The (Proud) Last Benchers

My first love after Ravi Shastri’s Audi was ‘the last bench’ in my class. Although it wasn’t for my taking, since my class teacher followed the rotation policy. The policy came into being because all the parents, including mine, wanted their kids to seat on ‘the first bench’. All the parents want the best for their kids and what better than the ‘first bench’, for there was a theory making rounds in the parents circle that if the child seats on the first bench, he/ she will become one of the top rankers in the class. What else could the poor teacher do when there were over 50 students in each class and almost all of them were ‘First Rankers’ in there parents eyes. Little did the parents knew that mentally, I and most of my close friends were the lovers of the last bench…for life?

At this stage of life, I can comfortably say that I have never been a topper in my school life. I and students like me who form the majority after graduating from the school, are the famous ‘by products’ of our school system. The ‘real products’ of the school system were the true first benchers who were destined to become ‘someone’ in the world. I am sure most of us have watched Bollywood blockbuster ‘3 Idiot’s’. I just wished that movie would have come a little earlier, then we would have justified our very little interest in Science & Math’s & Social studies & Hindi & English a little easily to our parents and teachers.  

The reason I am talking about our great education system today is not because I got frustrated with life and wanted to blame someone but because I feel that the ‘last benchers’ are not given the ‘respect’ that they deserve. We, the last benchers strongly believed that you can learn more if you enjoy more. Of course the ‘enjoy’ part of the above statement easily overtook the ‘learning’ aspect. So what if we are not the ‘cream de la cream’ of academia, we were on top of all the ‘other extra-curricular activities’. Life has its own pace in the last bench…dreaming with open eyes, enjoying a snack, writing a poem (of sorts); scribing on the bench with our modern art, etc…etc.

I have utmost respect for the ‘first benchers’ for some my non-last bencher friends have become ‘someone’ in the world. As far as my ‘fellow last-bench countrymen’ are concerned, I feel that the last benchers are the intellectual ones, whose level is same as that of the intelligent first benchers but have an ‘unusual’ and ‘different’ opinion about the concepts.

Here’s to the misfits, the rebels, the crazy ones, the squares in the circle, the trouble makers; the ones who see things differently.