School life in Ludhiana had edge from the start.
Everybody was measuring something: marks, shoes, handwriting, tiffin, cricket skill, tuition results, confidence, even who got picked first for random things that should not have mattered.
The city teaches comparison early, but it also teaches you how to survive it with humor.
Morning assemblies, canteen rushes, bus-stop gossip, and post-school coaching all blended into one long competitive season.
At the time it felt exhausting and normal in equal parts.
Later, it starts feeling funny and strangely formative.
A lot of Ludhiana adults were shaped in those corridors before they ever entered a boardroom.
Drop the one Ludhiana school memory that still feels weirdly intense today.