An old song from the ’70s, Seasons in the sun, talks about the fun of growing up in the hills with one’s childhood friends. Having studied in a residential public school back then, one’s mind takes a quick recap:
We grew up on a sprawling 750-acre campus. At 8,000 ft, surrounded by the Blue Mountains, we learned to love nature, value money and appreciate what we had. Pocket money was 20 bucks a month, from which we managed all our purchases. On Sundays, we explored the woods and trudged down to the tuck shop for a “pennyworth” of hamburgers and egg sweets. In the process, we learned to manage money from an early age. For fun, we hung out together, shared tuck, broke the rules, harassed teachers, laughed, cried, lived and loved — a lot. Sometimes, we just lazed on the lawns, squinting at the sun and chewing on the sweet sap that resides in a blade of grass. In the process, we didn’t just read Tom Brown’s School Days; we lived it.
When we stepped out of line, the prefects punished us — push-ups being the most popular mode. Our ‘play station’ was a field where we reported twice a day and got our butts kicked by the muscular physical instructor if we didn’t. There was no one to make a fuss over us. Our parents didn’t rush to meet the class teacher, over-protectively, each time someone stole our eraser. (The fact that they were hundreds of miles away is another matter.) If it rained, you got wet — it was as simple as that. If you caught the sniffles, you were sent to the school hospital where the nurse force fed you “cough mixture” or put you to bed. The orderlies had a strange but effective way of making sure you didn’t fool around — they took away your pyjamas temporarily, thereby confining you to bed and good behaviour!
 |
| The brass band in full regalia at the Trooping of the Colour parade of Lawrence School, Lovedale. The parade used to amaze military officers and visiting dignitaries |
We developed crushes on our rosy-cheeked classmates, sometimes carrying a torch for them all our lives. As expected of growing boys in salubrious climes, we were always ravenously hungry and not beyond filching food from the stores; often exchanging the bigger, better piece from our peers’ plates. To survive, we learned some of the wicked ways of the world like baksheesh for bearers for that extra portion. As in the song, we “learned of love and A, B, C; skinned our hearts and skinned our knees”. In the midst of all this, we had the most fantastic childhood a growing lad could have and formed lifelong bonds with our mates. By 15 or 16, we were already young men, toughened mentally and physically.
For outings, we walked to town, six kilometres away — and back — sometimes hitching lifts, as per the custom in the hills. On Saturday nights, if lucky, we were shown a western on a creaking 16-mm projector with the beginning, end and parts of the middle missing, but who cared? It was fun like no swanky multiplex could match. And once a year, we put up the most incredible show during the traditional Trooping of the Colour parade that amazed military officials and visiting dignitaries alike. Best of all, our parents’ socio-economic backgrounds didn’t count. If anything, fathers were known by their sons’ accomplishments. And right till we passed out, we couldn’t identify a person’s ethnic group by his last name — quite simply because it didn’t matter.
Today, public schools have become somewhat an anachronism, replaced by obscenely priced, pretentious “international schools”. All-round development is substituted with obsessive academics under the excuse of competition. They churn out either brats or nerds who wouldn’t last a day on the streets. Memories flash back to the song one last time: “We had joy we had fun, we had seasons in the sun / But the hills that we climbed were just seasons out of time/ And the wine and the song, like the seasons have all gone.”
Dinyar T Dastoor is a freelance writer who travels, conducts workshops and writes spoofs, satires and on anything except so called issues of national interest dd.wordsworth@gmail.com
-Article Courtsey Ahmedabad Mirror
No comments:
Post a Comment