This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any person, place, or thing, is purely coincidental. However, if greatly relevant to the narrative, your comments, are, indeed, welcome!
There was once, once upon a time, a merry school that was also a high school. As is the case with high schools there were over a thousand students, some boarders others dayscholars. The dayscholars thought the boarders had it better and the boarders thought likewise. On sundays the school would organize some film shows using traditional 35mm projectors and this was done in a hall that was also the theatre hall of the school. The primaries sat in the front seats, the juniors and the inters, after that, followed by the seniors, and then in the most dignified of the back-seats sat the British and American Priests of the Society of Jesus of Chicago. While the priests, seniors and inters saw the films, that were mostly in english, the juniors and primaries, since they could not make perfect sense of an Othello, or a John Wayne, a Peter Sellers, and the later to be Sir Michael Caine, except in the fight-scenes, and all the stars of the 1960s, they would often enough play their own games. One of these was to lick the stage after the hall had been abandoned after the picture show to see what a really horribly dirty stage tasted like.
Although there a host of other fathers (who lived in an enormous and very dignified fathers' building), and brothers (who lived, I donot know where!), it is simply not possible to remember every one of them. Father Welfle was aged, but enjoyed his swim. He would often, on saturday's and sundays, at leisure, have a swim with the boys. Father Welfle had the strangest of all strokes of swimming - he would simply lie flat on his back (in the pool-water, that is) and either simply float, with his white-belly protruding over the surface of the water clear enough for all to see, or gently paddle himself with his feet from one end of the pool to the other and back! Father Cleary, on the other hand, was another, and a very different piece of Cake! And father Carver, the piece de resistance of Cricket....always with a runny nose...he always packed a mean bat....almost the non-existent catier-bresson spectacles, back in the 1960s, father carver, was sure as anything, a Yorshire Man! To be sure, even as primaries, we studied his moves, on the cricket-field....you may not do otherwise, if you catch my point, if cricket, is played, as it should, in pure whites!
There was a fathers' buidling where they all dwelt. We were allowed into the Fathers' building just once in awhile...like to play chess with an awfully old priest...who for some reason never ever spoke at all, but was absolutely brilliant at chess, and if I remeber correctly, we thought he was Russian of origin, not that that meant any thing at all. He was very old, with a terribly long beard, but with sufficient, patience, to play chess with trifling Indian children; his beard was very long, and, kind of stained with tobacco; from which we may infer, that, in the 1960s, the fathers' were free to smoke, to their hearts content. This Father, he wore a cassock, and would engage us in these chess-duels, up on the second floor of the fathers' building; here we had free-pass too, no holds barred sort of entry, if we but muttered his name, and explained that we were going to play chess with him, to any inquisitive priest who may have wondered what we were about in the father's building.
This Father, he was ever so patient, never spoke a word, except through his gesture of beating the best of our players very hollow. As he was undeafetable, there was one way, however, to get his blood up. Make the same moves as he made.
Of all the American priests, brothers or fathers, Brother Nayor was the most cocky of americans, looked like he was about to go to war, as he readied the quite second-world-war-jeep for the hostellers, in 1969, for a visit to the soon to be purchased irish school called St. Michaels, Patna.
I still remeber the day I was deposited in school. We arrived by train from Bhagalpur, my mother and father; must have travelled from the railway station, patna, to St. Xaviers high school, by cycle-rickshaw, in the morning, and then walked into the school. of course i had cleared their not so easy entrance exams, so i couldn't have been a moron. then, i remeber, the tennis court. an over six foot tall and very white cassocked and bulky, and pink, and jowelled, father Murphy, took me by the arms, in front of my very emotionally shaken parents, and must have said: "Don't worry, We shall look after him from here". that was a parting of sorts. i was sure my parents understood what they were doing handing me over to this very first priest i must have seen in my whole eight years oof life! yet, Kishore Choudhary was nearby, already inducted, into the selfsame second standard, and roller skating, grinning, through his few broken front teeth. so i thoguht, school must be a fun place if broken-toothed kids were similing and having a good time.
Father Cox, was always banging away at his Remington Rand typewriter. Father Murphy, our principal, till kingdom come, was too imperial. There was a picture up on the school wall that had father murphy shaking hands with president Zakir Hussain, and the marvellous photo studio had them both floating up in the clodus. How wonderful!
