When my family moved back to India back in 1987, I as very excited as I wanted to spend more time with my cousins. My sister and I enjoyed our summer holidays when we would travel from Kuwait, where we lived at the time, and spend the better part of 2 months with our extended family in Kerala. My sister would end up moving to India at age 16 to studying her 11th & 12th and stayed in a hostel for a year while my parents and then 10 year old me continued to live in Kuwait for a year more. Once we moved back, my parents looked for a school for me.

As I didn’t know how to read or write Malayalam, which is the state language, they looked for schools where I could opt for another language instead. We found a school that one of my cousins studied in – he was about to start the 9th grade that year – and which was very close to my house. So the curriculum would be taught in English and for languages classes we had English, Hindi and instead of Malayalam, I could opt for a class called Special English or Advanced English. So when I joined I was one of just 5 students in that class as everyone else would have the Malayalam language classes.

Well every year, from 6th grade till the 10th, we sat in a small room, with a couple of desks & benches and the English language teacher would take us through the difference class of Special English and we had tests just like the rest of the kids did. It as fun, made us feel a little extra special, plus the last couple of years we had some awesome texts. It was fun.