March Madness, Amidst a Retreat

March has always carried a certain fever. Even now, as an adult, the month arrives with a faint tightening in my chest — as though somewhere a progress report is waiting to be opened. For many of us who grew up in Chennai, March was not just a month. It was a season of judgement.

I was fifteen when March first acquired personality.

Public exams were approaching, and my progress report and I were not exactly on speaking terms. I had quietly concluded that most of my classmates were better equipped for life, academics, and possibly existence. It was around this time that our school decided we needed a retreat — two days away from the city, run by Franciscan brothers, for “personality development.”

At fifteen, the phrase sounded both promising and suspicious.

We travelled by bus to a campus outside Chennai. I don’t remember its name now, which feels appropriate. Some places are meant to remain unnamed, as though they belong to memory more than geography.

We arrived late in the evening. The main building stood at a polite distance from the sleeping quarters assigned to us. Between the two lay a path lined with trees — tall, enthusiastic, and far more dramatic after sunset.

That first walk from the main building to our quarters felt longer than it probably was. The trees swayed in the dark as though they had independent opinions about our future. We walked in clusters, speaking loudly enough to suggest bravery but softly enough not to invite unnecessary attention from either spirits or teachers. I remember pretending not to be frightened, as though fear required peer approval.

Looking back, it strikes me that the trees were only doing what trees do. It was my imagination that was overperforming.

We were told a Brother would be waiting to receive us. Given the solemnity of the phrase, I expected something between a blessing and a briefing.

Instead, we walked into a large hall where a projector was casting an enormous image on the wall. Dorothy was cycling down a dusty road, her hair tied in neat braids, the sky already hinting at mischief.

He turned, smiled, and said, “Come, sit. Watch.”

That was it.

No preamble. No sermon. No orientation.

Just Dorothy on a bicycle — magnified to heroic proportions on a giant screen.

I remember being stunned by the scale of it. The image filled the wall. The colours felt bold. The sound travelled freely in the room.

At home, our television lived inside a cupboard — a small, obedient box that appeared only when my mother unlocked it. She held the key with administrative dignity. Watching anything required timing, justification, and good behaviour. The screen itself was modest, careful not to occupy too much space in the house or in our imagination.

And here we were — at a religious retreat — watching a full-length film projected larger than life.

If someone had told me earlier that “personality development” would begin with Dorothy cycling into a storm, I might have packed differently — perhaps even smuggled in popcorn from the Sisters’ run Duck Shop.

We sat on chairs, tired from travel but suddenly alert. I watched not just the movie, but the scale of it. The freedom of it. The absence of negotiation.

Somewhere between Kansas and Oz, something in me loosened.

It was the most unexpected welcome I could have imagined.

This was my first time staying away from home. Until then, every trip had been with family — and on the rare school excursion, I was often the one who stayed back. Some years the syllabus limited our “excursions” to within Chennai — VGP, Blue Lagoon — grand names that felt international at the time.

But this retreat was compulsory. Two whole days.

The sleeping arrangement that night was one large room with floor bedding laid neatly in rows. It also meant the bedding had to be folded and organised neatly after we woke up — discipline, even in dormitory democracy. It felt like a dignified sleepover. The same trees that had looked ghostly earlier now stood outside our windows, swaying but slightly less theatrical.

In the daylight, the campus revealed its true temperament — spacious, green, welcoming. The retreat officially began.

There were games. Personality exercises. Lucky draws. Bingo that turned unexpectedly competitive. Most importantly, the quiet hierarchies of our three school sections dissolved. Girls who had barely spoken to one another were suddenly teammates.

Ice has a sound when it breaks. It sounds like laughter.

I did not know then that something in me was thawing too.

I found myself laughing more than I had in weeks. No one asked for marks. No one compared test scores. For two days, I was not a progress report. I was simply one among many — present, participating, alive.

What I did not tell anyone then was that the previous year I had borrowed The Power of Positive Thinking from Murugan Lending Library — a modest establishment that quietly fuelled many of my early philosophical experiments. I had saved my rupees carefully to access that book. At fifteen, I believed positivity could be practised like handwriting — something you repeat until it improves.

I was already reading widely — taking even my own inherited religion with a pinch of salt, reading Thich Nhat Hanh with quiet admiration, curious about everything, committed to nothing blindly. Faith, for me, was something to explore, not inherit wholesale.

So I watched the Brother carefully.

He was undeniably rooted in Christ, but he never wielded it like a tool. His enthusiasm did not demand conversion. His positivity did not sound rehearsed. He encouraged us to see things differently, to try, to participate, to risk small failures within games. He laughed easily. He listened. He seemed genuinely happy.

If he had thrust faith upon us, I would have quietly switched off. But he did something far more effective — he lived what he believed.

In him, I saw something that books were trying to explain.

At fifteen, I could not have articulated this. I only knew that being around him felt lighter. The atmosphere he created did not rank us. It did not measure us. It did not label us.

And here is the truth: I had mistaken my report card for a character certificate.

I had quietly accepted that my academic struggles defined my worth. Walking through school corridors often felt like walking that dark path between buildings — aware of who was ahead, who was brighter, who was more confident.

But at that retreat, the ghost of comparison lost its sharp edges.

We returned to the city after two days. March continued its feverish countdown to public exams. I studied. I worried. I wrote my papers.

When the results came, I did not collapse in despair. In fact, my marks gave me strength — not because they were spectacular, but because they confirmed something had shifted. I had put in my best. I had shown up. I had stopped outsourcing my worth.

The retreat did not magically transform my grades. It did something subtler. It adjusted my internal compass.

Years later, when I think of those swaying trees, I smile. In daylight, they were simply tall, green, mildly dramatic trees. The ghost had travelled with me on the bus. It had been called Inferiority. It had worn the shape of comparison.

That retreat did not exorcise it with grand declarations. It simply exposed it to light.

Today, as an adult, I still carry that fifteen-year-old within me. She feels first. She worries sometimes. She is alert to shadows. She reads books with earnest seriousness and saves money to borrow ideas.

The adult in me listens to her. Then she adds perspective.

Between the two of us, most of my important decisions are made.

The emotional girl reminds me to care deeply. The practical woman reminds me that most ghosts are branches in the dark.

March still arrives with its old drama. But it no longer frightens me.

I walk past trees differently now — especially in March.

And I no longer mistake their shadows for truth.