about sirion school

It's a madness that consumes me. Today I spent the whole day crafting history and little idiosyncracies about Sirion School and Gabalpur and people there, at the library and felt like I just came back from a thousand years spent in nirvana.
I want to travel in the rain to the Himalayan hill stations and experience for myself these quaint little roads and sit under kitschy street banners, drink tea broiled hot from the foaming pot.

Sirion School is of the imagination and I guess that is why I feel more attached to it. But at the same time I want to feel tangibly the things that have been penned.

I wonder how the hall way at Grand View Palace smells like sheltered from the beating rain. I wonder how Onesius Cafe feels like brewing coffee scents and brimming with Sirion kids. I wonder what kinds of books line the racks at Chatterjee Book Depot, and somewhere deeper beyond the reach of the neon lights, what sort of strange records are stored, of the days when Gabalpur was still a holiday village and the white sahibs roamed its paved streets. I wonder about the grinning models on posters behind the display windows of Yannu Opticals. I wonder how the wet the roads become after the monsoon has been harsh on the mountainside, and how the rains sound like on the vintage Sirion School buses.

I wonder if there really is a secret passageway up to North Tower, that Nilotpal Pai discovered back in 1985. I wonder how the massive banyan tree sheds its shadow on the road for sweating pedestrians on Gabalpur's steamy summer's day. I wonder how the clear brook sound, under Turpin Bridge overlooked by South Tower's silent gaze.

I wonder what sort of movies they have at Chimpoo Video Rentals, and what are the kinds of films that gets rented the most. I wonder what sort of incense they burn at Lhasa Fooding & Lodging, and if they have a poster of the Dalai Lama on their wall. I wonder how Downing Lane looks like on the dead of the night.

I wonder how the cafeterias feel like on a cold rainy day, crowded with noisy complaining and shivering people, all wondering when their orders (wai wai and noodles and coffee) will come up.

I wonder what it feels to be at the start of a holiday and to board a sumo to go to Murti Colony to the nearest railway station and to think of a long holidays spread out in front of me. And I wonder what it feels to be in a sumo going back to school, after having spent that all too short holiday sitting at home and doing nothing much, to think of new subjects and new teachers and things to look forward to.

I wonder what its like to be thinking of a date to take to Kensington Hall Annual to juggle between two or three options or in the end to realise that there are not much options at all.

So much.