This blog post has been written by Suchitto Kumar Das for his friend Ajit , who could not attend the Alumni Meet of the Sainik School Tilaiya, 69 - 76 batch.
The venue of the meet was at their school : Sainik School Tilaiya, Jharkhand. Many of the class mates met after 39 years .
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Calcutta
5th Nov 2015
My dear Ajit,
This is for you.
Let me begin with a disclaimer: I
am extremely poor while describing emotions and other such non tangibles. So my
narrative will probably be too factual and therefore dry for your tastes, nevertheless
I felt that we owe it to you to give a detailed blow by blow account of the two
days we spent in SST.
When my wife and I arrived in the
school at about 8pm on the 31st, Ramnath , Sanjay 478, Vijay 535,
Singhasan, Jaishankar, Sunil Singh (with their wives) Anil, Shivanand, YN, ,
Salil and Pramod were already there. On arrival we registered with the hostel
supdt. And were given a kit containing 2 T shirts, a tie and the momento.
People with their wives were given a room each in the guest houses spread out
in the campus. The forced bachelors stayed in one of the dormitories We then
gathered in a hall adjoining the tennis court/ Basketball court which used to
be in front of Mr. Farooqui’s house
behind the Principals residence in our time. I remember Col. Satsangi and his
wife singing Waqt ne kiya kya hasin sitam there once during an open air
function with senior students.
There was lot of hugging and back
slapping with long lost classmates over drinks and snacks. After some time, the
principal, registrar and the headmaster also joined us. Ramnath then took the mike and invited us to
speak. Some of us and our wives spoke. Led by Ramnath, we waited for the Ranchi party to arrive. Meanwhile the
Principal gave a longish speech while making a pitch for acquiring a water
filtration plant for the students partly with our contribution.
Meanwhile, people from Ranchi, Niranjan, Prabhas, Rangnath,
Ramesh, Vyomkesh, Virendra Bhagat, Ashok Sahu and others arrived at about 11PM.
The speeches and drinks continued till midnight.
The
dinner was called at 12 O clock at night. We had food in the Junior’s dining
hall. The staff was nice enough not only to keep aside food for us but they
even warmed it at that late hour. There was high drama after dinner. It was
drizzling and none of us except Ramnath and YN was familiar with the general
layout of the school which has changed completely from the days we were there.
Group of forced bachelors had moved to the hostel where they were supposed to
stay. Ladies had finished their food a little earlier and they were waiting in
another wing. Somebody was not able to locate his wife and in desperation he ran
around all over the campus in the rain. Somebody managed to misplace his car
keys with his luggage locked inside the boot and another one was simply unable
to locate the room he had been allotted. The confusion added to the fun we were
already having. It also reminded me to find my bearings with respect to the old
layout of the school as soon as possible. I will write about the changes in the
physical infrastructure of the school later.
Things settled down only around 2.30 am in the
morning when everybody was able to locate his/her spouse, car, driver, luggage
et al. Meanwhile, the bachelors in the hostel had a good time chatting and
pulling each other’s legs till 3 in the morning.
Inspite
of the late night, almost everybody was up early the next morning. We went for
breakfast and waited for Shyam Mohan Murari, Sanjay Jha, Ravi Kishore, Shyam
Kishore, Mukund and Arvind 490 to join us, which they did by about 10. All of
us changed into the maroon T shirt arranged by Ravi Kishore. Apart from the
emotional dividend, in terms of bonding the T shirt was very useful in
identifying the batchmates from a distance throughout the day.
All of us then moved to Capt. Manoj Auditorium
(named after our 500), where boys from classes XI and XII had gathered. After a
very inspiring round of oath taking and a prayer song, began the speeches compeered
by Ramnath. Almost all of us spoke for a minute or two each. All of us were
obviously emotionally charged to have a get together after such a long gap.
