I completed my schooling in the Adimjati high school. It was an eye opener of sorts while being at this school. I came in contact with the many other tribes of our state.

I was indeed fortunate to have been among the Meitei, Mao, Tangkhul, Kabui,Anal, Maring, Moyon, Kom, Kuki, Paite, Gangte, Nepali classmates. I learnt a lot from them as they all came from different farming backgrounds.

I never knew what it took to be a farmer!!

I had thought people just threw paddy seeds in the fields to grow and harvest them and that it was available to us for purchase in the markets!!

How wrong and ignorant I was !!! I was very fascinated by the many great stories these friends told me about their childhood spent among those fields helping out their folks. It was great fun because it gave me a whole new experience to be among a totally different classroom environment than when I was in the Nirmalabas school.

These friends told me how they caught fish from the river or ponds, how they bulit scarecrows for their paddy fields, how they picked pumpkins , cucumbers, beans etc., from the gardens, how they chased their poultry back into their coops in the evenings!!!

Gosh!!! It sounded like another world totally different from mine!!! They had to take the packed morning buses to come to school everyday. They had to face the wrath of the fuming women who were on their way to Ema keithel ( women's market) to sell their wares on that packed early morning buses like sardines!!!

Hats off to all of them for that!!! The students as well as those women...who were out on their different missions of life!!!

These friends brought fresh produce from their homes to share with me. Oh! how I loved those eating those juicy fruits from their gardens!!! It was a very humbling experience to be among them because they were trying to get an education as well be helpful to their farming parents.

I really admire them for their hard work. Compared to them, I had an easier life as I was closer to the school and did not have to go through what they had to, everyday to come to school and back home !!! I did my best to help them out with homework as they needed.

I felt happy to be able to help them in any way I could. No one knew I came from a bilingual family. They all thought I was a Nepali girl but it gave me the anonymity to mingle freely around.

I could speak and understand the Kuki language so the Kuki girls got fooled every time I answered them and they had a blast after they came to know that I knew the language...They called me a "Kuki speaking Nepali girl and what not!!!"

My younger sister was the extrovert one among us so she could talk to anyone in school while I was an introvert. I would only keep myself among only few friends in the class.

We played football (as soccer is known over there) during the recess in school with all our classmates..both boys and girls together! We would make the boys agree to be the goalkeeper because they always tended to show off their physical prowess to us and play unsafe when playing with us girls.

We cant play rough like them but we wanted a fair play with a fair number of both boys and girls on the team!!

After the game, we would always come back to the class all flushed red in the face and very sweaty!! Our English teacher Miss Roma would comment that she would brook no excuses if we did not memorise the poem she had assigned us the previous day!!

Me and my sister helped out these football friends so they did not have to be in detention after class. We never gave our teacher any reason to complain about us because she was ever ready to do so as we had been spending our recess time playing this game!!!

Today when I think back on those high school days, I am filled with nostalgia about all those gopod friends with whom I have lost all contact!!!

After I completed my high school, I had to take up a teaching job at a private K.G. school in Paona Bazar, to supplement my parents' meagre income. They could not afford to send me to college.

Well, as I was the eldest in the family, I had the unspoken and expected role to play for shouldering the family responsibility, which I did with my whole heart and soul!!! I taught in that K.G. school for over three years,.

And boy!!! it was a great learning experience to be teaching these young kids !! I just loved and adored them!! My students felt that since I was very small built they could bully me into anything!! Hell no!! I may be small built but I am a dynamo inside!!

Well, I made them realise that it was fun to be in school. I made my lessons easier and fun for them. I took some of them to watch football (soccer) games after school as the Kangjeibung ( playground ) was closer and we did not have to go that far to get there. How fast those times flew by!!!

Before long it was time for me to say goodbye to these beloved kids of my class as I was getting enrolled for the nursing school in Assam!!

I felt so sad and heavy hearted to leave them as I had become so attached to them like my very own kids. Some of them came from a very low socio-economic backgrounds. And I could relate to them as I too came from a similar background.

I gave them free private tuitions as their mothers would beg me to help their kids out who were failing and had a lot of hardships to face. It was such a great pleasure and happiness to be able to help someone deserving!!

I knew some of these kids' mothers who really toiled hard to make ends meet by selling vegetables in the Ema Keithel (women's market). Some of them had alcoholic and drug -addicted and abusive fathers and it was very sad to see them come to school very disturbed and out of control !!!

I heard some few years ago from one of the mothers with whom I had become good friends with, when I last visited Manipur, that her son had become a good wrestler and won state and national trophies all over. It was very overwhelming to know that she still remembered me.

She took my phone number and let her son call me up in the evening. I had no idea how he looked like as he was already a 25 year old grown up now. He was very excited to speak to me though.

He told me that he had got job offers from out of state companies but his mother did not want him out of her sight!! Thats the typical attitude of our Manipuri parents!! He said that he had no hopes of ever getting a job in Manipur as corruption is rampant there!!!

So this poor young man is still there hoping for a good job!!!