Class of 1970

After our peregrinations through foreign lands, many of us came from the four corners of the world, from every inhabited continent bar South America, to rejoin our classmates who remained in India, as we returned to the land that raised and shaped us. We returned to the city that housed our beloved school, that hallowed plot on the ancient Armenian Street, where stands one of the oldest schools on the subcontinent, the one that bred and fed us, that nurtured and formed us. We returned to our Omphalos, our center of the universe, our Mecca, our Jerusalem, our Rome, our Mount Meru, our temple of education. Fifty years ago, we were scrawny, pimply youths facing a brave new world armed with only the education and ethos of the school. Fifty years later, we are grizzled senior citizens, pepper and salt headed (if we are lucky) looking to resurrect the halcyon days of our lives. The Almighty has kindly added years to the lives of most of us. Now we plan to add life to our years with this meeting, our golden jubilee, then think of our diamond jubilee.

Viriliter Age – Act like a Man – is the motto of the school. We were privileged to attend ancient St. Mary’s at its apotheosis when it was presided over by the legendary Reverend Father George Patrick Whyte. In 1945, the winds of war were blowing to an Allied victory, a dying British Raj was metamorphosing into the butterfly of Independent India. At this turbulent time, Fr George Patrick Whyte, SDB, from Ireland, assumed charge as Principal and Correspondent of St. Mary’s School, inaugurating a new and unforgettable era in the history of the school.

Fr Whyte’s service of 27 years in the school can rightly be called a saga of devotion and dedication to the service of youth. Father Whyte, in the year of our Lord 1970, had spent an equal number of years laboring in the vineyards of his Lord as he did in St. Mary’s. He exchanged his native green and pleasant land for the fertile plains and torrid tropics of the south; the Liffey and the Boyne for the Cooum and the Cauvery. We were privileged to celebrate the silver jubilee of his calling and of his avocation in that auspicious year of 1970. A handsome man with light blue eyes, his infectious smile was compared by some to John Wayne’s. He certainly possessed the Duke’s charisma, iron determination and his fight for the right. Blessed with a magnificent tenor voice, he was reputed to have taught the world-famous singer Engelbert Humperdinck his high C’s.

He strode down those hallowed halls like a colossus and magically transformed the bedlam of boisterous boys engaged in rubber band fights and all forms of nefarious mischief miraculously into the silence and sanctity of a Cistercian monastery. God help you if you were expelled from class for some infraction; you were promptly marched to his office and asked to choose your poison from an umbrella basket of canes of various diameters. Six of the best were administered; though black and blue stripes marked your hands, you were expected to return to class as if nothing happened. Viriliter Age in action!

Father Whyte combined the four classical virtues of love, wisdom, power and justice in his personality. His generosity knew no bounds. The poor boys were assured a square meal at lunch; on special occasions everyone was given an afternoon off and he paid handsomely for the cinema tickets for every one of us. Facing financial challenges, one of our prominent brains wanted to transfer to another school. Fr Whyte promptly reduced his fees by half. This brainy guy subsequently became a prominent dermatologist and was the last among us to meet Father Whyte before the great man passed away.

In those prelapsarian days Fr Whyte’s high principles and devotion to his students, his caring and compassion, his integrity earned the adulation of his students, the applause of his staff and the accolades of his fellow Principals. The ancient values of sportsmanship, decency, fairness and gentlemanly behavior were values he imparted to all. The great navigator, the helmsman with a steady hand on the tiller, the captain that led a team of educators that helped us navigate the rocks and shoals of an uncertain world: that was our Fr Whyte.

On a sunny Monday morning in early January 1964 many of us, filled with a sense of awe and trepidation, assembled in the quadrangle to see Father Whyte ascend the podium and lead the school in the daily morning prayers. We then marched off to our first classes. There we found our first friends and forged lifelong friendships, friendships now revived by the marvels of instant messaging.

Moving schools is a challenge for most nine and ten-year olds, exchanging the protection of nuns and a convent education for an all-boys school—where all the other boys are bigger than you—is a test even for the stout hearted. To emphasize the care and commitment to his tenderfoot charges, Fr Whyte entrusted the kindest, most caring teachers: Mrs Gear (Main School) and Mrs Jansen (Private School) to guide us.

