ajaysinghbamel
April 2nd, 2009, 08:58 AM
Of Bagpipes, Horses and Golden Orioles
Dilip Simeon (from Recess: The Penguin Book of Schooldays Palash Mehrotra (ed); New Delhi, 2008)
This is a very personal story about a public school. There will undoubtedly be names that I’ve left out, but I trust I’ll be pardoned my lapses. What I’m sure about is that all of us who joined it in its foundational years share a powerful affinity with a Haryana village named Kunjpura. (Dist., as they say, Karnal). Thinking about schooldays at a point in life when middle-age is edging towards elderly-ness, can be a strange encounter with oneself. I recall a time five decades past, peel away the filtering effect of more recent experiences and come face to face with things at once familiar and novel; innocence viewed backwards through the lens of worldly wisdom. The exercise is akin to seeing scenery flash past the windows of a train on a spectacular journey, a blur of images, colours and feelings, some stable, some fleeting, but all of them vivid. Nostalgia is too weak a word.
Three young teenagers riding horses at full gallop through frost-encrusted fields in the winter’s mist. I was one of them. The other two were Trilochan (Tilly), who also played the Last Post on the bugle to perfection, and Prahlad (Kakroo), the joker with the hat whom everyone seems to know these days. Tears streamed from my eyes, my heart raced at the thrill of danger mixed with confidence in the animal beneath me. Sometimes, on Sundays, the dafadaar would let us come out with him on one of these rides. He knew we loved riding horses, and that he didn’t need to keep an eye on us. We were between thirteen and fourteen years old. What a feeling!
Nine boys playing the bagpipes marching down Rajpath on Republic Day. Our majestic bandmaster Ruliya Singh, six feet tall, had retired from the Sikh Light Infantry, and was a man who could play every instrument and read music. We couldn’t of course. He used to drill the notes into us by hitting our knuckles with the wooden chanter with which he instructed us every morning. We learnt Scottish lilts such as The Skyeboat Song and The Green Hills of Tyne, Indian ones such as Deshon ka Sartaj and Naini Taalo. The pipers were the mainstay of the school band. On the morning of January 26, 1964, we were shaken awake at 5 am in the NCC camp in the cantonment, to get dressed in our shiny fresh uniforms. We shivered as Ruliya helped tie our white turbans. Four hours later we were on the march, bagpipes wailing and our drummers snapping out their beat behind us. We swelled with pride at the thought that thousands were looking on, that we were the only Sainik School on parade. There was deep anxiety too. Would Ajit Singh, our fourteen year-old and very tall band leader actually throw his mace in the air in front of President Radhakrishnan’s podium? More importantly, would he catch it on its way down? There was only one other band leader who had the balls (excuse my French) to do that, and he was a wizened old veteran of dozens of parades. But Ajit! We would have murdered him on the spot if - oh, it was unthinkable. Ruliya marched by our side, exhorting us from the side of his mouth, but we were terrified as we approached ground zero. Ajit swaggered as band leaders are meant to swagger, three foot mace bobbing proudly up and down, clasped in his left hand. Our teachers were watching. He balanced the bottom of the mace with its shiny silver head on the fingers of his right hand. Looking up without a tremor, he sent it swinging high into the air just a few yards away from the VIP stand. It glittered as it twirled in the sunshine. Sure enough, he caught it smartly, judging the angles and distance to mathematical perfection. The crowd cheered, and we played with even more gusto. It was a terrifying and proud moment for the Pipes and Drums of the Sainik School Kunjpura.
How did I get there? On account of an utterly whimsical fate. Early in 1961, I was eleven, and my father was a Lieutenant Colonel in the Corps of Signals. He returned from work one afternoon to tell my mother he’d been ordered to the Defence Minister’s office, via the office of Mr Soundararajan, Deputy Secretary in the Defence Ministry. (Mr Soundararajan helped establish the school. In 1963 he was succeeded as Secretary of the Sainik Schools Society by Mr. K Subrahmanyam). To cut a long story short (as father would say), he was ushered into the legendary Krishna Menon’s presence, and ordered to start a school from scratch in two months. Maybe three. When he demurred slightly and asked for time to think about it, the great man glared at him. “You can have till Monday,” he said. “I shall be unhappy if you refuse.” As they left the room, Mr. Soundararajan told him it was not wise for Lieutenant Colonels to make the Defence Minister unhappy. And that was that.
