I was trying to see if I could remember the Indian pledge and still say it by heart. I could. And this is the reason why!!
When I was in school we had two Physical Education periods. One was called P.T and the other games. The difference between the two was that we played Games in the games period and we played games in the PT period after 15 minutes of obligatory exercises. Our P.T teacher was Ms.Pyareji ( I wonder what her first name was….nobody called her anything other than that) and she ensured that we did our routine PT exercises (there were 12 0f them…taught in the 5th standard and then simply repeated year after year after year),
We also had P.T exams twice a year, which was very entertaining. Each class genrally had students from 4 houses (Red, blue green and yellow) and the exams were taken house-wise. The 12/13 girls belonging to a house would stand in a semi circle around Ms.Pyareji. She would call out a random number between 1 and 12 and then all of us would proceed to do that particular exercise. This was followed by a nails inspection where she ran a cursory glance to check that our nails were in order (clipped and with no nail polish!). Then depending on whether it was the finals we would also have to perform a group folk dance which we would did with maximum of enthusiasm and minimum grace. Generally like the exercises, these too were decided in the fifth grade and then just repeated year after year.
Then would come the pledge saying. After we had arranged ourselves back in the semicircle she would ask each one us to repeat the Indian pledge. …in Hindi!
The version we used was similar to the image on the right in meaning, although certain sentences were constructed differently . Â This one is the Kendriya Vidyalaya pledge while we repeated something that sounded as below.
“bhaarat mera desh hai. Sabhii bhaarateeya mere bhaaii-bahn hai. mujhe apane desh se pyaar hai aur apane desh ki samrruddhi tathaa vividhatao se vibhuShit paramaparao par mujhe garv hai. mai.n  un paramaparaon kaa safal anuyayii banane kii hameshsa prayatna karoongii.  mujhe apane maataa-Pitaa,  Gurujano aur badon kaa sammaan karoongii aur har jan se saujanyapoorna vyavahaar karoongii. main apane desh aur deshvaasiyon ke prati niSHThA  rakhoongi. Unke bhalaaii aur samruddhi main hii meraa sukh nihit hai.”
Translated:
“India is my country. All Indians are my brothers and sisters. I love my country, and I am proud of its rich and varied heritage. I shall always strive to be worthy of it. I shall give my parents, teachers and elders respect and treat everyone with courtesy. To my country and my people, I pledge my devotion. In their well being and prosperity alone lies my happiness.â€
Some things are just difficult to forget.
