Life as a D.A.V captain

DAV... The very name at once conjures up visions of a super grey building, a huge banyan tree, the grey uniforms, assemblies, and my most important and familiar feeling of looking at the whole thing from behind, the appointees' line, in the assembly. Four years as house captain gave me trouble, but more than that, unbeatable fun.
The school split us into 4 different houses when we reached sixth class. It was really exciting. All of us madly went about promoting our own house, mine being the great Shivaji. The other three were Bharathi, Tagore and Pratap, the last being almost Shivaji's sworn enemy. This classification was basically for the various intra school competitions and the sports day activities. It was great fun to take part in all these activities and I always used to look up at the house captain with awe, almost holding her as my idol. And, sure enough, it soon became my most fervent prayer and dream to become one when I reached the IX class.
Good for me and my enthusiasm, I was made one and my joy knew no bounds. I started with the work with full zest and josh, only to be hampered and slowed down soon by the way Shivaji began to lose. I was aghast and began to cry out loudly one day when Shivaji was unfairly(no, really, it was unfair!!!) given the third place in an amazingly made and enacted hindi drama. And that was also when I really started to mature and learnt how to accept defeat and gained a lot of mental strength. No wonder, it's pretty difficult to make me cry! (Touchwood! :) )
Not just the maturing part of it was nice, captaincy also gave us a lot of fun. Our IX class was situated right above the Principal's office and IX C was very famous for its rowdyish behaviour. There was one lunch break when a huge, ugly looking lizard went about the class room creating havoc. Obviously, little, dainty girls of 14 years will be scared of lizards! And as the whole class roared and screamed, and ran helter skelter, the 3 captains from the class (that includes me too!) hurriedly climbed up the benches to save ourselves from the impending (disaster). God only knows why IX C got such a location, but the class was also strategically situated next to the PT room (the PT teachers' staff room) and the loo for the floor. Sure enough, PT teachers came running to see what the riot was all about. Some girl mustered enough courage to tell her that there was a lizard about in the room. The teacher was, well, freaked.
"Where are the captains?", she screamed.
And three weak hands went up among the 40 heads, all on desks.
All teachers were very upset that 3 captains were scared of lizards! "We should have chosen better captains!", they said, shaking their heads in disapproval, as the three of us stood (our heads lowered, we had to show them a sense of shame, though the 3 of us wanted to burst out laughing thinking of what all the captains were expected to do: chase lizards out of the class?)
Things got better in X as we didn't have to do the major work for the activities as it would be taken care of by our IX class juniors. But X C, my class, made sure we were caught for something even then. It's ok, it was too good fun.
I was appointed captain again in XI again, and this time Shivaji improved tremendously well in activities. Things were great for me as I marched carrying a banner with SHIVAJI in huge bold letters and marched during the sports day. (We got first in march past, now, what do you think of my marching skills? It's a surprise they retained me as the house captain coz I was bad, no, terrible in sports!!!)And in XII, the work of the captains was (degraded) to the most possible limit, as we went and opened gates for chief guests, swept the floors, dusted the windows, etc. etc. The sad thing was that the Principal always turned to us if there was something wrong. The nice thing was that 3 years of experience made us all maratthufied to the thittu and we learnt how to laugh it off. On the rare occassions it was actually taken note of seriously, the effect of the thittu was lost in a couple of days and XII A, my class, soon went back to its old ways.
It's all extremely good in a way, I can now thangify almost any thittu, stand shocks, know crisis management (especially after many times of finding a replacement when that girl ditched in the last minute!) and well, managing a group of uncivilised animals (that's my school mates). And all these qualities surely help in life!!!