Same room, different future

More than fifty years ago,
we sat fresh-faced in the same room at Penang Free School,
dressed alike, believing the world was waiting for us.
The mornings smelled faintly of chalk and grass;
sunlight streaming in through open doors,
while our teachers, with quiet patience,
moulded our young minds for the journeys ahead.

We laughed easily
at small jokes and harmless pranks that lightened the day.
A chalk mark on someone’s back,
a wisecrack that set the class howling.
The echo of our laughter would follow us
down the long corridors,
past the rows of classrooms and notice boards,
and out to the wide playing field
where time seemed to stand still.

It was there, under the same blue sky,
that we grew up without noticing
each game, each shared moment,
the years that waited quietly beyond the school gates.
And now, when I look at the old photographs,
I see the same faces, the same light
that once filled our classroom.

Our teachers have mostly gone,
but their lessons live on.
Not just in what we learned,
but in how we learned to face the world.
Time has softened us, perhaps,
but the boyhood in those eyes still lingers.
For though half a century has slipped away,
a part of us will always belong
to those corridors and that field,
to that sunlit room in Penang Free School.

(This reflection was inspired by an image I saw on whatsapp today.)