About me and other tail-less bipeds
It was a big jump for me – from an ordinary Bengali medium school to the upcoming Denobili. It was the early sixties. After a sort of entrance examination Father Macpherland said, “Your maths is average but your English is miserable.” So I was demoted from class eight of my earlier school to standard six in Denobili. Nevertheless.
On second thoughts going down the ladder was great. Otherwise I would have missed the whole bunch of eccentric classmates, who have remained great friends over the last sixty years or so.
The school building was small then with a small compound wall. There was this ropeway through our school compound carrying sand to the coal mines. To our great delight one of these trolleys would sometimes topple over with a loud bang spreading sand all over. No accidents occurred however. During tiffin breaks we all had to stare skywards to avoid the kites which would snoop down to snatch away the tiffin boxes from our grips. (Alas, we hardly see kites these days).
Father Macpherland left when I joined and Father Hess took over. I was dumb struck by the appearance of the Greek god.
In any case I was dumb for the first six months in Denobili, simply because I could not speak in English and speaking in any other language was a punishable offence. Two of my classmates – Basu (Mani) and Ashim (Choudhury) took me in their folds and tried to make me fit to face the world.
But it was Ojha (Paramatma) who was my greatest teacher. He taught me about the birds and the bees. He whispered to me in great detail about the facts of life in a secret rendezvous and then told the whole class about it and everybody laughed and laughed at my stupid naivety.
This was the turning point and I grew up fast. The first inkling of my growing adulthood dawned when Miss Usha Gupta in her Bengali class snapped at me “Kundu (everybody called me Kundu – teachers and students alike – I don’t know why) for the last fifteen minutes your eyes are veered towards the right. If you keep staring at Mount Carmel this way you will develop a squint and fail in Bengali.” I stopped looking sideways through the corner of my eye and started loitering around Mount Carmel instead whenever I got the chance. I developed a squint anyway and barely passed in Bengali.
The classes were a lot of fun. Except that we were a little wary of Father Bradely and Sir Manik Midday, as neither believed in the philosophy of sparing the rod. Gurucharan was the favourite of Mr Midday, who would make it a point in every maths class to utter in his loveable Bengali accent, “Guroochorone, come to the blackboard and solve this equation.” Guru would invariably fail (sometimes I think Guru did it on purpose). And the sequel would be that Mr Midday would get hold of one of Guru’s ears and give it a firm twist. Guru in turn developed a defensive strategy. He wore a large turban stiffly starched with the ears fully tucked in. Oh it was hilarious to see Mr Midday trying to extricate the ear from the folds of the tightly wrapped turban.
Our Moral Science class was the best. I can’t tell what we were taught in this class as these were all adult stuff and would be censored by the editor anyway. But I can tell you this. The discussions in the Moral Science class were never complete without a plenty of amoral anecdotes. And sometimes there would be thrilling episodes that would encourage lively debates. Let me tell you a day’s chronicle and then maybe you will follow.
Father Dietrich was taking us through the Ten Commandments. We were all waiting for the Seventh Commandment, as we were sure that particular sermon would bring in absorbing discussions. But Father was lingering on the Sixth {Thou shalt not kill}.
Suddenly a diversion. A faint barking of a dog. Father rushed out of the class and fetched his rifle.
A stray wild canine had ventured inside the school compound. Father took aim from the corridor. Father Detrich was a good shot. At three hundred yards the dog had no chance.
A dying scream told us that the game was over. Through the windows we could see a couple gardeners dumping the corpse in a grave already dug out in anticipation. Father coolly returned to the class and finished the Sixth Commandment.
But the bell rang. We had to wait till the next class for the Seventh Commandment (Thou shalt not commit adultery).
One of the things that got me mesmerised in school was the number of trophies, medals and cups displayed on the dais on the sports day. There would be hundreds. More than half of them would be carried away by
Chanchal (Banerjea) and most of the rest by his brother Bidyut (alas Bidyut is no more). Last year I challenged Chanchal to a hundred metres race, but he declined. He has had a cardiac bypass.
Early in school I had decided that I must have one of those silvery looking medals. So I tried all there was – hundred metres, two hundred, four hundred, mile race, high jump, long jump and so on and failed miserably in all. I tried basketball, football, baseball, hockey and tennis and was successful at nothing. The tennis racket was too heavy. I tried boxing and the very first day one of the Desuza brothers (was it Kelvin?) gave me such a beating that I decided then and there that boxing was not meant for the intellectuals. I tried hard at everything and the best I could achieve was a fifth in one cross country race. It gave my house a point, but no medal for me.
I tried the elocution contest. During my time passages from Julius Caesar and the great speech by Abraham Lincoln were the favourites. I almost made it to the top once. At the end I bowed as low as Subhas Banerjee did (he was the best elocutionist of my era). But to no avail. Vanamali as usual beat me to it.
But I was determined. The lure of that silvery looking medal was too much. So I took one my sister’s paintings (she was an artist of sorts) and presented it in the arts and crafts competition as my own. ( Mr Hadi our crafts teacher will no doubt be shocked to hear of this fraud, but I think it is sixty years too late to make amends}. And I got my medal, which I sill possess.
But you see the point. I tried. I tried very hard. All of us tried. Fathers encouraged us to try. In fact some of them forced us to try. And that I think it helped us in later lives. The ambience created by our teachers, admonition or punishments we grudgingly accepted, was directed towards imbibing a sense of discipline and values which, I do acknowledge, helped us in later life. We survived in the bigger world. Most of my classmates reached the pinnacle in their respective fields. I am proud of my classmates.
But it is closing time for us. We have enjoyed our lives and still do so. But a small query remains? Have we played any significant role in making the world a better place to live in for our children? I wonder.
I am sure the new Nobilians will take up the challenge. It is, I repeat, the closing time for us. And the world dear upcoming Nobilians, is yours to deal with.
Dr Asish Kumar Kundu NOBILIAN 68 Batch