Through the dim memories of childhood, I remember that the next few months were a whirl, with father barely visible. When he was, he and my mother talked incessantly about the great unknown into which they were headed. My father drove to the site every week, the first time with Krishna Menon. The car did the eighty-mile journey in less than two hours. News advertisements were issued for staff, for applications from students ranging from age nine to thirteen. Thakurma wrote my father a letter, at the top of which were the words, “The Lord thy God shall bless thee in all that thou doest.” I found it in his Bible after he died.
Forty-seven years ago, the Defence Minister of India inaugurated the first Sainik School at Kunjpura on July 24, 1961. The Schools were the vision of a convinced socialist, who wanted to alter the social composition of the officer cadre of India’s Armed Forces by enlisting deserving students from strata other than the upper middle-class segment that had thus far filled its superior ranks. Entrance exams would be conducted and those who cleared them would be granted part or full scholarships. The only condition was that they appear in the National Defence Academy entrance exams. The school was situated two miles from Kunjpura village, and was named after the Grey Kunj, the Indian name of the bird that flew in from Siberia every winter and nested in a lake adjacent to the campus. The four houses: Panipat, Chillianwala, Thaneshwar and Kurukshetra, represented Punjab’s major battlefields. (I was in Panipat House. At first we used to lose most inter-house competitions, but our detractors don’t know where to look now. One of us is the first-ever Sainik School alumnus to make it to Army Chief). The main building was a large haveli surrounded by tall eucalyptus trees that once belonged to the Nawab of Kunjpura. (Karnal was the hometown of Pakistan’s first Prime Minister, Liaqat Ali Khan). Its long corridors with rooms symmetrically arranged on either side were ideally suited to a school. It became the centre of a 275 acre campus with playing fields, stables, a swimming pool and a gymnasium. Every evening we would assemble in front of the main building for the day’s roll-call. Then the flag would be lowered with the school’s buglers playing the plaintive notes of the Last Post. Schooldays were a kaleidoscope of starkly novel experiences. And because it was a new school, this was true for everyone.
PLS READ FURTHER ON NEXT THREAD
Dilip Simeon (from Recess: The Penguin Book of Schooldays Palash Mehrotra (ed); New Delhi, 2008)
This is a very personal story about a public school. There will undoubtedly be names that I’ve left out, but I trust I’ll be pardoned my lapses. What I’m sure about is that all of us who joined it in its foundational years share a powerful affinity with a Haryana village named Kunjpura. (Dist., as they say, Karnal). Thinking about schooldays at a point in life when middle-age is edging towards elderly-ness, can be a strange encounter with oneself. I recall a time five decades past, peel away the filtering effect of more recent experiences and come face to face with things at once familiar and novel; innocence viewed backwards through the lens of worldly wisdom. The exercise is akin to seeing scenery flash past the windows of a train on a spectacular journey, a blur of images, colours and feelings, some stable, some fleeting, but all of them vivid. Nostalgia is too weak a word.
Three young teenagers riding horses at full gallop through frost-encrusted fields in the winter’s mist. I was one of them. The other two were Trilochan (Tilly), who also played the Last Post on the bugle to perfection, and Prahlad (Kakroo), the joker with the hat whom everyone seems to know these days. Tears streamed from my eyes, my heart raced at the thrill of danger mixed with confidence in the animal beneath me. Sometimes, on Sundays, the dafadaar would let us come out with him on one of these rides. He knew we loved riding horses, and that he didn’t need to keep an eye on us. We were between thirteen and fourteen years old. What a feeling!