Before I come to the other things, the next thing really worth remembering about this school or high school was its refectory - on account of its superb diet served to the inmates. as far as i may remember the primaries, juniours, inters and seniors, we all shared the same dining hall. it was therefore very large and capable of catering at once to about five hundred students or hostel inmates. we were expected to display perfect table-manners and were served by liveried bearers most of whom had anglo-indian names like Peter and Henry. The prefect in-charge of the mess was rotated and we had more than one in the five years I spent at this school, first a primary and then a junior, and one of these was Brother Gomes. He was so neat and clean, I remember, that his nose used to absolutely shine. Perhaps he himself was also aware of this and in his demure but firm way he would be hiding the shiny part of his nose when he rotated around the mess-hall chit-chatting with students or instructing the bearers to do this or that. There was heavy and very shameful punishment for not maintaining perfect manners at the table, accidents apart. for a jug of spilt milk, you would be ordered off the table and asked to finish your breakfast in a tamcheen plate squatting on the floor infront of 499 students. However, the fare was very nutritious and par excellence.
There is not much to any school, this fictitious one also therefore had just such the same things as annual fairs called the spring-fair, a sports day, a swimming festival, an academic prize-giving (called honours-day) day, annual dinners called banquets, study halls, music and recreation rooms, changing rooms, dormitories, an infirmary, and electronics club, a film club, a dramatics society, a chapel, a Fathers' Building, and several playing grounds for football, hockey, cricket, described variously as the first -field, the second -field the third - field and so on, a basket-ball court, a tennis court, a swimming pool, and indoor games like Table Tennis, ludo, chess and carrom. Quaintly, an Irish Game still persisted in this fictitious school or high school in the 1960s - it was called handball, and must have come to India with the Irish Brothers. Handball, was played in proper courts, perhaps some four of them, and it was hugely popular with all primaries, inters, juniours and seniors alike. as juniors we were also free to indulge in the mohalla games that we remebered very well and brought to school like marbles, tops and very occasionally, on holidays, gulli-danda. as boys are wont to do, in a circumscribed environment, and the school was surely one of them, as we rarely saw anything of the outside world, we invented several new games that were played on sundays in abandoned and little known corners of the school. the Ice-Spice game was also played, with the difference that the boys would go and hide near the biology lab which made it very dificult for one den as the smells that emanated from this lab portended the most evil, swift, and dastardly end - the human skeletons that were kept in the lab and what they might choose to do on a night like this was a matter of immediate concern!
A typical day in the life of a primary strated at 5:00 am in the morning when we were roused from our very comfortable and warm beds by a very loud bell. Then every body scampered, in nightsuits, to the loo, then the shower, and then onto the changing rooms that are often in india called dressing-rooms. here about a 1/2 a second of time was given to get dressed in the school uniform, shoes polished to a shining, crisp clothes, nails neatly cut, and in the 1960s the use of hairoil was made mandatory by the school thus such brands a cantharidine and keokarpin existed side by side with jabakusum, ghritkumari, dabar amla, coconut hairoil and mahabhringaraj that very strongly scented and smelley type. there were assistants like Patrick Ji and Lagan Ji who taught us the basics of things like cutting nails and tying proper knots to school ties, shoelaces, and how to push the school belt through the loops around the waist of the half-pant. after dressing there was a quick inspection by a brother and then single-file by 6:00 am or so we were marched into the morning-study. here no vestigial sleep was allowed as there was always a prefect brother with a very threatening but elegant cane that amply cheered us to study while still half-asleep. for hostellers, there was a hour a week reserved for letter-writing, usually letters home - these would be every weekend, and would usually report on the week's activities, like what ice-cream was served with bun-beans-chips-chops on saturday and that we saw the film Tokyo Olympiad this week. there was even a book-store in the school that sold pastries and we got free tucks on sundays. I once tried posting my sister two or three tucks putting them inside the weekly letter envelope, just to let her know what I meant by a tuck. however, Mr. Jeff who was on duty as the letter writing prefect that saturday while collecting and inspecting all the letters noiced that strange protrusion from my envelope and I was then the laughing stock of the room.
Come the sports day, the Republic day and the Independence Day a morning march past was the routine, after the morning study, and yes, still before breakfast. No body was spared and primary to senior had all to dress appropriately and march up and down within and without the premises of the school. You could hit the broad road outside or be practicing in the Gandhi Maidan only if you were a senior. The most popular tune played on the school loudspeakers, for marchpast rehearsal, was Colonel Bogeys March tune from the film The Bridge On the River Kwai.
And since I am near around the gates of this fictitious school, I may as well also remember that Frontier Gandhi, better known as Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan, visited our school once. I was still a primary then and got a view of him standing, I am mean actually standing up in a very large open car, probably an antique mercedes or chevrolet, going past the Fathers' Building and into the School. He was very tall and lean, quite aged, very fair-skinned, wearing white clothes and smiling and grinning at the boys. He had a very large hooked nose. As he was as white and tall as our priests we sort of looked at him with wonder and amazement, although since we had never seen Gandhi Ji we could not quite follow what was meant by Frontier Gandhi.
