Back to school

Illustration/Uday Mohite

OHMYOHMYOHMY! I went for a school reunion this week after ages, for the centenary celebrations of St Teresa's Convent High School, Santa Cruz (1922-2022), where I studied as a kid. It started with a Mass at Sacred Heart Church at the boys' school next door (ha! sweet revenge: when we were in school, the Principal would announce at assembly that we were not to look at the boys from Sacred Heart, who perched on our school walls and blew seetis at us). I'm Hindu, but my entire education has been at excellent Christian institutions: St Teresa's Convent school, then St Xavier's College, Mumbai.

After the Mass, we went to St Teresa's, where there was a staff get-together, and I caught up with my school buddies Sujata Bhat (Sujju), Kalpana Kanchan (Kalpu), Premilla Rodrigues and others, all thanks to Yamini Kunder, who alerted me about the centenary. I was delighted to meet a few teachers, who would be in their 80s at least - Miss Duarte, who taught us French, and Miss Cleta Rodrigues, who taught geography and was historically called ‘Murgi' for no reason I can recall. Memories came in a rush, and I could only shake their hands in awe: Ms Duarte was still spiffily dressed, her back erect, in command, as always.

We wandered amid the primary section, secondary section and the school hall. We sat in Class III-B, wiggling into those little wooden benches, with desks that had holes drilled for inkpots. Inkpots! Yes, I'm from that zamana. Sujju recalled a highly squirmy incident: when she was a kid, her mum dressed her up daily for school. One day, her mum was busy and asked her to dress up on her own. Later, at class, their maid turned up, with her panty in hand: her mother was convinced, for some reason, that she had forgotten to wear her panties. Oh gawd, in front of the whole class. Sujju still turned beetroot at the memory, while we collapsed in an epidemic of giggles.

Outside the school gates, ‘bhaiyas' sold all kinds of goodies, including kairi (raw mango), boras, jeera golis, red churan, a striped chewing gum that was wrapped around a wooden pole, imlis and bimblis. I was allowed to buy only ‘proper' food at the canteen, not ‘kachra' at the gate. But my benchmate Arlene invariably had an array of khatta-meetha goodies in her desk, that she generously shared with me. Bindaas girls like Janice Mathias were goddesses in my eyes; with their healthy contempt of authority, their popularity only soared.

We met Sr Juliet, who had taught us Social Service. Possibly in her 90s, she was frail and not all there, but she clasped my hand warmly, smiled, gurgled at my chatter, and would not let go of my hand. I was very moved. Sr Juliet was the kinder one; her authoritarian colleague Sr Caroline used to make us lift our thick, sports day, divided skirts, so her stick could leave a weal on our legs.

Miss Girija, a South Indian who taught Hindi, was cross-eyed, so a decade of full-on masti was guaranteed, which she countered by hurling chalks at us, shouting, "I'm talking to you!" When she read some patriotic Hindi chapter, where an Indian solider threw a bomb at the enemy, we would keep saying, Miss, please repeat, we didn't understand, and she'd repeat: "Sarhad pe usne dushman par apna bum pheka," (at the border, he threw his ‘bum'/bomb at the enemy) and the entire class collapsed in hysterics. The centenary promises many more events during the year, and I can't wait to go back to school.

Meenakshi Shedde is India and South Asia Delegate to the Berlin International Film Festival, National Award-winning critic, curator to festivals worldwide and journalist.
Reach her at meenakshi.shedde@mid-day.com