Some spoke very well, some fumbled a little and some like me mumbled
incoherently. But everybody was very upbeat about the future of the school and
its students. What struck me most about our batchmates is that almost everybody
was proud of the achievements of his children. This is no mean achievement and
many of us did attribute this to the values imbibed by us in school and our
success in passing them on to our progenies. Meanwhile, Philip landed up in the
auditorium straight from Ahmedabad via Ranchi. Suddenly, he appeared on the
podium in his suit and tie. Many of us took some time to recognize him till he
started speaking and the penny dropped. He, of course changed into the T shirt
in no time and quickly immersed himself in the landscape of the bon homie.
The
principal and the headmaster also spoke. The headmaster, a strapping young
Squadron Ldr., was particularly
expansive about the giant strides the school has made in the academic sphere.
He said that in 2015, there were 20 students who had secured more than 90% in
CBSE exam and apart from making it to NDA, a large number of students had also
made past the IIT JEE Mains. It was vacation time, but Class XI and XII
students had stayed back for special classes and the headmaster said that he
wanted to raise the academic standards so high that no Tilaiyan would need to
go to Kota for IIT coaching. If even a part of it is true, it would be good for
the students because I have always felt that in our times emphasis on academics
was relatively less probably because of the overwhelming importance of NDA. I
have always maintained that those among
us who did not go to NDA were probably not fully prepared either for
life outside the school or for alternative careers.
Two of the ladies, Mrs. Murari and my wife
Ananya also spoke on the occasion. Mrs. Murari recounted her visit to school
immediately after her wedding. She said that the fact that Shyam Mohan took her
to school instead of to one of the usual honeymoon locations showed his
feelings and respect for the school. She also reminisced that the reception she
received from the people in school befitted the one reserved for a new bride in
one’s family. Ananya said that in the early days of our marriage she found it a
little strange that I would mostly talk about my school and not about my
college days, but then she understood that I was much more attached to my
school than to my college even though the latter was much better known and more
prestigious. I remember that even though I had lot more independence in College
and life was more interesting in Delhi than it could possibly have been in
Tilaiya, I yearned for my school days till much after I left school. In fact, I
continued to live my days in school through my dreams almost all through my
stay in college. Ananya also said that she was grateful to the school for
having given her a husband who is respectful towards women and otherwise a good
human being. This open praise by my wife made me vulnerable to a lot of good
natured leg pulling later by my dear friends.
We left the Auditorium (Assembly Hall for us)
at 1245 and went to the staff room for snacks. The entire administrative block,
the class rooms and the other adjoining buildings look quite impressive. They
have been constructed in the land between the erstwhile administrative gate and
the road to the dam, opposite the lock factory if you remember. The lobby of
the administrative block has huge boards containing the names and school
numbers of all those who have made it to NDA since 1963. There were some
inaccuracies like Uday Shankar’s name was missing and Pramod’s school number
was wrong. Nonetheless it is a commendable effort to remember and honour those
who fulfilled the school’s stated mission. Principal promised to rectify all
inaccuracies as soon as they are brought to his attention.
Led by Ramnath, we then went in the school bus
to meet Mr. M Sharma, our maths teacher. He has started a residential school
for small children on a piece of land located on the other side of the road
from Urwan More to Dam opposite the Dhobi Ghat Corner of SST. He is 89 and
though a bit frail physically looked
fairly agile mentally. All of us including all the ladies touched his
feet and took his blessings. We presented him with a shawl.
We came back for lunch to school. We had lunch
and then some of us went looking for the old landmarks. We entered the old
campus near the hillock behind the dining hall which you were enquiring about.
We made our way through the road between the MI Room and the Isolation ward and
turned right towards U Kumar’s and HSPd’s house. New MI Room has come up in the
house of U. Kumar. The old houses are
still there and we could identify M/S RC Sharma, RD Singh, Moinuddin, MN Jha’s
house. The main passage to the old Dining Hall adjoining HS Pd’s house is
almost nonexistent with some construction and some vegetation blocking it
completely. Similarly, near Mr. RD Singh’s house, passage from the road to the
back of Magadh house through its lawns was also blocked. Same with the passage
to Maurya. In fact, we had to walk all the way to the gate and skirt Vikram
House from the back. Vikram House lies completely abandoned with doors and
windows barred and its dilapidated insides partially visible from outside. We
entered Vaishali house from a door which has been created on the wall abutting
the road outside. This building has been converted partially into a cafeteria
and I am told is run by Moti’s family. Kitchen of the cafeteria is where the
bathrooms used to be.
