June 7 was the reopening day of school. I was entering 10th Standard, and everything felt like the beginning of a new phase.
Before leaving, I called my cousin, roll no. 14, and asked whether I should bring the books we had received from the seniors. He told me not to bring anything.
I had also got a new school bag for the new academic year. With that bag packed and ready, I went to the bus stop.
While waiting for the bus, someone I really admired was standing on the roof of their house. I just stood there admiring her for a while.
Then the bus arrived. It was Bus No. 3, with one of the coolest drivers among all the school-transport drivers. I got on, and we headed towards school.
The morning began with the usual prayer and assembly. There was also a new rule introduced by the Tamil Nadu Government requiring schools to conduct assembly every day. In the previous years, we were used to having the larger assembly mainly on Mondays, so this was a change in the daily routine.
After the assembly, we went to our classroom.
The school had a single section for 10th Standard, with around fifty students. The class was still the same environment I knew, but the feeling of entering 10th Standard made the whole thing feel different.
The school had also provided us with notebooks and textbooks. There were a lot of them, probably around twenty to thirty kilograms altogether.
The English teacher, who was also the principal, was responsible for our English classes. English was the first period on almost every school day except Saturday. She was rarely absent, although she could be busy with her responsibilities as principal.
On the first day, she introduced us to the year's English work and instructed us to write our first English memory poem.
I also memorized the Tamil "Vazhthu" poem on that first day.
The principal later told us that from the following day we would have special classes until 6:00 PM. That day, however, we could leave at the usual time.
By around 4:45 PM, it was raining. We were in the verandah of the next building, waiting for the rain to stop before leaving.
It was during that wait that I noticed a quote written in the office verandah.
June 8 · The First Special Class
June 8 was different from what I had expected. The holiday that was announced applied only to students from KG to 9th Standard. For us in 10th Standard, it was not a holiday.
Instead, we had our first special class.
Our Science 1 teacher introduced us to the subject and spoke to us about motivation. It was one of the first introductions to the subjects that would define the academic year.
The regular academic routine began taking shape from there. English continued almost every day, along with the regular classwork and homework.
The First Week
During the first week, the driver of Bus No. 3 told us that from the following week, Bus No. 4 would be coming instead.
I was happy about that because Bus No. 4 had been important to me during the previous academic year.
When the next week arrived, I went back to my old seat from the previous year — the last seat.
There were plenty of reasons why I preferred sitting there. Some boys liked staying in the front because they wanted to show off a little, while I preferred the back. I often sat there with junior students who were several years younger than me.
Another reason was that the person I admired usually sat around the second row from the back, with other girls sitting around that area as well. I mostly kept quiet and simply observed.
June 14 · A Change at Home
On June 14, we shifted our residence.
The biggest change for me was getting my own room. Having a separate room gave me more privacy and also made it easier to concentrate on studying.
June 17 · The Saturday Joke
On Saturday evening, the school campus felt unusually quiet around 5:00 to 6:00 PM.
At one point, our Science 1 teacher said something about having school on Sunday. The class reacted immediately. He then clarified that Sunday was actually a holiday.
Looking back, it was simply a joke from the teacher, but the class reaction was immediate.
The Investiture Ceremony
Somewhere during this period, the school suddenly gathered us for an assembly related to the upcoming investiture ceremony.
Four house captains from 10th Standard and four vice captains from 9th Standard were going to be selected.
I was roll no. 3. When the selection process was being discussed, I became slightly anxious about the possibility of being chosen myself.
I knew that it would mean standing in front of the entire school and taking an oath during the ceremony. That was not really something I saw myself doing, especially because everyone already knew that I was quiet and did not talk much.
I was an above-average learner, but leadership in front of a crowd was a different matter.
My own expectation was that roll no. 4 would have been a better choice for a leadership position.
Instead, the school selected roll no. 1 as the captain of the Red House.
The other selections were also interesting because every house had several possible candidates.
For the Blue House, roll no. 16 was selected as captain. There were only four boys in that house who were realistic possibilities, and roll nos. 9, 14, 16 and 25 were among them. I personally considered 9 or 16 the strongest options. Roll no. 16 had good sporting ability and was also someone I had been friends with previously.
The Yellow House selection created more discussion. Roll no. 13 was chosen. He was a good person and was well known for football, particularly as a goalkeeper. He also had a tendency to show off, which made the selection interesting to observe. I personally thought roll no. 24 was another strong possibility.
The Green House was more complicated.
Roll no. 8 was my friend and sat near me in class. Roll no. 33 was selected as the female house captain. She had already been a vice captain in 9th Standard, which led roll no. 8 to complain that the school was simply prioritizing girls.
I saw it differently. In my view, roll no. 33 had genuine leadership qualities and was academically strong. There were other possible candidates, including roll no. 17, who was a good dancer and reasonably sporty, but the choice of 33 still made sense to me.
The Red House had several possible candidates as well. Roll no. 1 was selected, while roll nos. 4, 18 and 23 were also possibilities in my view. Roll no. 18 was already being selected for another leadership position. Roll no. 4, especially, seemed like a strong fit to me.
The final selections made the upcoming ceremony feel more real. The leaders had been chosen, and the next step was the actual investiture.
June 19 · Investiture Ceremony
The investiture ceremony took place on June 19.
The pupil leader was roll no. 37, a female student from the Blue House. The assistant pupil leader was roll no. 18, a male student from the Red House.
Both were widely respected in the class. They were good at studies and sports, and they had the kind of leadership qualities that made their selections easy for most of the class to accept.
The four house-captain selections were more complicated because there had been several possible candidates for each position.
Watching all of this made me think about how leadership was judged within the class — academic performance, sports, confidence, personality, previous positions and simply how well someone appeared to fit the role.
June 24 · The Evening Trip
On June 24, the morning journey to school had been on the school bus as usual, but the government bus that normally took us home in the evening failed.
I ended up returning with a village boy, roll no. 6, and my cousin, roll no. 14.
Later that evening, I also noticed a double rainbow.
It was a simple event, but the combination of the unusual return journey and the rainbow made that evening stand out.
June 26 · Ramzan Special Class
June 26 was a Ramzan special class day.
The subject was Mathematics. We were allowed to wear colour dress instead of the usual uniform, which made the atmosphere more relaxed than a normal school day.
The First Phase
By the end of June, the new environment was no longer completely unfamiliar.
The routines had settled in. The daily assembly had become part of the schedule. Special classes had begun. The bus routine had changed. A new room had given me more privacy. The class hierarchy and leadership structure had started becoming clearer.
I was still mostly observing rather than actively participating in the social environment.
June was less about competition and more about adjustment. It was the starting point — the first layer of a new academic year and the beginning of everything that would follow.