Nine boys playing the bagpipes marching down Rajpath on Republic Day. Our majestic bandmaster Ruliya Singh, six feet tall, had retired from the Sikh Light Infantry, and was a man who could play every instrument and read music. We couldn’t of course. He used to drill the notes into us by hitting our knuckles with the wooden chanter with which he instructed us every morning. We learnt Scottish lilts such as The Skyeboat Song and The Green Hills of Tyne, Indian ones such as Deshon ka Sartaj and Naini Taalo. The pipers were the mainstay of the school band. On the morning of January 26, 1964, we were shaken awake at 5 am in the NCC camp in the cantonment, to get dressed in our shiny fresh uniforms. We shivered as Ruliya helped tie our white turbans. Four hours later we were on the march, bagpipes wailing and our drummers snapping out their beat behind us. We swelled with pride at the thought that thousands were looking on, that we were the only Sainik School on parade. There was deep anxiety too. Would Ajit Singh, our fourteen year-old and very tall band leader actually throw his mace in the air in front of President Radhakrishnan’s podium? More importantly, would he catch it on its way down? There was only one other band leader who had the balls (excuse my French) to do that, and he was a wizened old veteran of dozens of parades. But Ajit! We would have murdered him on the spot if - oh, it was unthinkable. Ruliya marched by our side, exhorting us from the side of his mouth, but we were terrified as we approached ground zero. Ajit swaggered as band leaders are meant to swagger, three foot mace bobbing proudly up and down, clasped in his left hand. Our teachers were watching. He balanced the bottom of the mace with its shiny silver head on the fingers of his right hand. Looking up without a tremor, he sent it swinging high into the air just a few yards away from the VIP stand. It glittered as it twirled in the sunshine. Sure enough, he caught it smartly, judging the angles and distance to mathematical perfection. The crowd cheered, and we played with even more gusto. It was a terrifying and proud moment for the Pipes and Drums of the Sainik School Kunjpura.
How did I get there? On account of an utterly whimsical fate. Early in 1961, I was eleven, and my father was a Lieutenant Colonel in the Corps of Signals. He returned from work one afternoon to tell my mother he’d been ordered to the Defence Minister’s office, via the office of Mr Soundararajan, Deputy Secretary in the Defence Ministry. (Mr Soundararajan helped establish the school. In 1963 he was succeeded as Secretary of the Sainik Schools Society by Mr. K Subrahmanyam). To cut a long story short (as father would say), he was ushered into the legendary Krishna Menon’s presence, and ordered to start a school from scratch in two months. Maybe three. When he demurred slightly and asked for time to think about it, the great man glared at him. “You can have till Monday,” he said. “I shall be unhappy if you refuse.” As they left the room, Mr. Soundararajan told him it was not wise for Lieutenant Colonels to make the Defence Minister unhappy. And that was that.
Through the dim memories of childhood, I remember that the next few months were a whirl, with father barely visible. When he was, he and my mother talked incessantly about the great unknown into which they were headed. My father drove to the site every week, the first time with Krishna Menon. The car did the eighty-mile journey in less than two hours. News advertisements were issued for staff, for applications from students ranging from age nine to thirteen. Thakurma wrote my father a letter, at the top of which were the words, “The Lord thy God shall bless thee in all that thou doest.” I found it in his Bible after he died.
Forty-seven years ago, the Defence Minister of India inaugurated the first Sainik School at Kunjpura on July 24, 1961. The Schools were the vision of a convinced socialist, who wanted to alter the social composition of the officer cadre of India’s Armed Forces by enlisting deserving students from strata other than the upper middle-class segment that had thus far filled its superior ranks. Entrance exams would be conducted and those who cleared them would be granted part or full scholarships. The only condition was that they appear in the National Defence Academy entrance exams. The school was situated two miles from Kunjpura village, and was named after the Grey Kunj, the Indian name of the bird that flew in from Siberia every winter and nested in a lake adjacent to the campus. The four houses: Panipat, Chillianwala, Thaneshwar and Kurukshetra, represented Punjab’s major battlefields. (I was in Panipat House. At first we used to lose most inter-house competitions, but our detractors don’t know where to look now. One of us is the first-ever Sainik School alumnus to make it to Army Chief). The main building was a large haveli surrounded by tall eucalyptus trees that once belonged to the Nawab of Kunjpura. (Karnal was the hometown of Pakistan’s first Prime Minister, Liaqat Ali Khan). Its long corridors with rooms symmetrically arranged on either side were ideally suited to a school. It became the centre of a 275 acre campus with playing fields, stables, a swimming pool and a gymnasium. Every evening we would assemble in front of the main building for the day’s roll-call. Then the flag would be lowered with the school’s buglers playing the plaintive notes of the Last Post. Schooldays were a kaleidoscope of starkly novel experiences. And because it was a new school, this was true for everyone.
PLS READ FURTHER ON NEXT THREAD