Moving into the Sixth Standard saw these nine and ten-year olds, in the space of a year, grow into ‘big boys’ because they were no longer the babies of the school; the next batch had arrived. As many of these ten-year olds still needed some TLC, our Sixth Standard teachers were Mrs Lazarus for the A section and Mrs Vanspall for the B section. These two respected teachers were charged with grooming the fast growing ten and eleven year olds into fine young gentlemen.

As we were promoted to the Seventh Standard, these teachers transitioned with us; we said they had also been promoted. These two teachers were assisted by Mrs Moses and Miss Manuel, another duo of loved and respected teachers. Mrs Vanspall was moved up, perhaps to monitor her second son Gordon. Forty-five years later, Gordon unknowingly had an immense impact on the Class of 1970; his untimely death from a botched angioplasty procedure in 2015 reminded us of the fickleness of life; this was the catalyst that speeded up the reconnecting of this class.

The beloved Mrs Browne, a multitalented music maestro, was entrusted with our musical education. She was renowned for the annual music show that featured the works of a famous composer and was presented annually during “Handel Manuel’s All India Radio Children’s Show”. These teachers multitasked as mothers, mentors, disciplinarians, nurses, comforters, protectors, tutors and guides. They prepared us for the transition to the next phase of our education.

Entering the Eight Standard marked a transformation in our lives. Gone were the days of the motherly care of the teachers as male teachers took over the reins. Mr Edmonds, Mr Shillong and Mr Jose Thomas were in charge as Class Masters. To this day, the young men who were privileged to be assigned to Mr. Edmonds’ class testify to the enormous influence that he had on his students, a view that is universally shared by every other student so blessed. A man of military bearing and a look of cold command, he had perfect control of his class.

Though the Class of ’70 had a healthy sideline of subversives and rebels, none dared practice those dark arts in his class. The one teacher without a nickname, though never knighted, he was “Sir Edmonds” to all his students, a title that testifies to the awe and reverence all held for him. Indelibly incised on our young minds was his theatrical rendition of poetry and to this day many can see “The Highwayman” riding up to the old inn door.

Mr Shillong was a chess Grandmaster. He would generously devote his lunch break to teaching any boy the game but credit to any crafty student who could checkmate him with a criminal move. Mr Thomas, who taught the C Section, was the epitome of a teacher who delivered his lessons in story form. Apart from their general duties as Class Masters, Sir Edmonds was responsible for teaching Math and English, while Mr Shillong was the History master.

Mr Auckland Rodrigues and Mr Emmanuel were entrusted to mentoring these maturing young men in their career paths. Mr. Rodrigues, a man of great learning, is well remembered for starting every morning for a couple of weeks with the words, “Shelly, in his immortal poem ‘The Cloud’, personifies this elemental force of nature,” before launching into a detailed analysis of the poem. Mr Emmanuel, endowed with a sonorous voice and aided with his green bible, Jasper Stembridge’s The World, taught us Geography. It was in this year that a freshfaced new teacher, Jude D’Costa, a solidly built young man who was promptly saddled with the nickname, Django, after a popular movie of that era, entered the school and taught us Science.

Who can forget the eminent Tamil teacher, Mr Xavier, fondly remembered as ‘Pericles’ by one and all due to his love of the ancient Greek civilization and hisinfatuation with the great Greek statesman, orator and general Pericles, who lived during the Golden age of Greece. He spent his first few weeks at St Mary’s narrating this story to every class that he was assigned to teach Tamil. Mr Mashallah taught Hindi; despite his Greco-Roman wrestling stature, he was one of the kindest teachers; Mr Subramaniam used his linguistic skills to teach Tamil to junior classes and Hindi to the seniors. Mr Mashallah had an excellent knowledge of cricket and his classes could be easily derailed by asking about a match or cricketer. His classes often started with him calling us ‘noble boys’, but by the end of the class, he would rightly label us ‘budmarshes’.

