School Days – (Part 1): Sainik School Kazhakootam
By
J K Kurian, 52 Course NDA
Having joined Sainik School, Kazhakootam on 4th Feb 1967, when barely 10 years old, I was allotted Roll no 596 and allocated to the 5th dormitory, with Madhavan Nair Sir as the House Master and Ms Jessie John as the matron. The older generation of Kazhaks look upon Jessie John as a motherly figure, who taught us manners and etiquettes of social living and moulded us kids into boys.
A tall, elegant anglicised lady, sound of her pointed high heeled shoes could be heard from far, thus giving adequate warning to mischief mongers amongst us. She had made it compulsory for all to converse only in English, which meant that for village boys from Malayalam medium schools, like me, mum was the word.
We had few students like Rajeevan 592,(Maj Gen Rajiv Krishnan) whose father was in the Navy, Amarnath Raja 567, whose father was the PMG, Kerala and Dilip Mathew 573, whose father was the Executive Engineer of Thanneermukkam, (those whom I can recollect), who could speak fluent English- which meant that we, the ordinary mortals, held them in high esteem.
Most evenings, after dinner, Jessie John used to get us all freshers into a group and force us to converse in English and also have sing-song sessions of old English songs. On weekends, she used to organise social evenings in ante room of the dormitory, wherein all boys will be encouraged to participate in some activities- a stepping stone to shedding stage fright and shyness, specially for an otherwise shy boy like me.
And then we had our famous Resident Medical Officer, retired Surgeon Commander Burby, a World War II veteran. He was a thorough bred ‘gora’ Anglo Indian, with a large family. No 3 dormitory was converted into an MI room/ small hospital, with the doctor staying on the first floor (in other dormitories, the House Master stays on first floor).
In order to skip the strenuous PT and thereafter the academic classes (besides other extraneous reasons) few students used to feign illness and report sick. The veteran doctor knew who such characters were and he made it a point to strip them and give some painful injection on their buttocks.
An unique feature of our batch was the presence of large no of north Indians, 8 from Haryana and a rare sardar, Gurvinder Pal Singh Mokha from Delhi. In those good old days, sardars were a rarity in Kerala and whenever we used to move out of the School campus on route marches etc, the village boys used to follow Mokha curiously, as though some alien from another planet had just landed on planet earth.
The most dreaded sound in those younger days was the 530am wake up bugle call to get ready for the morning PT. Our prefects and House Captains had to literally pull some of us out of our beds or pour a mug of water on some.
I continued to be extremely homesick and eagerly looked forward to a visit by my elder brother, Thomaskutty, a pre degree student at St Xavier’s College, Thumba (nearby) every other Sunday. A visit by my father, of course with all the goodies made by my mother, was a rare but welcome occurrence.
Naturally, we all youngsters eagerly looked forward to the 3 breaks, Onam, Xmas and Summer breaks, when we could go home- which itself was a memorable journey. We used to pack our meager belongings into our airbags and send it to Kaniyapuram rly stn 2kms away by the School van, and then we students would march in a single line to the rly stn.
One of the happiest moments in our life then would be seeing the steam engine hauling our home bound train moving into the rly stn. We would all be herded into the reserved compartment, with a warden or any such Class 4 employee as the in charge responsible to drop off the students in the rly stns enroute.
In those days when diesel or electric engines were unheard of in Indian Railways, travelling by a coal engine meant that you had minute particles of coal coming out of every hole of yours, after the 6 hour journey to Tiruvalla, my NRS (Nearest Rly Stn). We were given Rs 2 as pocket money for the journey, a princely sum those days.
At Quilon (now Kollam) station, the major junction en-route, I used to eagerly look forward to buying my favourite ‘parippu vada’ (dal vada), costing 25ps and a cup of tea, 20ps. The unspent cash was used to buy some goodies for my siblings and mother.
We were blessed to have some of the most committed, qualified and dedicated teachers any student can think of- all post graduates with BEd, some with Doctorates. One great value addition during our younger days at School was the UK government’s GVSO scheme (Graduate Volunteer Serving Overseas), wherein qualified volunteer teachers from UK came to teach in our School, besides in schools in other developing Commonwealth countries. It was almost like learning English from Shakespeare.
Our batchmates fondly remember Mr Weikfield and Hurran, who inculcated the spirit of adventurism and love for nature amongst us classmates. My fluency and love for the English language can be credited to these stalwarts, as also my favourite English teacher, Alma Patrick Soans, a thorough bred Anglo Indian.
To be continued……
