The Upper Room

It's amazing how memories manage to attach themselves to so much around us; people, odours, tastes, mental images...

Alright PG Wodehouse, memories are definitely like Mulligatawny soup and it's best not to stir them; but what if they force themselves down your throat? It felt like a dam had burst and the power of the sea had been unleashed. Every single detail flashed across my mind; the candidates' faces, the words that flew across that room in the summer of 2005, the expectations, the nervousness et al.

******

It was that time of the year when the Student Council had to be elected for the senior section of our school. Being a newbie at the institution and consequently not being very well known had nipped my chances of ever getting short listed for even House Prefect, or so I thought. The surprise moment had happened when the list for Head Boy and Head Girl had been passed around all classes and there it had been in black and white, 'Melissa Nazareth'.

"We all voted for you Meli," one of my best friends had said. I had just smiled trying to look modest but it had made me happy that those who did know me thought I was worth it. An entire day of student voting and at the end of it we were called to the room...

******

That's when I had walked into the Executive Committee (EC) room on the first floor of the main office for the first time. An intimidating place it had been back then but today it just made me feel as comfortable as a womb would have a foetus. In 2005 I would've never really thought that life would bring me back to the EC room seven years down the line, but it did; and am I glad that it did!

Strange life is and stranger are memories...