We recently had a wonderful 31st year reunion of my secondary school (10th standard) class (and teachers, all of whom showed up!). We started by visiting the school at 8:30am, got to the venue at 10am and the event went on until 6pm (of course followed by an afterparty). The teachers seemed to enjoy it so much and were fully engaged (and didn't budge until 5:00pm). Everyone in attendance had a chance to give a speech and there were a number of beautiful moments that I feel compelled to document (and share) a few nuggets from my already fading memory.
- Our math teacher began her speech by addressing us as "Children" - just like old times. Spine-tingling.
- Our class was the third oldest in the school's history, and so we had joined a very very young school with just 7 teachers and a few classes. So - outside of one or two exceptions - our teachers were very young, very inexperienced and pretty nervous to teach (now we know!). They just figured it out on the fly, and got better and better every year. They also worked damn hard (teaching 6 hours a day) and cared for us. I remember the effort they put into organizing school events (annual day, plays, sports day, etc.) - By the time we reached 10th grade, the quality of instruction was quite good - by any standard. I remember Biology and Math to be particularly exceptional - again, by any standard.
- Teachers seemed to not only remember us, but recounted memories that some of us didn't (including the time I sent one of them a personalized greeting card (analog version of photoshop). From 35 years ago. I think the size of the school, the youth of the teachers (and the school) made for a family-type atmosphere. Besides, the headmaster (who was present at the reunion) was also very tactful in getting things done without ever being pushy. That made the teachers more committed. I remember getting on a bike with some of my friends and randomly visiting 2 or 3 different teachers at their homes over weekends. This wasn't an exception, and even those students who were regularly "punished" seemed to get along well with the teachers. All of this contributed to us having very fond memories of our beloved school.
- Since matriculation schools were somewhat prestigious (and had a hard syllabus), apparently such schools only admitted students from educated families. Our school did not discriminate and had a pretty diverse class. Teachers shared stories about how much effort they put into educating students (admittedly they were working towards achieving a 100% pass rate). One of the teachers shared a touching anecdote : Some students could not study at home because of "problems." So the school gave them a room to stay, fed them in the canteen and gave them extra lectures. 😇 They did achieve 100% pass rates year after year (and in my class, 34 out of 35 students secured first class).
- Most of the teachers were very strict back in the day, and one of them said "I think about your lot once in a while and always assumed that you all will be somewhere swearing at us. I did not, for the life of me think you'd organize this beautiful event and shower us with love." One of the teachers said "Sometimes I wonder whether I was too strict and how that may have affected your development." Of course, almost all of them lamented the relative lack of control they had over succeeding generations, although our Physics teacher, still active at a convent school, and still calls some students as "donkeys." One of my classmates recollected that she used to waltz into class pointing to him and two others as "Donkey #1, Donkey #2, Donkey #3, stand up on the bench." 😂
- Our English master (a really cool guy, then and now) was apparently educated in a Tamil medium school and said that he barely passed his English in high school (70/200). He joined us right after his M.A. and recounted his very first lecture: It was a lesson titled 'The Banyan Tree'. He apparently pronounced it as 'The Bunyan Tree', and he was immediately corrected by a student in our class. "It is not a bUNyan tree - it is a bAANyan tree." He said he was terrified, but handled it OK. We had him for our final 3 years and I remember him to be really good at teaching and to be very engaged with us in and out of class. I vividly remember his in-class grammar exercises (something about main clauses and subordinating conjunctions) would be on text extracted from current news articles. He recently retired from a long and distinguished career (eventually got a PhD in English literature and was headmaster at various schools for more than a decade, of course very popular wherever he was). He recounted number of things in his career based on experience he gained from a few years at our school.
- We all remembered our Tamil and Hindi teachers to be so calm, collected, and even-keeled. Or so we thought. We just learnt that they were incredibly shy (so shy that they won't even talk much with other teachers) and borderline terrified of us. Our Hindi teacher shared this "I had to walk 20 minutes to catch a bus with the Tamil teacher. One day I was wondering whether she would even begin a conversation. I didn't say a word, and she didn't either."
- We felicitated the teachers, received their blessings, and of course, all of them gave us children advice on everything from "never stop learning" to "how to bring up kids" to "how to control our temperament."
- My aunt was a prominent teacher in the school. One day she asked one of my friends to meet her in the library. He thought he was in trouble but he recounted the following "I hear you are Karthi's best friend. As you know, his birthday is coming up. Can you give me ideas for a gift?"
- We made a trip to the school and the current principal (a very energetic lady, who also made the time to spend a few hours at the reunion) greeted us pleasantly, and gave us permission to roam around, even when classes were in session. Funniest moment was when she said "I am proud and privileged to meet you all, especially because you are 10 years older than me."
So yeah.. in summary I think it was memorable enough to spur an average of 800 whatsapp (no exaggeration) posts a day over the past week in our school group.
