I joined RamaKrishna Mission Vidyapith , Deoghar , Jharkhand (erstwhile Bihar ) in March 1992.
To start with I will like to let the readers know some facts about the school .
* Vidyapith is a fully residential school located in the town of Deoghar , Jharkhand .
* The school is managed by the saints of The RamaKrishna order (Headquarters of which are located at Belur Math , Kolkata ).
* The Institute is well reputed for its academic excellence and overall development of students there and continues to produce incredibly great results in the C.B.S.E Board exams .
As the name would suggest , the school has the aura of puritan hinduism surrounding it . Though the teachings of Ramakrishna Paramhans called for a secular way of life and it is well reflected in the atmosphere in Vidyapith . There used to be only around 300 students studying at Vidyapith and that meant , that almost all the students knew each other by name . It was truly like a close knit family . Despite that I had a really bad 1st week and my mother came to see me just 10 days after she had left me alone . I had planned that I would ask my mother to take me back home as soon as she comes on Wednesday . But somehow it happened that when on wednesday morning I saw my mother , I decided I'll act brave and let her feel that I am comfortable with the proceedings and would like to stay back . That decision meant that I was destined to spend some more critical years of my life at RKMV.
Religious by all standards , we had to follow a rigorous schedule that included getting up at 5 in the morning , wearing dhoti-kurta (had great difficulties learning how to wear dhoti ),going to the temple for prayers ,going for morning drill and jogging , sweeping our rooms and halls , going for studies , going to school , then another round of sweeping and gardening , followed by 1 hour of playing and an arguably longer 1 hour of prayer in the temple followed by studies . And to round it off , chanting of Gita and other Holy Texts .
Well as a child if all this was difficult , think about this on your first Diwali away from home .. you are not given any crackers and instead , asked to sit in the temple for 6 hours at stretch praying to God who is being fed with various dishes "BHOG" . And despite his reluctance to eat his innocent devotees are starved for another few hours in a vain attempt to feed their deity . Sounds weird ?? But this is the usual norm at Vidyapith . Some of the newcomers actually start crying during this period .
Anyways coming back to my academic life here .. I started really bad with my 1st exam going haywire . I even failed in Bengali getting 26 out of 100 . But my the next semester exams I had picked up and was always there in the top 10 in a rather competitive class . I even managed to score 80 out of 100 in the next bengali exam I took . I owe that performance and much more to Rajiv Ranjan da . He was an inspirational figure for me when I was in class 4 (He was in Class 10) and I would love to hear from him again so if anyone reading this , knows his whereabouts please drop me a mail .
About friends at RKMV , I would like the readers to know about this bizarre phenomenon which was a trademark of RKMV in those days . There used to be around 50 students in a class living in a dormitory and almost every student had a list of classmates with whom he wont talk . Sounds weird na ! 2 students couldn't have remained best friends for more than a few months as invariably they would break up . And somehow I managed to top the list with almost 15 classmates with whom I wouldn't talk . And most of this list was formed of my ex-best friends .
Some of the names worth mentioning are Harshit Srivastav (he was from Patna and we had adjacent beds , so he became my 1st bestfriend , but for some unknown reasons we broke up in a few months ),Bimol Thongam (He hailed from Manipur and was my best friend after harshit )
So after two bitter experiences I had stopped designating individuals as best friends . The other great friends I had included Arijit Ghosh , Pratyush Katyayan (in Zakir Hussain College , DU), Anjul Pratyush (in some DU college), Kunal Kishore (last heard was preparing for JEE), Kautilya Alok Aman , Shishir Saurabh , Shantanu Singh , Thangam Ranjan Singh . Another important person who deserves a special mention is Pratyush Sinha . His was a classic case of a genius of a brain gone haywire though he has resurrected himself to a cerain extent . He used to solve problems of calculus in class 7 and was crazy about them . His intelligence could be gauged from the fact that though all the students at Vidyapith used to study like anything for hours , he was always busy disturbing others and still topped the second semester at Vidyapith much to the astonishment of everyone else . He left the school in class 7 and presently after some major hiccups is in REC Surat .
Though I would grade my academic performance at Vidyapith as Above Average , It was my exploits in co-curricular activities that brought me the much needed acclaim . I was outsandingly contributive in Dramatics , Debating , Public Speaking , Quizzing , Writing . Invariably the extra curricular activities took a chunk of my time at Vidyapith . From enacting the role of a kanjoos seth , sardari to directing one-act plays ... dramatics was what enthused me the most at Vidyapith . During my stay I boarded in Premanand Dham (Class 4,5), Matri Dham (Class 6)and Brahmanand Dham ( Class 7).
I even got to participate in Children's Science Congress and having won the district levels and state level I went to represent Bihar at the National Level . That was my first visit to Delhi , and somewhere in the subconscious I chose that as a destination in my Jeevan Yatra.
Any discussion about my stay at Vidyapith is incomplete without the mention of one name , someone who contributed in many ways to my life . Ramakrishna Maharaj (Swami Samarpananand Ji Maharaj) He was the principal of the school and having come in contact with him 2 or 3 times he thought I had huge academic potential in me and i need to get out of my shell (used to be a big introvert which is still the impression one would get of me in the first meeting ) . He tought me the way to study subjects like geography , which thus far had been unbearably boring for me . His influence on my life will always be dear to me .
Now to the question people have asked me umpteen times and I have been hard put give a logical sounding answer to . Why did I leave Vidyapith ? Well I would have never left Vidyapith had Ramakrishna Maharaj stayed as the principal there . But he left and the new heads were so authoritarian in nature that my instincts never allowed me to be a part of Vidyapith anymore . The changes brought about in the system which was made so pleasnt by the concrete efforts taken by Ramakrishna Maharaj were so disheartening that I decided to call it quits . Even my performance that year suffered and I went out of my usual top 10 rank .
And after long delibrations with my parents over the issue of leaving the "reputed institute " which I once longed to join , I was given the green signal and I was packing my bag for another stint in the school I had left behind . I was about to rejoin St.Michaels ......
(Click here to read further )