Mr Kothandaraman is remembered for his physical education and making every class play ‘kho’ under the midday sun. Br Zacharias was the Principal of the Private School, but his role in the school baffled one and all; apart from the fact that he organized the collection of balls that landed on the roof of the school (hand cricket and hand tennis were games unique to St. Mary’s and the concrete school yard was congested with competing teams), only to sell them back to the students at second hand prices and to run the Projector on Saturday afternoon “movies”, he did not have much to do (or so we thought). Every one of these teachers has had an immense influence in the shaping of the characters of The Class of 1970.

The Tenth Standard differentiated the Science students and the Arts students with English, Second Language (Hindi or Tamil) and Geography being the only common subjects. Mr B. A. Matthews, Headmaster, ‘Teddy Bear’ affectionately to his students, along with Mr Jude D’Costa were in charge of the Arts section, while Mr Paulraj was in charge of the Science section, with each progressing with their classes of 10 and 11.

Mr. Navamani dressed immaculately in white, prowled the classroom like a tiger and hurled chalk pieces at recalcitrant students. His dedication to Math and his ability to explain the most complex of mathematical problems provided his students with a platform to launch their careers while Mr. Paulraj, whose devotion to Science, Physics and Chemistry was second to none, helped ground us in these subjects. Science classes were conducted in the Science Gallery with the experiments being conducted in the lab. When he broke his leg in a motor bike accident, he took classes from his home.

In 1960, Fr George Patrick Whyte petitioned the Board of The Anglo Indian Higher Secondary Schools for funding to build a state-of-the-art laboratory for Science studies; in 1964, The St Mary’s laboratory was inaugurated to become the pride of the school and the envy of all other schools in the region. With the new laboratory as the place for experiments, the science teacher, Mr Paul Raj, in collaboration with his counterpart, Mr Davie of St Bede’s AI High School, soon had a science curriculum text book published and adapted as the prescribed Science text book for the Anglo Indian Higher Secondary Schools.

The Headmaster, Mr Bernard Matthews, a master of the English language, was a rotund, bookish man whose desk in the headmaster’s study was always overflowing with books. He is well remembered for his unique punishment style, dry wit and always wearing a coat and tie. Recidivists in his class were hauled up to his desk with a command of “come up here” and then subjected to a ‘hair raising’ treatment while he intoned “Muttal, numbskull, when will you ever learn…” He is well remembered for his detailed exegesis of the prescribed Shakespearean text ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’. He elucidated every word and phase (except for the naughty ones) and brought to life the Bard’s work. If Mr Emmanuel had a green bible, Matthew’s was red: a well-thumbed Wren and Martin’s English Grammar.

“Mens sana in corpore sano” (a healthy mind in a healthy body) was a maxim that the school fully subscribed to. Apart from the academic courses, the school shone on the playing field with the hockey and athletic teams often winning Inter School competitions. The highlights of the sporting fixtures were the Annual School Sports Day and Boxing Day, not December 26, but the day that the boxing gloves were brought out. Sports Day was a festive carnival with the winners going on to represent the school at the annual Inter School Sports Carnival, an event in which the St Mary’s team traditionally featured prominently.

St. Mary’s was one of the few schools that promoted boxing and “Boxing Day” was as important an event as Sports Day. Boxing Day was when the best of friends could be pitted against each other under the strictest code of a gentleman’s sport and Marquis of Queensbury’s rules (rather than the crude ring and free for all rules used to settle schoolboy disputes on the grounds of the nearby High Court). Held in the ring erected in the quadrangle, it was presided over by Father Whyte, who had been a boxer, with Sir Edmonds acting as Announcer and professional Referee overseeing the fights. ‘Sir’ Edmonds was ever alert on the ring side to “throw in the towel”, if a fight was unevenly matched. To this day we can hear his stentorian voice announcing, “This is the fifth fight of the evening, an exhibition bout. It is a flyweight contest between James of the House of Hawks and Shane of the House of Swifts. Gentlemen, shake hands,” and two young pugilists and classmates went at each other hammer and tongs, to the thrill of the audience — a scene forever etched on the minds of many of us.