Haunting Remembrances - Chapter VII

St. Anthony's High School - Undying Memories 

As the fun and the games and the festivities of the winter holidays of 1977 came to an end, and I had ascended to Class-VI, the chastening I received at the hands of sir Halifax two years since was still fresh in my mind. I was steadfast in my resolve not to wait for the bus at Barik, come rain or hail, unless perchance it so happened that the lumbering Bedford ground to a halt just as I was crossing the bus stand. The bus ride was an ordeal for me anyway, as I put the onus on myself to save my 15 paise from the conductor. As soon as I saw the conductor approaching, jingling his bag of coins, out of which he dispensed change to the customers with amazing deftness, I would take advantage of my small size and the interposing crowd to sneak behind the conductor and stand amongst the passengers he had already covered. But most of the conductors were seasoned campaigners. They were inured to dodgy little scamps and their evasive ways, and my success rate in those attempts was quite low. On the other hand, the pleasure of walking three kilometers to school in that pure air and benign light, with the little entertainments along the way - Sylvan shortcuts beckoning me to luxuriate in their splendorous, fragrant and melodious abodes; the film posters on the Civil Hospital wall, where I stood staring many a minute at the heroic attitudes of the stars; the "Dalmug" shop in Malki - City Center, the "dalmug" of which was my favorite, although the shopkeeper always complained of the smallness of my purchase, saying "sirf bish poisha? aaj kal bish poisha mein kyaa milta hay?" but still gave me a generous quantity of that delicious mixture; admiring the new cars on the road, especially the new Ambassador Mark-III, which I liked so much that I often fancied that if I were to be run over by a car, it should be a Mark-III

Time had decreed that the old must necessarily make way for the new, and my old friends Wanbok and Klensing slowly drifted away from me, they themselves preoccupied with their new acquaintances in the Khasi section. I observed with some sadness Wanbok playing truant more and more often, and straying more and more into dubious company. Yet we met often after school, and walked home together with the same camaraderie and cheer as of old, always on such occasions passing through Hydary Park and competing in bouncing flat stones off the water surface in the open pond, or looking at the animals in the zoo. But Wanbok's slow slide into a life of vagrancy and dissolution was unstoppable, and he eventually dropped out of school in Class-VII. I often met him afterwards,   sauntering aimlessly in the marketplace, mouth full of kwai, or among the crowds in a cinema hall, with a colorful bandana wrapping his head, selling tickets at a premium. He was still his jolly old self, amusing me with comments like "Debojit, moi khoi jham?", or "Debojit, tum kaha boitha?" or "tum kaunsa class mein abhi? Woh school achha tha, kabhi jayega"

Life in St Anthony's for me had meanwhile changed in many ways. It had become larger in scale and profusion. I made many new friendships, of which the first, and one which I most fondly recall, was my friendship with Tali Ao, whose amazing skills at making sketches of film and comic book heroes I so admired; and who lent me so many comic books. Our text books had become larger too - I had progressed from Ben Gunn in Radiant Reader to David Copperfield; from Christina Rossetti to John Keats and William Wordsworth; from Brighter Grammar to Wren & Martin; from Moral Science to Looking At Children Of Other Lands and Alternative English; from basic mathematics to Jadav Chakravarty. The classrooms had grown noisier, which even the rough monitors found it hard to subdue. I finally got to sit in the first floor classrooms, from classes VIII to X. My adventures during tiffin time exceeded their previous limits, as I found newer delights farther away, not the least of which were my trips to Jalpan Restaurant in Laitumkhrah, where I would have the extremely delicious Puri Sabzi once every week from my bus fare savings.

All those moments, which had lain dormant in my heart, now return to me in their full vehemence - the moments of joy, anxiety, pain, ecstasy, merriment and sadness. How delightful those moments when father took me to buy shining new books from the school bookshop! What joy I felt in acquiring my copy of the school calendar, with its shining blue cover and the bright school emblem! How full of anxiety those days and nights after my new Wren & Martin was stolen from class; and I had to copy all my lessons into my copy book from a book borrowed from my friend (I never could let father know I lost it)! How tremulous the moments when Miss Fernandes asked the entire class to stand up and she came around, cracking her scale on the back of each hand, and my turn approached nearer and nearer! How my heart leaped every time when I saw our class teacher, D B Wallang, come into class with the heap of report cards for the monthly test, and how agonizing the wait for Roll Number 10, as he announced the results! What an exultant feeling that was, when we all sat inside the wonderful auditorium to watch movies (I remember Poseidon Adventure was one of them)! How sorrowful was my heart at my comics being taken away from me by sir Phillips, and how great that distraction, as he asked us to do our lessons while he chuckled in enjoyment while reading those comics in class! The gravity and aura of some of our great teachers come back to me at this time, bringing with them the same feeling of fear and awe I felt in their presence then. Sir Jyrwa was one such, for whom respect and admiration was equal in my heart, and his dignified deportment and portentous calmness dissuaded even the most mischievous backbencher from indulging in any sort of frivolity. Sir Shangpliang was another, whose stern disposition, smart gait and great eloquence in English earned him the nickname "Center". Sir D K Sen was yet another awesome personality, who was not just the master of his subject, but an articulate speaker, and not known to put up with any nonsense. We could tell him from a distance from his trademark brown blazer, which he was never seen without. Then the quiet sir B D Wallang comes to mind, and that rare instance when he lost his cool due to a persistent disturbance while he was writing on the blackboard. Some more faces form out of the haze of remembrance - Das Gupta sir, our science teacher; and Bro Stephen Mavelly, the formidable disciplinarian, who looked every bit Fr George's successor to all eyes at that time.