And while i am still about the gates of this fictitious school let me tell you that these gates of the school were always almost locked. all we could see of people hanging about, outside it, once the school-day got going, were various wallas, selling this or that that might have attracted some school-boys to buy. and what were these things. murhi-chaat and pachak. ice-cream was sold by Rudal inside the school. other than that it was the street-urchins usually who assembled at the gates and heckled the prim and properly-dressed school-boys. we were allowed-out of the gates only once in awahile,such as to see Julie Andrews in My Fair Lady, or Mary Poppins, which in the 1960s was showing at the Elephinstone, which was by far the best cinema hall of the town, in which this school or fictitious school was located. other than occassions like this, it was a visit to the dentist or the city hospital only that would earn us a trip outside of school. thus, and in other words,the school was self-contained and sufficed for most of our needs. it is no effort at all to take forward the eleven year story of a school or a fictitious school. first of all as some of the priests of the Society of Jesus of Chicago were obviously of american origin so our school had some peculiarly american aspects. in most schools of the time,in that town, drinking-water for students was provided through taps - we had curious silvery fountains that spouted water at the press of a lever directly into a mouth heldover the fountain.for rural boys like us it made drinking water a very funny and pleasurable activity leading some of us to drink as much water as was humanely possible in the course of a day. and then as we emerged from the school refectory, one fine morning, in 1968, the school black-board meant for urgent notices for the whole school, read as follows - MAN LANDS ON THE MOON. SCHOOL IS CLOSED TODAY.
Our school library, even in the sixties, was very well-stocked with story books, about which I shall have a lot to say later, the National geographic Magazine, and there must have been some other reading, or perhaps, as primaries, it was our peeps into the physics, chemistry and biology labs that the seniors used, were impetus enough for the primaries to form their own secret societies that very secretly pursued their own invention projects. we had our own sentries to guard against spies and such like of our rival inventing groups. i recall that a few of us who regularly lounged on the terrace of the school, from where we had a majestic and panoramic view of the Ganges, chose as our secret project to build a proto-type of Bachcha Baboo's Jahaj or Steamer, that we would see very often plying in the river. this was although merely a case of replication rather than invention since such toy-steamers were available for a farthing from the bazaar made by our famous and redoutable indian bazaar inventors who may make anything from the Apollo Eleven to the Tajmahal out of scrap tin, wires and the such like. our own project, this steamer one, as i remember, despite all our precaution to fend-off spies and the like, was a bit of a failure, as our prototype sank without so much as a spin of the ice-cream-stick-propeller affixed with a rubber-band, and that too in the very large sink in the bathroom meant for the primaries and the juniours.
Eventually, as in any school or a high school, we must eventually come to speak about the education itself. however, any succesful educational institution, must have a measure of discipline, to make sure all inmates imbibe or try to imbibe to the best of their abilities, what education is on offer. Now Father Edmund C. Rebeiro was our hostel superintendent, a very merry man, who smoked rolled-up cigarettes, and was more than leninet with his silver-mounted cane. his usual trap set for hostelers, in order to use his favourite cane was the washing or shower stalls. Father Edmund Rebiero sat on a stool, smoking his cigarette, and humming, whistling or singing the famous song "Lots of Choclates For Me to Eat" and swinging his cane to the rythm. That may have been music to him and My Fair Lady, but for us it was utter dread and struck the deepest terror in our hearts. The purpose of his presence at the shower-stalls was to ascertain the dirt-levels per student. To avoid the contingency of his cane, usually on a wet backside, we regularly bought clothes-scrubbers from the bookstore, and after soaping ourselves, we would use that hard scrubber vigorously on our arms and legs, the usual spots that Father Rebiero tested for the presence of dirt vestigial from football, hockey or simply rolling in the mud which some primaries resorted to for reasons best known to them.
The school tennis court was a multipurpose space. it was actually coloured red and was a hard-court. as i remember little tennis was played on it in the 1960s. mostly, it was used for those zillions of other games, like mini-bicycles, roller-skates, for roller-skating, and roller-skate hockey. next to this court was a absolutely huge banyan tree that held much significance for the primaries at least. in fruiting season, when the banyan would yield reddish fruits by the hundreds, there was these huge green flies, and the deadly yellow wasps, that would appear to feed on the fallen fruit or those on the trees and herein lay a game. such primaries, as me, would tie strings, really white threads to pieces of fruit, and then wait for one flie or wasp to pick-up the fruit. as soon as the wasp got the fruit, it would be soon airborne with the fruit and the length of string! that was thrill enough.
