YUJAN 2019

It is the 14th of December and I leave for school at 6:30 a..m. eager to reach my faculty well before 7:30 a.m. as I have all the polaroid cartridges with me. I get a call from Raghav to confirm whether I have the keys to the cupboard and I assure him that I am sitting right in my faculty with the keys in the lock. He somehow doesn't seem to believe his ears! I tell him to come right up and he tells me that he is yet to start from home.

Say no to plastics, and worse still, the coatings that line the packets! This is the message that this little boy had to convey about the need to reduce, re-use and recycle plastics. In fact, he suggested that we should stop using plastic! As far as I could hear, he is a student of class six.

The day started slowly with parents and guests trickling in and then it was suddenly a rush, what with guests suddenly pouring in. I was initially with the Safety and Security team, managing the flow of the guests and then just when the alumni started trickling in, I had the parking duty. Nevertheless, I was able to meet a few of my old students who surprisingly told me that they would be coming for an alumni re-union on the 20th of December. They even recorded a message from me exhorting to visit the school (though I didn't have any idea of it!).

Shrey, incidentally, is training to be a commercial pilot and it was certainly a joy to have him visit us! Besides quite a few of my students were present on the occasion and I was able to take a few snaps of them.

Good to see you, Sidharth. Though I never taught him, I was, however in touch with him during dispersal, at the end of the day!

CLICK, you certainly rock, I loved working as their faculty advisor, and perhaps the greatest challenge was working with such young student leaders! That, though is just half of the team, the rest were to come in shifts!

And, Anoushka, thanks for the books, got my self a stock of books to last me a week! All smiles and rearing to go, she was the driving force of the Litsoc Stall that had books to exchange. But the YUJAN was also about our staff, people who wanted to have some fun. And, sure enough, I was able to capture a few candid moments! Wonder how the IRA and the British army could come together on YUJAN, nor could I imagine that I would be able to capture two namesakes in a slice of history! Biting on a sugarcane stem would test not only the strength of my jaw muscles but also my resolve! Well, we had them all! I loved the Ches Guevera look though! And who could forget Madhuri Ma'am, the one who takes all those lovely photographs!

Hair extension?

Gotcha!

Is that me?

Some of the performances were really good, at least the ones that I could watch. I particularly liked the one with the students dressed as clowns, it somehow struck me as being full of energy and vibrancy. The other one was an Indian Classical dance by a student who was once a member of the CLICK club.

Gaurav, thanks for the wonderful photographs you take of the students and their teachers!