If the classroom was a cage of rules, rulers, and flying inkwells, the world outside the school gates was a wild, open sky.
The geography of my childhood wasn’t just defined by the school, but by the Bachhraj Factories. My father was the manager of the cotton ginning press there, which meant I had the golden ticket to an industrial playground. To a modern parent, a factory sounds dangerous. To us, it was a kingdom.
I still remember the cotton season. Trucks would groan under the weight of the “white gold,” bringing the harvest in from the fields. The machines would roar to life, separating the seeds from the fibre, a mechanical heartbeat that thumped through the ground. But the real magic happened after the work was done.
The cotton was pressed into massive bales, wrapped in wire, and stacked in towers that seemed to touch the clouds. These stacks were our mountains. My friends—Shekhar Deshkar, Suhas Jajoo, Chandu Fattepuria, and the rest—would climb these soft, white cliffs. We would run and jump across the gaps, sinking into the deep, pillowy cotton. We would emerge looking like snowmen, covered in white lint, standing on top of the world, surveying Wardha from our soft, high throne. We went home dirty, tired, and absolutely happy.
***
The Box Man
In that group of friends, Santos Kekre was the one you couldn’t miss. He was a thin boy with a smile that could light up a dark room. While most of us carried our books in simple cotton bags slung over our shoulders, Santos was different. He arrived every day carrying a distinctive aluminium box.
It was shiny, sturdy, and unlike anything else in the school. Naturally, because schoolboys are cruel geniuses, we named him “Petiwala”—The Box Man.
But Santos was tougher than he looked. In 1958, a terrifying fever called encephalitis swept through our region. Santos caught it. He spent three months in Mayo Hospital, hovering between life and death, enduring painful spinal taps. He was one of only two people in the entire region to survive without brain damage. Maybe that brush with death gave him his courage.
I remember one day in English class. A teacher wrote the word “Seing” on the blackboard. Santos raised his hand. “Madam,” he said, “the spelling is wrong. It is S-E-E-I-N-G.”
The room went deadly quiet. Correcting a teacher was a crime. She turned on him. “So, you are teaching me now?” she snapped. “How do you spell ‘going’? You add ‘ing’ to ‘go’. So ‘see’ becomes ‘seing’. Sit down!”
Most boys would have crumbled. Santos didn’t. He marched straight to the Headmaster, Mr. Deshmukh. The Headmaster was horrified by the teacher’s mistake and scolded her. It was a small victory for spelling, but a huge victory for Santos. The boy with the aluminium box had a backbone of steel.
***
Rich Man, Poor Man, Beggar Man, Friend
One of the most beautiful things about growing up in Wardha in the sixties was that money existed, but it didn’t matter.
Our class was a strange mix. Chandu Fattepuria came from a wealthy family of cotton traders. Vilas Thakur lived in a massive British bungalow with guards at the gate because his father was the police superintendent. Baban Sonwane’s father was a government minister.
Then there were the rest of us. My father was a manager; others were sons of teachers. But once we crossed the school threshold, or climbed onto those cotton bales, the differences vanished. The rich parents of that era were different. They were humble. They never flaunted their wealth or asked for special treatment. In fact, they told the teachers to be stricter with their sons.
We shared our food, we shared our punishments, and we shared our secrets. There was no VIP section in our childhood. We were just boys.
***
The Invisible Wall
But if money didn’t divide us, gender certainly did. Our school was “co-ed” on paper, but in reality, an invisible wall ran down the center of the hallways.
Shubha Thatte, Lina Wele, and Suhas Jajoo might have been family friends who played together at home on Sundays. But inside the school? They were strangers. Boys spoke to boys. Girls spoke to girls. Crossing that line was social suicide.
If a boy accidentally brushed past a girl in the corridor, the other boys would scream, “Contaminated!” The poor soul would be teased for days. It seems funny now—the idea that talking to a girl was a dangerous act—but those were the rules. We found small ways to show off, of course. During the break, we would rent bicycles for ten paise an hour. We would ride frantically fast, doing tricks, secretly hoping the girls were watching from their side of the invisible wall.
***
Music and Mayhem
Amidst the noise of school, there was one voice that could stop time. Vikas Kale was our musical prodigy. He had a voice that sounded too mature, too perfect for a schoolboy.
On school picnics, when the chaos settled down, Vikas would sing. I remember him singing songs from the Geet Ramayana. The rowdy boys would stop shouting. The teachers would stop scolding. For a few minutes, the dusty picnic spot felt like a temple. He didn’t just sing; he cast a spell. We all knew he would become a star, and he did, becoming a renowned classical singer years later. Vikas lives in Wardha.
But for the rest of us, the real music was the sound of the recess bell.
The twenty-minute break was pure chaos. We would explode onto the field. Footballers claimed one corner, cricketers claimed another, but mostly we just ran. We didn’t have teams; we had mobs. A boy might be fielding for a cricket match while standing in the middle of a football game. The ball would fly, bodies would collide, and the noise was deafening. It was glorious. We played with the desperation of prisoners let out into the yard, trying to squeeze a whole day’s worth of fun into twenty minutes.
***
The Sweetest Memory
I want to end with a memory that smells like chocolate.
In the fifth grade, someone brought a box of chocolates to school. I don’t remember who, and I don’t remember why. But in a moment of pure, innocent generosity, we decided to give them to our teachers.
We tracked down Mrs. Amte, one of our strictest teachers. She was walking towards the staff room. We swarmed around her, a gang of ten-year-olds holding out chocolates like they were gold coins. “For you, Madam!” we chirped.
She stopped. She looked at this group of messy, noisy boys blocking her path. And then, her stern face cracked. She laughed—a warm, genuine laugh that we had never heard before. She took the chocolate.
It was a small thing. But it stays with me. It was the moment we realized that our teachers were not just rule-books with legs. They were people. And just like us, they liked chocolate.
That was the magic of those days. The stinging slaps of the math teacher faded, but the taste of that chocolate, the softness of the cotton bales, and the sound of my friends laughing—those things stayed. We were young, we were equal, and the world was just waiting to be explored.