Unimorph

Hey guys. I have to submit a paper in my college about the 'effect of peer pressure on the student psyche' and I have written this article for it, which I feel quite justifies the topic. Most parts of the article are quite true. However a certain incident at the very end did NOT occur. I am sure most of you might have guessed which book series gave me the idea for the title.... I might add that I never actually read any book from the Animorph series.

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I had already changed approximately 8 schools now and all of you present here must think that for such a person the excitement generally arising with the change of another school must be numbed. However this was not the case with Delhi Public School RK Puram. I had made an attempt before to get through it and had been unsuccessful. Therefore the prospect of having got through it now, sent shivers of excitement as well as anxiety through my spine. I had heard a lot about this school from my cousins, the large part of them either studying or having passed out from it. In fact one of my cousins had fed my gullible 6thy brain with a glorified version of the whole atmosphere. I don’t remember too much of the description but it ranged from descriptions of the modern buildings to those of the large expanses of open spaces with profusion of grass and dotted by trees. All in all, a blend of modernity and natural beauty. What enhanced this eco friendly feeling was the uniform, which was an outfit in gray and green or white and green, both combinations representing the same phenomenon.

Such was the extent of my awe with the school (now called the ‘Factory’). When I finally reached my school, I was, as you all must expect, tremendously disappointed. But I must say – my schoolmates were certainly very friendly. Within the course of time I made quite a few friends. They all liked me immensely (as I imagined), however they had a problem with the way I handled my exterior form, which consisted of the Uniform. I shall elaborate on that. They somehow had this habit of presenting themselves in an extremely scruffy manner, which for some weird reason, they considered very cool. Their shirts used to hang out (and this was done in a very proper manner…. it had to be up to a particular length), their sleeves were folded high up (they were finicky about this too), and their socks hardly showed. In the beginning the disapproving hints were thrown in a subtle way. But as they were deliberately not quite registered, my friends’ line of attack became increasingly straightforward. They never got tired of reprimanding (I reckon it’s a very pleasurable activity. …Perhaps I shall only experience it when I become a mother ….if I do that is). They pulled my shirt out, calling it an ‘undipsitish’ appearance, told me day in and day out how hot it was and how claustrophobic it felt in these tucked-in school uniforms etc.

Initially I showed a lot of resistance but along with time I realized their efforts had hardly diminished and I slowly started giving in, just so that they would cease their nagging. My shirt came out slightly, sleeves never rolled up, but they were quite satisfied.

As the months flied by and I developed a better equation with my bus mates and class ones too, I started thinking of them as very cool people. My appearances and behavior (as I reflect upon it now), became almost a mirror image of theirs, and I too wanted to be cool. My earlier ideas of wearing the uniform properly in order to give it due respect and thinking of myself looking smart in my ‘different but right way’ was very easily forgotten. Or to be more correct, was just dumped into my hippocampus (I have studied 2 years of biology and consider it my right to bore you with a li’l bit of the subject…. Hippocampus is the part of the brain, which converts short-term memory into long-term …for later use). Nevertheless, the point I want to make is that I shamelessly began to ape my friends.

In class 11 people from various schools from across the country joined our school, to be branded as dipsites. They of-course were unaware of the dress code of our school and could be easily spotted by their ‘dowdy’ looks. They wore their uniforms quite properly. And this irked many of my colleagues, who avoided most of them who failed to recognize the tradition. Many were coerced into it, just like me. There was this particular new admission in my class who had been ‘undipsitish’ despite having now spent a year in our prestigious institution. And I thought I must directly point it out to her. And so I went to her and quite calmly told her how she did not looked nice in the fashion in which she presented herself and must make an attempt to look more like us. It looks smarter that ways you see, I explained. She gave a frank reply, voicing her opinions on how she preferred the way she looked …howsoever unsmart though her appearances may be. When I pressed upon her, she quite politely said sorry and turned away. I never got a chance to bully her again. Or to be more truthful, I never had the courage to do so