Yet, any narrative on the wonderful teachers of St Anthony's cannot be complete without dwelling on my fond remembrance of sir Nongrum, our vivacious and athletic PT instructor. Oh! What merry sessions of training we had under our short and stout instructor, who was uncompromising on fitness, but also evoked great mirth with his comic lines. "March like German soldiers" he would say, as he showed us how; "not like Bangladeshi soldiers" and he would again show us how, making us laugh into splits. Whenever he found someone incorrigible in his slackness, he would shout in frustration, "Jungleeeee Bhoot!!". When he saw someone stand with his legs slack in attention, he would silently creep up from behind and give him a whack behind the knees, causing the unsuspecting person to buckle down, and the others to find it hard to stifle their giggles. I can never forget him.

As the days passed by in a rapid spate, the spirit of St Anthony's was slowly assimilating in my heart and soul, with a love for everything about it, including its innate trait of wildness, growing overwhelmingly in me; a pride in its stature, its faculty, its prowess on the sports field, and its dominance of the streets from Dhankheti to Laitumkhrah swelling up irrepressibly in my bosom; giving root to a supercilious disdain for any claimants to the top spot among all the schools, which in my mind, was indisputably ours.

Wanbok was right. Our school was very "achha". In time, it proved to be "achhe se achha" - it was the best. I wonder often now, about the pleasant coincidence of the great resurgence of St Anthony's High School at the same time as I was progressing through high school. From 1975, when I joined the school, to 1982, when I left it, I had seen the school move only in one direction - upwards. It was also a great coincidence that Fr George reigned supreme in the school through exactly the same period, endowing it with the best of his skills, harnessing astutely the raw talents and natural flair of the Anthonians into performances of coruscating brilliance. He was rarely seen to be hurried or ungainly in his movements, yet he seemed to be everywhere - personally supervising practice sessions for the school games; looking on keenly as the Table Tennis players warmed up and practiced; appearing in the most unexpected of situations, and the most unexpected of times; watching calmly with his grim countenance and deep eyes, hardly revealing what thoughts and emotions might have been whirling in those unfathomable depths. I recall so vividly the day when one of the Table Tennis players was a few minutes late for the warm up, and Fr George, without so much as a flicker of anger showing on his countenance, landed his huge palm with sudden force on the cheek of the offender, leaving all the other players and the onlookers (including myself) frozen in their tracks in fear. Fr George's intensity was scorching, unrelenting and forceful; no goal seemed to lofty, no hurdle insurmountable in his eyes. Only once do I remember seeing something like a flicker of emotion in his countenance. That was on that ecstatic occasion of our school winning the Subroto Cup Football Tournament in 1978. I thought I espied a look of profound satisfaction on his face that day, as he stood on the podium and watched us celebrate the occasion with great conviviality and jubilation on that sandy playground, enjoying the snack packets of samosas, sweets and thums up.

The annual sports meets and inter-school sports meets on the Anthony College field bordering the Edmund's campus were intense affairs, with racing tracks professionally prepared with white markings; the athletes and players looking proud in their red, blue and maroon Anthonian jerseys and shorts; and the best of organizers, sir Halifax not the least, employed to oversee the events in order and style. I remember being always at the front of the crowd to watch the events, and to cheer for our champion classmate, Frankie Pariat, who was crowned "sportsman of the year" for his amazing feats in athletics and football, two or three times in a row.

No less exciting were the school fetes, when the whole school was ablaze with posters, and we treated ourselves to delicious Jadoh and other snacks in the many colorful stalls that were set up in the school compound; and the teacher's day events, when we sold tickets to collect money to present gifts to our dear teachers.

My life was so full of St Anthony's and the crowded curriculum of the outer world, that no wonder I didn't know or care whether there was an adventuress to be enamoured of, a femme fatale to be courted, a demirep jostled at a party to be discussed, or any form of morbid ribaldry to be indulged in.

Time had its own race to run, which it ran out in due course. So, inevitable as it was, I had to endure the pangs of separation from my dear school, as I collected my HSLC certificate and walked down those broad steps, perhaps for the last time. All my long built friendships were to dissipate, as most of my friends - Rajib Bora, Abhijit Chakrabarty (one of the most jovial persons I've ever met), Dipanjan Chakraborty, Larry Kupar, Pawan Bawri, Sapan Barua, Farukh Ahmed and so many others were going to different institutions. All the tumult of the years of passion, fervor, ecstasy, fear, anxiety and elation had fallen abruptly silent, as if it was all a dream, and I had woken up. I joined the PU Science stream in St Anthony's College. Yet, my mind dallied in St Anthony's High School. Often, of breaks between classes, I would climb the Jacob's Ladder and walk to Don Bosco Square, just to have a look at the familiar walls, the majestic portals, and that cascading steepled roof, under which I had spent perhaps the best days of my life. That vision still rises in me whenever I am in need of strength and courage, and whenever I have the leisure to dwell upon those times, and fills my heart again with the same pride with which the heart of every Anthonian swells.