Confessions of an Adolescent Mind

Every one of us will definitely have some stories of our adolescence.  The early adolescence was really confusing for us.  I remember when I was in 7th standard some of my friends including me had a big confusion “How babies are made?”  I think now days children of this age group are much smarter, may be because access to any kind of information is just a click away.During that time many of us had different theories of our own. Many of us believed that when people get married they will have babies. Someone asked “but what exactly happens after marriage?” Someone replied “if they sleep together in the same bed then they would have baby” It seems some theories were highly influenced by the Bollywood movies. Our discussion on this topic almost lasted over a year. No one had proper logical answer and every one’s theory was questionable. We haven’t accepted the “sleeping together” theory as one of our friend argued that he always used to sleep with his sister.  Someone came up with one more theory “if girl and a boy eat in same plate and drink milk/water in same glass then baby will be made” this theory was also logically not acceptable as the same brother-sister funda made the theory too weak. There were few more weak theories and I don’t exactly remember them. We used to discuss and argue on the topic among our close friends. Now there was a guy named Tapan Sarkar, he was actually one or two years elder to us. His academics was little weak but his theory was strong enough, in fact only he had the exact theory among our friends that time. 

Few of us believed his theory that time but there was a little problem.Now there was a group who completely discarded Tapan's theory considering it to be absurd. When some of the guys tried to defend Tapan’s theory, someone questioned “That means your parents have done exactly the same thing before you guys were born?” Hearing this some of us became completely red. one guy replied “No, never, my parents never did something like that” he was almost about to cry. After this how could anyone accept that controversial theory?

So time passed quickly and we were in our 8th standard. Our school was KV BRPL but now our school doesn't exist. Physically it still exists but now it’s no longer a KV, it’s DPS Dhaligaon now. There was a very nice girl in our class and she actually was our topper that time. many of us used to copy notes from her and she never minded even if we take her class notes home. In the beginning of our 8th standard suddenly she stopped coming to school. During school days it was very unusual for any student specially topper kind of students to remain absent continuously for few days. We were little worried about her. We asked one of her close friend “what happened to her? Is she all right?” She replied “yeah, she is fine” We asked “then why she is not coming to school?” She replied “Actually she is grown up now and become matured, so she will not come to school for few more days” She was little shy in her reply. This stupid reason was kind of bouncer for us and it went over our heads. Now one of her notebook was with Babul. The topper girl sent Babul a message through someone that she need that notebook. So one day during lunch time Babul went to her house to return her notebook. To his surprise she was perfectly fine and was smiling and was talking to everyone. Babul saw that there was some kind of ceremony going on. Her mom gave him some food to eat and after eating Babul returned to school. Actually in our Assamese culture when any girl experiences her first cycle it is taken as a positive aspect of her life. Neighbors and close relatives used to give presents to her, actually elders used to celebrate considering it as a special occasion.  

Time passed very fast and we were in the middle of our 8th standard. In 8th standard our Science subject included physics, chemistry and biology. Now in biology we had one chapter on reproduction in animals and human beings. The chapter was actually among the last chapters but out of curiosity everyone read that chapter much earlier. After reading that chapter few times, our concepts became much clear and many of us started to believe Tapan’s theory,  but definitely with some doubts and confusion in mind. Everything became crystal clear when we watched the reproduction kind of movie for the first time in the beginning of our 9th standard. 

Dedicated to all my KV friends Ratul, Ashish, Alomgir, Vivek, Ajay, Partho, Tapan, Babul, Michael, Riddhi, Rajiv,Hemanta and the list goes on.