Old School Ties

HT, Patna 14-09-08

Old School Ties

It’s the place that established our values, our ideas about how life should be lived and our concept of good education. No wonder so many of us are tied to our schools for life

By Kushalrani Gulab
Actually, this has been the easiest story in the world to research. The moment you say you’re working on a story on old school ties – meaning relationships as well as institutions, and relationships with institutions – people of all ages and backgrounds fall over themselves, skid down passageways and crowd into your space, clamouring, "Talk about my school. Let me tell you about my college. It’s the best school / college in the world."
Obviously, old school ties can be very, very strong. And why shouldn’t they be, really? After all, as we’ve heard from everyone we’ve spoken to, school (you’ll have to pardon the Americanism. All educational institutions we talk about in this story will be referred to as ‘school’ since ‘Old Educational Establishment Ties’ is a bit of a strain) is the place where most of us began to discover ourselves and our places in the world. It’s the one place that (aside from our families at home) firmly established our values, or ideas of how life should be lived, and our concept of what a good education is .
Since we didn’t Know all this was being inculcated in us while it was being inculcated in us, school is also the place where we made the first good friends of our lives, where we indulged in masti and mischief, where we learned how much we are capable of achieving as well as our limitations.
It was where we grew up.
And, since it occupied most of our lives before we became responsible, grown-up people, it’s also the place that made some very strong memories.
Most people go back to school for the good times they had," says Kolkata-based Mukesh Mirchandani, who went to St Joseph’s School, North Point, in Darjeeling in the 1960s, and plays football at the school’s annual sports meet whenever he can make it. "A guy my age shouldn’t be playing football, but there’s an affection we have for the school, for all it’s given us, and so we want to be part of it still."
It’s great fun, says Brigadier N K Bhatia, who finished school at Birla Public School, Pilani, in 1976, to recall how the riding teacher cast aspersions on the ancestry of Rajputs who couldn’t ride a horse on the first attempt; to try and remember a classmate’s real name as opposed to the nickname he had all through school; to know that so many years after you’ve left school, there are shared memories.
Nostalgia is a big factor in old school ties as everyone agrees. Particularly among students of residential schools which tend to be located far from cities so you really have no one to be with but each other. And it helps that, very often, these schools are located in particularly gorgeous places. It may seem like a small thing when Ashoke Chatterjee from the 1951 batch of Wodstock, the international school run by American missionaries in Mussoorie, tells us that the hills play a big part in drawing old students back, but for someone who actually went to school in the hills, it’s enormous. It’s home. "It was a sheltering environment that we all grew up in, so people come back in the sense of coming home. Almost back to the womb," says Ashoke.
But nostalgia exists in various degrees. For people who haven’t, or don’t, keep in touch with batch mates beyond their special friends, nostalgia is what keeps the party going when they land up for an occasional reunion.
And to tell the truth, nostalgia often begins at school itself, in the last year. Because there’s only one exam left and then it’ll be over. Which, after years of togetherness, can be unnerving. So memory-collecting becomes important.
"Up to class IX, the batch tends to be a divided lot," says businessman Brijraj Singh who went to North Point, Darjeeling in the ‘80s. "But in class X there is tremendous unity because you suddenly realise it’s going to be over. So it has to be maintained, for memory."
Nostalgia also rules when you’ve just left school, says communications designer Himalini Varma, most of whose batch at the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, are still in close touch with each other almost 15 years after they finished. "That’s because, when you’re out of the institute and in the world, you feel a little lost and do all you can to hang on to what you left behind," she says. "But we’ve all kept in touch and it’s not about nostalgia and longer. We’ve done that. That’s over."
If nostalgia is done and over, why do old school ties continue to bind? Simple. It’s friends. Everyone acknowledges that the Internet has done much to make old school ties strong. For instance, old girl activity among former students of J B Petit School, Mumbai, really took off when someone posted an old photograph of class fancy dress party on Facebook. Immediately, says journalist Riddhi Shah, a proud J B-ite, a party was organized to recreate that photograph and lots of old girls turned up. It’s all very exciting, but, as Shyla Boga points out, there can be abig difference between ties to your old school and ties to your old school friends. Shyla was at Mumbai’s Cathedral & John Connon School in the 1960s and has been active on the alumni committee since 1970, voluntarily keeping old students together for the sake of the school.
"I see this with my daughter who also went to Cathedral," Shyla says. "I have very strong relationships with my friends from school, but I also feel very strongly about what my school gave me in terms of a education and other things. My daughter’s generation, on the other hand, seems to be more concerned with their friends than with their school."
Shyla’s daughter, Alisha, takes great exception to this, and hastens to clarify that while her school relationships were and are very important, she also has an enormous sense of pride in the school. "It’s just that my mother feels more strongly about the school than I do," she says.
That’s something that people do acknowledge – after some thought. It’s often difficult to separate the friendships from the school when the friendships happened because of the school, but there is a difference.
