---
title: The Last Day of School | Bachpan Diaries
description: Signed shirts, group photos, promises to meet every year, all with the certainty of people who'd never yet lost touch with anyone. Also written in Hindi.
image: https://bachpandiaries.com/hubfs/bachpan-diaries-theme/blog/featured%20images/PNGs/The%20Last%20Day%20of%20School.png
---
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# The Last Day of School
By Manoj Rajput • April 12, 2026
Now Playing The Last Day of School
0:00 / —
1×
Nobody told us it was the last day.
I mean — we knew it was the last day. It was on the calendar. We had been counting down for weeks. But knowing a thing is the last day is not the same as feeling it, and we did not feel it until it was already over.
We signed each other's shirts.
We took photographs in groups that will never all be together again. We made promises — to meet every month, then every year, then at the ten-year reunion — with the absolute certainty of people who have never yet lost touch with anyone.
I remember standing at the school gate at four-thirty waiting for my father to pick me up. Everyone else had already left. The driveway was empty. A peon was sweeping the corridor.
Twelve years of school. Four thousand-odd days. And now just a gate and a sweeper and the smell of chalk dust in the air.
My father arrived late and honked twice. I got in the car.
"Done?" he said.
"Done," I said.
He drove. I looked out of the window. We didn't talk.
I didn't cry until I was home and in my room with the door closed. Not for long. I wasn't even sure what I was crying for — not sadness exactly, more the strange feeling of something that had always been there simply not being there anymore.
I see those people sometimes. Fewer and fewer as the years go on. The monthly meetings became yearly, then occasional, then birthday messages, then silence.
But the shirt is still somewhere. Folded in a box in my parents' house. Everyone's names in blue and black and one very optimistic red.
✦
✦ Kahaani Khatam ✦
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Manoj Rajput
I'm the founder of Bachpan Diaries. I started this project chasing down the small, ordinary memories of growing up in India that never seem to get written down anywhere, madaari shows, school bells, dabbas from home. I still read every story myself before it goes up.
FROM THE ARCHIVE
## Continue the Journey
### [ Ages 18–40 हिं The taandh ran the full length of the wall, corner to corner, and the television sat right on it, a curtain hanging in front, kept closed most days. Coming back, not from school, from tuition, pulling the curtain aside and fixing the antenna was always the first thing to happen. Read story → Bachpan Diaries · 3 min read Do You Remember Shaktimaan? Nostalgia The taandh ran the full length of the wall, corner to corner, and the television sat right on it, a curtain hanging in front, kept closed most days. Coming back, not from school, from tuition, pulling the curtain aside and fixing the antenna was always the first thing to happen. Manoj Rajput Oct 2](https://bachpandiaries.com/stories/do-you-remember-shaktimaan)
### [ Ages 18–40 हिं He used to grab hot, burning plastic with his bare hands sometimes, quick, almost bored about it, moving it aside before it could do real damage, like his hands had already decided this was fine. He was a supervisor in a factory that used to build plastic containers, Delhi, night shifts mostly. For two years, when I was ten, we lived inside that factory. Not near it, inside it. Read story → Bachpan Diaries · 5 min read What He Left Behind Family He used to grab hot, burning plastic with his bare hands sometimes, quick, almost bored about it, moving it aside before it could do real damage, like his hands had already decided this was fine. He was a supervisor in a factory that used to build plastic containers, Delhi, night shifts mostly. For two years, when I was ten, we lived inside that factory. Not near it, inside it. Manoj Rajput Sep 7](https://bachpandiaries.com/stories/what-he-left-behind)
### [ Ages 18–40 हिं It was afternoon, the kind of hour when the street usually went quiet, just the fan whirring and a radio playing somewhere far off. Then came a sound, dum, dum, dum, someone was playing a damroo, still far away, but our ears were already up. Spoons got left mid bite, slippers stayed behind, we just ran for the gully. Read story → Bachpan Diaries · 4 min read Madaari, The Monkey Show Nostalgia It was afternoon, the kind of hour when the street usually went quiet, just the fan whirring and a radio playing somewhere far off. Then came a sound, dum, dum, dum, someone was playing a damroo, still far away, but our ears were already up. Spoons got left mid bite, slippers stayed behind, we just ran for the gully. Manoj Rajput Aug 11](https://bachpandiaries.com/stories/madaari)
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