The trip to school last weekend went off well. The old boys won the cricket
match against the Masters by about 4 or 5 wickets. Quite a comfortable win.
The match against school was a different story. We played a day-night game
at a new stadium that has been developed in Sinola off the Mussorie road.
School batted first and scored around 215. We had a terrible start,
something along the lines of 1-1, 2-1, 3-5, 4-9, 5-16. Unfortunately there
was no Kapil Pajji in our mist to rescue us and the innings folded for
around 60 or so. When you are thrashed so badly there is no point keeping
score.
The funds we collected were handed over to Bond and Mrs. Vaishnav at a
dinner held at the HM’s residence on the 13th. I don’t have a figure on what
the old boys collected over all but I think it was close to around 15 lakhs.
The fact that 33 of us collected funds from one batch went down very well.
The HM came across to me after the presentations were done and said that our
batch had done a very nice thing.
While at school I had time to walk around the campus. Many buildings from
our time have been knocked down and new buildings have come up in their
place or are under construction. I have posted photos on the Google Groups
site. Take a look if you are interested. I will be adding a few more photos
in the next day or two.
Faculty members still at school from our time include Burrett (Dy HM now),
DVS, Bhatkoti, MCJ, PKN, DKS, Piyush Malvia, and Shukla. There are probably
others who I haven’t listed here as I didn’t run into them.
Apart from the infrastructure which has improved, other changes that have
taken place include boys keeping cell phones (it is an offence), no more
cycling mid-terms (I guess traffic in the valley has gone up), no more
un-escorted mid-terms for A formers – they have to go with their tutor, no
more using UP/UK state transportation for mid-term travel but relying solely
on hired jeeps/buses instead, and supposedly Roop Kund is no longer allowed
as a mid-term destination due to the stories circulating about the bones up
there. To me most of these seem like terrible changes as they take away from
the process of making the Doon kids more independent – something I feel we
were way ahead of all the day schoolers when we started college. What do you
guys think? School becoming too conservative?
Here is the link to the pictures from my trip:
http://groups.google.com/group
Kunal
