SCHOOL LIFE - SHRUNK TO REMINISCENCES

'Goodbye....' I remember how the campus of Tashi Namgyal Academy vibrates to it, responds to it in the morning of Farewell Day each year. I've stood often enough in the assembly listening to it and it seemed no different than any other word, hardly realising any feeling or depth in it.

It is only when it comes to you that you realise what it feels to leave a place where you've spent around fourteen years, which comes to more than half your life till now.

We've all known and heard about the history of TNA and it is surprising to see ourselves being transformed into history - characters of the past.

It seems just yesterday when I used to come to school in shorts with a small bag on my bag and a water bottle in hand. Time has flown since and goodbye seems round the corner.

The years spent in the school have been a glorious roll of drums. We all look back to them with a wishful longing and thrill. Leaving school seems to be leaving a glory behind, all the joys of childhood and adolescence that will never come again in life.

These are the years when we live in a world beyond all pretences and hypocrisy, that seem to inhabit this world of ours. These are the years when we actually develop our personality and taste, grown from a juvenile to a young, trustworthy and a good human being.

A school suggests a beautiful confluence of change and continuity:

• Change because different batches of students join and leave the school each year - the old ones giving way to the new ones.
• Continuity because a teacher is always there teaching and imparting the same noble values of life year after year to different batches of students.

In a school, a child receives education as well as the guidance and encouragement of teachers, the love of friends. A school helps you take out the BEST in you and shows you your capabilities.

TNA has been all these to me, and much more. All along my school days, I've felt the pride the pride of studying in TNA. This wasn't the pride of studying in a premier institution of the state, but the pride of belonging to the TNA family, of being its member.