Last speech

There I was standing, in a well-ironed uniform, with hair tied-up in a pony-tail with a black rubber band, white clean shoes, in the school playground on the last day of the school prepared to give my last speech, my farewell speech. Oh yes ! It was different. Definitely different from all those speeches I had given earlier on various occasions, either on the Independence day or on the Teacher's Day, for this was my last speech, my farewell speech. I was not nervous, surprisingly. Maybe, because I wasn't going to be judged by anybody for my words that day or it was as if the enthusiasm just overrode all my consciousness. I didn't have to care for my expressions. I didn't have to care for my accent. I didn't have to care for my hand movements. Nor did I have to care if I am giving the correct gestures. Because that day was simply meant to pour my heart out in its truest form. And I did it, probably. I started speaking and within a few seconds words came themselves floating out. 

From being a girl who was crying on her first day to school sitting on the second last bench of the classroom for not having any friends, I had been a girl who was crying on the last day of the school for not having wanted to leave those friends, which that place had provided her. Yeah! I had got many friends. Good friends, some really good friends, and some  for lifetime. And I said this all, that day. 

"I would definitely miss the way our teachers used to turn red when our talks didn't end, being endless, of course. I would miss the way my parents used to push me out of the house so that I didn't get late for school ( though every time, I got). I would miss the way my mother used to stand at the gate to see me off, every morning. " - I said this all, that day. 

We always hated stuffing our bags with those voluminous books. And we hated more carrying that burden on our shoulders, every single morning, making our way to our classrooms. But that day, it all seemed quite irrelevant. Our sorrow for not having being able to experience this anymore was more than the happiness we had derived from the sense of freedom when we stepped outside that old school building. 

Today, I have reached at a juncture where I have to take up new paths. I have to tread upon the new roads now. I have to trace a new and a different life from here but definitely not without withholding my old school memories.