reunion that JSB night. The eight of us on that table, and dozens more to whom we spread the word, decided that we would meet exactly five years after The Big G. But not at Woodstock - our meeting point would be the one place that was close enough to our point of origin, but still what we as students considered a safe haven, an appropriate distance away. That place was Cozy Corner - where all our Wai-Wai and Bun-Omelette Cheese fantasies had been coming true since elementary years, where we had spent countless hours temporarily escaping the Woodstock bubble without actually taking our eyes off it.

Five years passed: we spread out to the US and Canada, England and Germany, the Middle East, Thailand, and down to other parts of India. We spread out to 'the real world' - away from our little Himalayan life.

Over the years, I came across classmates that I hadn't been friends with, Woodstockers from other classes whom I barely recognized; but whenever we met, we celebrated and mingled as if we had been best friends forever. It was as if every moment and experience between that day and the Big G in June 2003 had never existed, and we were back talking about the same things we talked about by the Hostel Tuck Shop, or on the way to 'The Buzz', or at the JSB table.

I spent my five years away in Leeds, England, and then back in my hometown of Varanasi. Most of us were far too occupied by our other lives to go through with our Cozy-Reunion. But in November 2008, fresh after quitting my journalist job in Varanasi, I was back visiting Mussoorie. I did stop at Cozy for Double-Wai-Wai-Cheese, but soon enough I was back in Woodstock. Back at school.

And then I was hit with a flurry of memories. Memories I thought I despised, or worse, had forgotten, but they were back. And they were amazing! I missed drinking hot chocolate on those cold February nights at Hostel, sitting with my friends around a bukhari. I missed drifting up to Midlands to catch a glimpse of the girl I had a crush on, or in the worst case, getting one of my other friends to cook me a meal. I missed running back from the bazaar in the rain as the 5 pm check-in time at the dorms beckoned. But more than anything, I missed the Himalayas - the snow peaks, the treks, the rare sunny afternoons, the Winterline, the silence.

So I decided to give the Himalayas another go. In July 2009, I was officially a part of Woodstock again, not as a student this time but as a volunteer for a year in the Development Office. It took me a few days to get used to my new life, to Mussoorie without a "Lights-out", to calling staff members by their first name (although Ms. Chander will always be Ms. Chander!), to sitting on the "staff side" of the Quad Dining Hall for Lunch.

And faster than I could comprehend, the Woodstock experience was back, albeit a little different. Four Square in the Quad, hours of basketball (we had an actual gym now - I'm still in shock!), and the food. The food is - am I really going to admit this? - mostly okay. Mostly. I became an advisor to a group in the 9th grade, I was taking photographs at Hanson Field on Sports Day, I was spending my weekends gobbling noodles at Char Dukaan, and I was hiking back up to Deolsari before getting lost near Nag Tibba!

Coming back to the hills made me realize that I need to stop pretending and accept that the hills would never leave me. Even when I now move away for the second time, the Himalayas will be forever embedded in my personality, and in the personality of every 'Renegade' - and all other Woodstock alumni who spent enough time up here to a have had a life-changing experience.

Seven years before that JSB night, fourteen years before today, I was an 11-year-old being ushered by my parents into this strange new school. That dorky 6th grader (with long, side-parted hair and a fake Fila cap from the Tibetan market) morphed into a confident Senior and then into a college graduate and a journalist and was then back where it began. But the memories never left - Ms. Bona's bonfire in the 6th grade, the 8th grade 'WildOnes', Activity Week in Lucknow, cramming for exams in the 'Stacks' below the High School Library.

I remember that JSB night again. I was wearing a hideous red shirt and an even hideous-er orange tie. Luckily, my date wore a flowery, colourful dress to make up for my utter lack of class. I sat with my closest friends and we talked about the future, but more than that, we talked about the past. We talked about Cozy, and we talked about Woodstock. Graduation, the Big G, was only months away, and when we left, we never did. A part of us would always remain on the JSB table, at that Middle School assembly, crowded back cozily around that warm bukhari.

Back to school!

Karan Madhok '03