The
passage between Magadh and Vaishali has been widened. Magadh, Mithila, Nalanda
and Maurya have been converted into what somebody from school referred to as
the holding area for class VI. It seems
the menace of ragging has afflicted our school also. In the main hostel
building, large posters advising
students against ragging have been put up by the administration. Each of these
houses has about 25-30 beds. The tall wooden lockers which used to be fixed on
one wall have been replaced by steel cupboards/lockers. Beds and mattresses
looked much better than what we slept on. Toilets for all the four houses have
been shifted outside to a common area. After a tour of the old hostels and the
roads, the unanimous opinion was all roads and buildings looked much smaller
now than what we remembered them to be from 1976.
We then went to the Dam in the school bus. Some
of us and their wives went on boats in
the dam waters for about half an hour. You must have seen the pictures. One
thought that occurred to some of us is that we don’t remember doing any boating
in the dam during our school days.
Some of us also went up the hill to the DVC
Circuit House on the top. It is still the same. No additional structures seem
to have been constructed in the last 50 years.
We came back to the school and went for tea and
snacks to the area near the basket ball court and the handball court. Play
grounds are in front of this area. A new squash court and a gym has come up
where we had the swimming pool. Play grounds have been provided with cemented
seating arrangements like in a stadium. A permanent shed with seating
arrangement has been made where the teachers and students used to sit while
watching cricket and athletics. Football goalposts have been placed
perpendicular to the direction they were placed in our time. The football
ground at the lower level at the far end still exists in the same form as it
used to. Headmaster’s house is at the same place. The road that we used to
travel between our houses/classrooms to the playgrounds is still there but is
closed to the students because the old classrooms have been converted to staff
quarters.
Almost all new important buildings like the
boys’hostel, dining hall, class rooms, auditorium and the administrative block
have come up beyond the boundaries of the old school. These buildings have been
constructed on the land between the old boundary of the school and the road to
the Dam. Somebody must have acquired that land for the school in the subsequent
years. Now there is a single building which houses the entire hostel complex
and is connected to the dining halls. Modern multistoried flats have been
constructed for teachers near the hillock you were looking for. The road along
the school boundary from the hostel gate to the gate near the office has now
become the main thoroughfare inside the school. I could not see the old
assembly hall, staff room and the library or the boxing ring and the ground
surrounding it. Many of these buildings seemed inaccessible to us. The old
access routes may have changed to such an extent that we could not reach them.
We could only see the back of the science block and the physics and chemistry
lecture theatres.
In the map Red is NOW and Black is as it
used to be in 1969-76
We gathered at the tennis court again in the
evening at 7.30. The hostel superintendent proposed a game of Antakshari
between the ladies and the gents. From our side, Niranjan was the star of the
show, ever ready with the appropriate song, so much so that the referee banned
him temporarily so that others could also get a chance. After the Antakshari,
Shivanand, Madan Mohan and my wife and I sang a few songs. The grand finale to
the cultural evening was, of course, the spirited performance by Sanjay jha
which got many of us on the dance floor. He sang Dumadam mast qalander with
gusto.
Since many of us were preparing to leave,
dinner was called at 9.30. We had very good food at the tennis court.
People
then started leaving with smile on their faces which scarcely hid the tears in
their eyes and the pain in their hearts at having to part again.
This, then is a chronological log of our
activities during the two most wonderful days of our lives.
You will appreciate that the entire narrative
is a first person account written from my perspective. It may not be totally
accurate as the time was too short to absorb everything that was on offer.
Others may have more to add to this or may even correct me if I am wrong. Hope
you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.
Yours
Suchitto
Akhwari was never likely to win the marathon, but
his chances were wrecked when, perhaps because of the effects of the high
altitude, he succumbed to cramps that slowed his progress. If that was painful,
then worse was to come after he was involved in a melee of athletes jockeying
for position.