We played stairs-cricket by the side of that very tennis court.
Most importantly, come banquet-day, at the end of an academic year, it was this same tennis-court where 500 boys and priests descended to enjoy the evening. about fifty tables were laid out, with proper table-cloths, silver arranged, name tags in place, and a nice piece of music playing, that i shall remember shortly. each table has a presiding priest or a father, a brother, some seniors, inters, juniors and primaries. the repast started with music, liveried bearers bringing us soup, mostly cream of tomato, for which soup bowls and soup spoons were already in place. Over soup the head of the table would strike a conversation. as primaries since we were unable to understand what was being discussed between the priests, brothers, inters, we made ourselves busy with our own conversation, or else merely responded to any questions that were fired at us. these would usually be about sports, whether primary x or y had picked-up swimming, or about missing school-belts, about what we planned for our holidays. the banquet, after such elaborate preparations, naturally, lasted a few hours, but strict manners were mainatained, and there was no horsing around at all. it is possible for indian kids going to such schools, in the 1960s to forget most or everything about such lavish banquets, however, it is simply not possible to forget the vanilla ice-cream topped with hot molten chocolate sauce that usually rounded off the banquet. huge dollops of the ice cream and molten hot chocolate sauce srved in silver containers from which it was poured onto the ice cream. the chocolate bit was done by the waiters as primaries are likely to go after chocolate, molten or otherwise, with a vengeance. Sothat is where the eating habit of Xaverians comes from...at least I think I have got that right!
Now to education. it was not uncommon in the Xavier's of the 1960s that we had colleagues from such far aflung places like Rajasthan (Prithipal Singh Chauhan), Kolkata (Debashish Ghosh), Mahrashtra (Ajit Limaye), Nepal (Harsh and Shashank Koirala), and loads of Chinese boys, too, who were the by-products of a flourishing chinese community of doctors in patna. If we added to this menagerie of indians, our fathers and brothers and other teachers from Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Pondicherry, not to mention Goa, then a complete roll-call, of citizens from all parts of india, would, be complete. And the there were, with us, the dozen or so, students who were doyens, of the any princely families of Bihar - Kursela, Tikari, Tilauthu, Amanwan, Banaili - and so on. However, Brother Ittoop, our Hostel superintendent, and Father Reberio, before that, were very strict about pocket-money, insofaras hostel inmates were concerned. Primaries were, in no circumstance, allowed a generous pocket-allowance, disbursed by the Hostel Soup hisself, and an account of which, had to be provided by each student, in a proper allowance-card, provided by the Soup's office, was a paltry Rupees 2. so princely or unprincely, rupees two is all a xaverian got per week.
Amongst the teachers there was Gordon E. Murphy (Moral Science), Mrs. Gurtu (Music), James W. Cox, Father Carver, Father Welfle, Father Starr, Father Zubricky, Brother Nayor, John James (The School Nurse!), Mr. Jeff, Mrs. D'costa, Mr. D'costa, Mr. Kujur, Mr. Robin Francis, Mr. Fernandez, Mr. and Mrs. D'rosario, Mr. Raj, Mrs. Cowell, Mr. and Mrs. Patnaik, Mr. Alam, Mr. K.P. Sinha, Mr. Tarafdar, Mr. Mitra, and Mr. Mishra. I was then too young to remember what each of these our teachers taught us, by way of subjects, however, what I do remeber is this: Father Cox taught Elglish Language and Literature; Father Zubricky also taught English Language and Literature, Mr. Robin Francis taught Physics, Mr. Kujur taught Hindi and Sanskrit, Mrs. Gurtu taught Music, Mr. K.P. Sinha taught Hindi and Sanskrit, Mr. Alam taught Urdu, Mr. Tarafdar taught Geography, Mr. Mitra taught History, Mr. Peter Francis taught Economics, Mr. Fernandez taught us Aritmetic, Mr. P.N. Raj taught us Advanced Mathematics, Mr. D'rosario geometry, Mr. Thomas taught Chemistry, and finally Mr. Jeff was our lord and master of all sports and games (except swimming!). Brother Ittoop was a nasty player of tennis and was ever so generously roping in senior students to play and was free with his racquet and balls. the school had two hard-courts and a grass-court. I have already spoken about the study hours maintained in the hostel for primaries, juniors, inters and seniors, alike. Study, breakfast, study, school, tea, games, shower and change, study, dinner, study, bed.
The spring-fair was a grand and a gala event that all students,for different sorts of reasons,waited eagerly for. itinvolved days and days of preparations.
