‘Those were the days, my friend,
We thought they'd never end,
We'd sing and dance forever and a day.
We'd live the life we'd choose,
We'd fight and never lose,
For we were young and sure to have our way.’
- A popular 60’s song
My St. Xavier’s
St. Xavier’s for me, as it must have been for almost half of all its students and alumni till recently, has always meant two different schools – one being the primary section on Mirabai Road, and the other in the ABL Township. The former, as I found out not very long ago, has ceased to exist altogether. The building still stands as before, but the writing over the entrance porch, as I discovered to my great sorrow very recently, has been changed to something which I have not cared to remember. The grounds are no longer maintained, and the general ambience gives the feeling of a lifeless and deserted building. Such a situation is very rare in the experience of any ex-student and I wish it had not come to pass, for it is not the physical building and location which matters to ex-students like me, but the many memories attached to it. I can not revisit the two short years I spent in Mirabai Section, but I would have liked to have the satisfaction of assuring myself whenever I pass by that building that the ‘furnace’ that forged ‘gold’ thirteen years ago is still at work within its walls and in the playing fields. To make my point clear, I will only add that when I, along with my friend Kunal Lal (also of my batch) tried to enter the grounds of Mirabai Section sometime last year in order to refresh our faded images of times long past, we were denied access by the guard, something inconceivable had it been the friendly and smiling Gurung at the gates like the old days, always recognising a Xaverian when he saw one.
When we were small, we would always refer to the two campuses of the school in Bengali as ‘boro Xavier’s’ (big Xavier’s) and ‘choto Xavier’s’ (small Xavier’s), and those of us who had to shift from the small school to the big one in the fifth standard were initially apprehensive of the latter, as if it were some unfamiliar and overwhelming monster. The relative merits of the ABL and the Mirabai Sections would be subjects of heated debate between the students originally hailing from each, with the ABL boys always trying to take an upper hand in matters of seniority. Ironically or otherwise, the big monster has had the last laugh, having assimilated its smaller cousin unto itself, for better or for worse. Regretful as I am of this fact, I shall always remember Mirabai Xavier’s as the place where I met those few people who are till date my best friends, notwithstanding the fact that none of us today live in even the same city. I still fondly remember teachers like Shiela Chatterjee and Krishna Miss. In particular, I shall never forget Sunanda Miss of Class 4, who refused to give me an autograph when I passed out of Mirabai, saying that I would be worthy of it only if I remembered her and came back for the autograph after Class 10. Like most others, I did not come back, but if she be reading this, I would like to put on record that even without the autograph, she claims a permanent place in my memory.
One of the most vivid images that I retain of my days in Mirabai is of the portrait of Gandhiji that used to hang on the wall of the staircase, and which read “I shall develop in the child his hand, his head, and his heart.” Those words perhaps best describe the Mirabai experience for me, though I did not realise it back then. Needless to say, that portrait no longer hangs in the stairway of the now-deserted Mirabai building.
Life in the ABL section was altogether different and more eventful. It is there that I met some very good teachers, and gave some of them really bad times! I wonder if the punishment bench that was instituted for me in 5C for being talkative is still in place. Out of the many random images that flash before me as I think of my St. Xavier’s experience, Lawrence Sir’s resounding declamation of Kipling’s ‘If’ in the morning assembly, the same man in a lighter vein likening his unruly classroom to a ‘piggery’, Jhunu Miss dictating problems from Jadav Chakravarti’s Arithmetic from halfway down the corridor – some of which were full length essays in their own right, Fr. Peter D’Abrew coming down to our homes and teaching us magic tricks over evening tea, Bhowmick Miss drawing a near-perfect outline map of India on the board, her eyes fixed on the class all the while, Dasgupta Miss trying to convince the class that Brutus, in spite of being a murderer, was an honourable man nevertheless, Roy Sir lapsing into thoughts on literature in the middle of a class on statistics, Brother Hyde, complete in his cassock and collar even in the heat of the afternoon sun shouting orders into his portable loudspeaker during Sports Day practice with PT Sir insisting that we maintain the ‘discipline and decorum of St. Xavier’s Institution’, the long bus rides, the forays into ‘Fr. Wautier’s woods’ (portions of which I hear have given way to buildings) during the ‘second-trip’ stay-overs, are but to name a few. Most of the people I have mentioned are perhaps not associated with the school any more. In particular, the school shall miss Dasgupta Miss and Roy Sir, two of its best teachers of all time, and I hope that their successors live up to the standards set by them. The inimitable, though much imitated Nandy Sir too, I hear, is about to retire soon. Other committed teachers like Nandini Miss and Dorothy Miss who are still there, represent to me the last bastions of that old guard who really made differences to our lives, and present generations of Xaverians must cherish their presence as long as it lasts, for they will soon realise once they leave school that teachers whom they can look up to are rare to come by in life.
One hears too often that winds of change have been blowing in St. Xavier’s in recent years. I too had felt this change in my final years at the school. The Xavier’s that I left in 2003 was very different from the one I had joined eight years before. For me, the change was evident in some seemingly unimportant practices, one of them being the termination of the simple system of giving books for prizes. Though I never won a single medal on Sports Day, I was lucky enough to have received a book almost every Proclamation Day, and each used to have my name inscribed in the class teacher’s own writing, making it a personalised autograph of sorts for Old Xaverians like me. But for the discontinuation of this excellent system of awarding books when I was in my ninth standard, this prized collection of mine would have been a complete one, and this is one change that I would like to see reverted among others.
Having said this, I must add that I have an unflinching faith in the spirit of Xavier’s, and I would like to believe that it will resist winds of change unless they portend a change for the better. This spirit is larger and stronger and more potent than the frivolities and caprices of any one individual, and will prevail in the long run. It pervades the hearts of all who have worn the grey-and-white colours with the red-and-black badge for any length of time, and the truth of this is substantiated by the fact that come the 8th of February, Xaverians from all over the world will converge on a small town, with very little in common to bind them but a shared schooling.
It is very difficult for me to express what ‘St. Xavier’s School, Durgapur’ means to me. Perhaps the best way to put it would be to say that it is much more than just the sum of its campus, students and teachers. It is not a thing of my past, but a part of my present. It is with me each living moment, and is, without a shade of doubt, responsible for every good thing that I have ever done or shall do in my life. I am sure it is the same with every Xaverian attending the reunion this February.
Sourav Sengupta
Class of 2003
Email: sourav.sg@gmail.com
A note: This article was written in January 2009 for a souvenir that was to be released in the reunion on 8th February 2009. Since the souvenir did not see the light of day, I am posting this on this blog two years later, with the hope that Xaverians will be able to relate to it.
