February 2020

The first year in St Mary’s flew by and in no time, I was in the 9^th Standard, Division A in the main School Building. As I mentioned earlier, I was very competitive and wanted to score high marks and stand first in my class, so here I was amidst fellow classmates who were equally brilliant and ambitious! My bench mate was Godfrey Rodrigues who was a very quiet but an outstanding student, very studious and with a very neat handwriting.

Adolescence hit me very hard and all my hormones seemed to be at full play! Adolescence does strange things anyway and in my case I suffered several of its effects – I became very self-conscious and worried unduly about the impression that I had on other people. I was ambitious but I began procrastinating on daily tasks like regular study hours and homework. The desire to study regularly was there, but I somehow perked up only before the terminal exams.

I developed a phobia for Maths and this put me at a disadvantage whilst competing for high grades. I was very good in subjects like English, French and Social Studies but the Sciences left me cold. I recall preparing hard for the first terminals but fell ill with the flu just before the exams, missed several of the papers; and was disqualified from being ranked at the end of the Term. This was a great disappointment and I really felt that I had started on the wrong foot that year!

Adolescence also changed my reading tastes – from the books of Enid Blyton and Frank Richards, I graduated to the crime novels of Perry Mason and James Hadley Chase. I also developed mild crushes with a couple of our teachers, though solely in my imagination! Another important phase of my development was increasing wanderlust – the desire to travel alone during Diwali holidays as well as the Summer Vacation. Hence I started making regular forays to Cochin and later to Calcutta: these two cities fascinated me no end!

Book collecting and book buying was an activity that I cultivated during my adolescence – whichever city I visited, I would visit the nearest book shop, and if funds permitted buy some books! This interest continues even today and I have managed to accumulate a very large quantity of books in my house!

It was the summer of 1965, and I was in search of a good school to join in Bombay. Getting into a reputed school in the 8^th Standard was difficult but my Father soon found a solution. He reached out for help from catholic friends both in the Reserve Bank and also at the Sodality House at Byculla. I was invited to take an admission test at the iconic St Mary’s School in Mazgaon, in the Red Tie or SSC section. I did well at this test and was duly admitted to the 8^th Standard for the school year starting June of 1965!

It was exciting to join St Mary’s and to go to School in the blue school bus, from our colony to Nesbit Road, Mazgaon. The School had both an SSC section as well as Senior Cambridge Section popularly called the Blue Tie Section. The School had vast grounds and the legendary Jal Pardiwala was the Chief PT Master. The School was founded by the Jesuits in 1864, and so was already 100 years old when I joined!

I was placed in Class 8^th C which was especially added that year, to accommodate Catholic students from the nearby St Anne’s Parish School which was only up to the 7^th Standard. The main line divisions were A & B, housed in the main School Building; while our classroom was part of an adjoining ramshackle building. Next to our classroom was the visual instruction or VI Room and behind that was the Science Laboratory presided over by the aged but colourful Mr Noronha. So I was part of this motley bunch in 8^th C and I soon discovered that I could outscore all my classmates! That school year I won 8 prizes in all and also the Fr Donnelly Scholarship Award – in fact the only subjects where I did not get a prize were Marathi, Hindi and Drawing!

As you can notice, I was very competitive and I was determined to stand first in the 9^th class the next year, where there were only two divisions. Unfortunately, I soon found out that the students in the 9^th standard were brilliant – students like Brian Martis, Malcolm Monteiro, Leslie Pinto and Abbas Koita. This would indeed be a challenge, as we shall see later!

I was not much of a sportsman but I did play some cricket and also table tennis. I remember we had a table tennis competition sometime late in 1965, and I decided to participate in it. Soon the draw happened and I had to play against Lionel Extross who was my senior. I recall vividly how nervous I got, in front of the school audience – needless to say, I was badly beaten. With this, my sporting activities came to an abrupt halt – I blame my self-consciousness in front of an audience rather than a lack of skills. I was in the throes of adolescence and being self-conscious was just a part of growing up!

So I was back in Bombay from my holiday in Delhi and this first maiden solo trip had stirred my wanderlust. As I mentioned earlier, there was a Family Wedding happening in Cochin immediately after my Delhi trip and I was all eager to go and attend this event! Along with my aunt and uncle and my cousin Sudha, we left Bombay by train to Cochin via Madras.

My Uncle was a Railway Board Member and he was entitled to travel in a saloon car which was then duly attached to the Madras Express from Bombay. So there I was, travelling in colonial luxury which had its own living room, bedrooms and a small pantry manned by a waiter who travelled in the saloon with us. It was a remarkable journey as at every important junction, railway officials would visit our saloon to greet my uncle who, as a Railway Board Member, was high up on the totem pole.

We halted in Madras for a day and had lunch with a close relative in the city, after which we boarded the Mail train from Madras Central Station to Cochin. I loved the train journey and early in the morning, we crossed through the Palghat gap and soon entered Kerala crossing the expansive Bharatapuzha river near Shoranur. We steamed past Thrissur and Chalakudy, where one could see elephants hauling logs from the river running along the railway line – what a picturesque sight! It is still etched in my memory!

Soon we reached Cochin Harbour Terminus where we were received by my grand uncle who sent his car to pick us up. Whilst we were crossing the Wellington Island on our way to Mattancherry where my uncle Dammanajja lived, we saw at a particular point three modes of transport running parallel – the railway line, the airport landing strip and the ships in the harbour!

I fell in love with Cochin including Fort Cochin with its spacious British and Dutch Bungalows – henceforth I made it a point to visit Cochin every summer during my school and college holidays, for the next 10 years right up to 1974. Once the marriage was over, I returned to Bombay along with my grandmother – we were chaperoned by my uncle Ganpatmam who decided to take us by air to Bombay.

This was my first air travel experience – I remember it was a Fokker Friendship plane carrying around 40 passengers and it was indeed an unique experience travelling through the clouds; and suddenly within a couple of hours, landing at the Bombay airport. It was sometime in May 1965 and soon in early June I would be starting a new chapter in my life including joining a new school in the 8th standard!