"I’m still as close to many of my school friends as I was 20 years ago, and to several friends from college, but I havent’s set so much as a toe in my old school or college since the day I left," says writer Vani Sriram. "I have no strong feelings for them either way, though I did get a very good education and was very fond of some of my teachers. But if you ask me what was so wonderful about school, I’d say it was the friends I made there."
The batch feeling can be very strong, sometimes overriding everything else. Nothing can explain it better than an anecdote from Lt Gen Depinder Singh, best known to us as the former commander of the Indian Peace Keeping Force in Sri Lanka.
Lt Gen. Singh went to the Indian Military Academy in 1949 and, after the 1971 war with Pakistan, met a pre-Partition IMA graduate with the Pakistan Army. "He used to push me to organise a gathering of his IMA batch mates," chuckles Lt Gen. Singh. "Finally I told him would, but on one condition. He’d have to defect! HE was quite taken aback."
For a lot of people, the institution matters just as much as the friends. And many people feel those friendships could not have happened anywhere but at the old school. Because the school had certain values and ideas about life, people who went there share those values and ideas of life. As journalist Udita Jhun-jhunwala, who went to Cathedral, says, "The moment someone tells me he or she is from my school, there are 10 questions I don’t need to ask."
Nowhere is this best exemplified than at our two military academies, the Indian Military Academy in Dehradun and the National Defence Academy in Pune. "Camaraderie and an esprit de corps are very important in our profession because at some point, you’ll have to face bullets together," says former Army chief, General VP Malik. "So the NDA and IMA make it a point to establish that."
Both the batch and the institution are important, continues Gen. Malik. The batch because you grow up together, which is a big bond. And the institution because it provides the values you live by – and that’s a bond in itself.
Shared values. They can often be so strong that age and generation have no meaning. "When I meet a guy from Roorkee, whoever he is, it takes me 30 seconds to get to know him," says financial advisor Jaywardhan Diwan who passed out of the University of Roorkee (now IIT Roorkee) in 1988. He’s backed up by his batch mate, architect L Ventakesh, who impressed his children mightily on a trip to Ladakh when an army officer who was inclined to be unhelpful, produced tea and jalebis when he learned Venkatesh was from Roorkee. "The officer had been to Roorkee too!"
Tea and jalebis don’t seem like much, but they’re just a small example of whet the values a school provides can do for people who share those values. Because older people tend to have an almost automatic affection for – or at least a sense of responsibility towards – younger people from their old schools.
"I miss the institutions I went to more than they miss me, so I always want to give back in some measure what they gave me," says lawyer Bhavnesh Kumari Patiala who has nothing but good memories of her years in Woodstock, Mussoorie, Miranda House, Delhi (where the girl from the royal family of Patiala first discovered the meaning of the word ‘strike’ and cheerfully led a ‘pens down’ strike against the mid-term exams) and the Yale Law School.
In the course of that ‘giving back’, Bhavnesh has frequently used her influence and contacts to help students get into schools and colleges – even abroad. And she’s not the only person who uses her old school ties in this way. Almost everyone does.
"As a designer, I’m not in the mainstream, so it doesn’t happen to me, but I see the old school ties at work with my batch mates who’ve done MBAs and are getting into those streams now," says 26-year-old designer and writer Viraj Circar, a product of Mayo College, Ajmer. "I know many people who wouldn’t be in the positions they’re in today if it weren’t for the school network. It’s a very helpful network and younger boys often go to reunions purely for that reason."
If this sounds shocking, it really shouldn’t be. It’s not very different from the assistance that the Roorkee alumni association in Atlanta, US, recently provided the nephew of a Roorkee alumnus who was to study in the US. Or, for that matter, any different from way that Mukesh mirchandani of North Point made the time and effort to clear up an indiscretion that a younger member of his old school had committed. Or the way that Himalini Varma can travel around Europe and the US, and never stay at a hotel even once.
It’s because of the old school ties. Because they are so strong.

Notice

It has come to our attention that a colleague in Brunch is likely to be "crucified" if there is no mention of her boyfrientd’s old school in this story. So, in the interests of keeping the Brunch team intact, hello Siddharth! Of course Sherwood is a great school.
It also strikes us that, while many of you might identify with what you read in this story, by the end of the day, the Brunch inboxes will be full of angry / upset / sad / sentimental mails, asking us why there was no mention of your school or college. Because it’s the best school or college in the country. No, the world.
So here is an apology in advance. We’d have loved to feature your school or college. Honest. The reason we haven’t is simple: no space. Because, as we discovered while we worked on this story, love of your old school and college is a near universal thing. Everyone feels it to some degree. For some people, it may mean rushing back to the campus for Founder’s Day (or whatever day that holds significance for the alma mater) as often as they can. For others it may mean logging on to a social networking site for some old school reaffirmation. For others still, it may mean accidentally bumping into a batch mate last seen in 1957, spending hours remembering how both of you were once thrown out of chemistry class by the most kharoos teacher ever, and then taking off, nevr to meet again, but with a warm and happy feeling in their hearts.
Because for many of us, there’s nothing like old school ties.
Nothing compares at all.