I wish I could somehow write all I feel about finally leaving my school of twelve years…technically, it should be 16 years…but I’ve been in this particular branch for twelve…much, much longer than any of my current friends…and some teachers too. The entry was on Thursday…and almost every girl was bawling her head off…bit ironic really, cuz it wasn’t technically the last day, Friday was (and almost no one showed up on Friday anyway—interesting…). I wanted to cry, I really did. In this school, I’ve watched my friends leave, I’ve seen the school building change and the huge new art room built, the swimming pool renovated twice, the Hall being built, the reading room, the second canteen—I’ve watched the lockers come in, the common room painted with a landscape that’s hidden behind the lockers now….with only the red sky showing; I’ve watched the upside down girl painted on the common room door. I’ve watched the swings dwindle year after year to make room for new buildings. And I’ve seen the school gate changed from black to dull green to black to white. There were all the classrooms…a new one every year…the one where we all sat together and cried when one girl’s brother and sister died in a car crash; the one where we threw a surprise party for our second-grade teacher, the one where the birds used to die every year by flying in through the exhaust fan—what else? Yeah, I wanted to cry. But I cudn’t…I’m sorry, but if neone made me stay in that building for one more year, I’d puke right on their face. Sure, it’s made me tough, it’s made me less sensitive, and it’s given me a hell of a good education. And it’s destroyed a part of me in the process. It just isn’t special, and I have no wish to see it again. It may sound callous, especially coming from me, but I’ve just about had it. I’ve made a lot of friends, but I’ve lost a lot too…and not all of them were lost by just leaving. There are just too many bad memories here…I was never a Grammarian at heart, I wasn’t one of those screaming, hyper, non-serious females so typical of LGS…hence, I just can’t bawl my eyes out like they were doing. I learnt a lot here, but I learnt nothing that could help me make myself a better person-there’s none of that here. I doubt if any school ever does that. To be perfectly honest, it does seem a bit strange. I’m a overwhelmingly sentimental person, but not in this case. I’ll miss certain teachers, I’ll definitely miss my friends if they don’t get into the same university I’m going to, but I’ll never, ever want to go back there…twelve years was more than enuff…I can move on without looking back. So maybe it’ll be worse in LUMS, with the co-ed system n all…I’ve never really thought about it, but what would it be like studying with guys after soooo long? But I don’t think about that; I don’t even fell it’s weird anymore. All I want to do is to just get LGS out of my life and into my past. Btw, an update on my previous post…Mr. Qazi’s funeral was the day before yesterday, and I got the wrong information about Mrs. Qazi-she’s not in a coma but has got a lot of injuries…she wasn’t sedated cuz the doctors had to make sure her brain wasn’t damaged…so I guess there’s bit of hope left.

I wish I could somehow write all I feel about finally leaving my school of twelve years…technically, it should be 16 years…but I’ve been in this particular branch for twelve…much, much longer than any of my current friends…and some teachers too. The entry was on Thursday…and almost every girl was bawling her head off…bit ironic really, cuz it wasn’t technically the last day, Friday was (and almost no one showed up on Friday anyway—interesting…). I wanted to cry, I really did. In this school, I’ve watched my friends leave, I’ve seen the school building change and the huge new art room built, the swimming pool renovated twice, the Hall being built, the reading room, the second canteen—I’ve watched the lockers come in, the common room painted with a landscape that’s hidden behind the lockers now….with only the red sky showing; I’ve watched the upside down girl painted on the common room door. I’ve watched the swings dwindle year after year to make room for new buildings. And I’ve seen the school gate changed from black to dull green to black to white. There were all the classrooms…a new one every year…the one where we all sat together and cried when one girl’s brother and sister died in a car crash; the one where we threw a surprise party for our second-grade teacher, the one where the birds used to die every year by flying in through the exhaust fan—what else? Yeah, I wanted to cry. But I cudn’t…I’m sorry, but if neone made me stay in that building for one more year, I’d puke right on their face. Sure, it’s made me tough, it’s made me less sensitive, and it’s given me a hell of a good education. And it’s destroyed a part of me in the process. It just isn’t special, and I have no wish to see it again. It may sound callous, especially coming from me, but I’ve just about had it. I’ve made a lot of friends, but I’ve lost a lot too…and not all of them were lost by just leaving. There are just too many bad memories here…I was never a Grammarian at heart, I wasn’t one of those screaming, hyper, non-serious females so typical of LGS…hence, I just can’t bawl my eyes out like they were doing. I learnt a lot here, but I learnt nothing that could help me make myself a better person-there’s none of that here. I doubt if any school ever does that. To be perfectly honest, it does seem a bit strange. I’m a overwhelmingly sentimental person, but not in this case. I’ll miss certain teachers, I’ll definitely miss my friends if they don’t get into the same university I’m going to, but I’ll never, ever want to go back there…twelve years was more than enuff…I can move on without looking back. So maybe it’ll be worse in LUMS, with the co-ed system n all…I’ve never really thought about it, but what would it be like studying with guys after soooo long? But I don’t think about that; I don’t even fell it’s weird anymore. All I want to do is to just get LGS out of my life and into my past. Btw, an update on my previous post…Mr. Qazi’s funeral was the day before yesterday, and I got the wrong information about Mrs. Qazi-she’s not in a coma but has got a lot of injuries…she wasn’t sedated cuz the doctors had to make sure her brain wasn’t damaged…so I guess there’s bit of hope left.

Yesterday, my dad went to pick us my little sister from school…they were late getting back, because of yet another traffic jam. This time, it was an army truck and a fallen sign. Just before you get to any underpass in Lahore, you have these huge boards over the road, saying that trucks are not allowed, not allowed, NOT allowed...heavy vehicles like trucks would simply not fit in the underpass…it’s written there, in English, in Urdu, and there are several signs with a truck and a red line through them…but no… Very cleverly, this truck driver decided to zoom through the underpass…I don’t know how big the truck was, but it was large enough to rip the biggest board off and send it crashing to the road. So there you were, in the busiest road of the day, with kids coming home from school, college students, teachers…that road was the way home to almost every school-going kid…and there it was if no underpass had been built at all…just one way to go for every type of vehicle… So what happened when the board was ripped up? Behind the truck was Mrs. Qazi with her husband…the whole board fell onto their car. Mrs. Qazi had been my third-grade teacher…one of the few favourite teachers I’ve ever had…she used to give me a lot of prizes for English, I now remember…and she’s never changed…even ten years later when I was in A levels in the same school, we’d still talk to each other on and off. She was the sweetest teacher I’d ever had-knew about the class bullies, told them off constantly, and what not…I suppose I mostly got my encouragement for literature and all that from her. And she’s in a coma now-and her husband’s just passed on now…how can I forget that huge, jolly man who used to carry his 6 year old daughter home on his back every day…he never taught me, but that was such a touching sight…almost every day. I wish I had known…the last time I talked to Mrs. Qazi I remembered her famous colourful sari…she promised me she’ll wear a similar one especially for me one day…well, she never got to that day…but I’m just remembering useless stuff now. It seems so weird now…I’ll have to go to the farewell today, have to dress up and look happy…see everyone dancing…sure, they both weren’t an integral part of my life, but…but it’s such a shock when something like this happens-and when you have known the people…and all because of a jahil army truck driver who can’t even see the signs, let alone read them. The world has definitely got to come to an end soon…it’s gone down and it won’t come up again. I feel so cynical it almost hurts…it would have if I hadn’t already been rendered numb.