HYDERABAD: This Friendship Day, we go back to school and revisit some of our oldest friendships: with classmates, teachers, books, campus and much more.
The foundation of what we as social beings turn out to be in our adult lives depends, to a large extent, on the experiences we have at school. Some of the best relationships with people, activities and spaces are made during the school days. While time may take us on different pathways, a few memories remain distinct and constant throughout our lives. We talk to Hyderabad Public School (HPS) alumni from different batches who take us back in time…
Nandita Sanker, who now runs one of Asia’s top training companies, graduated from HPS in 1986. Recollecting her time spent there, she says, “I was there only for two years. I had some really good friends at that time. I am still in touch with Nina, Beenu and Fatima. Ours was the first batch where they had girls in senior secondary classes. For everyone in that school, it was a whole new experience. I used to be a tomboy, with short hair, while all the other girls were well-dressed and had immense make-up and a number of hair clips on them. I was in 11C. Ours was not a very large group, just about 12-13 people. We had about four-five girls. I don’t know how I never got bullied.
Maybe I was bullying other people! We used to have sports for one hour at the end of the day. There were all these mighty prefects and people were quite scared of them. If the prefect catches you doing something, then you are in big trouble, and they could beat up people. I think it was a little violent, typical boys’ school. One day, I had a fever and decided to walk home. It was just across the road, but all these prefects were hiding and waiting for people to run out. I got caught and they made me do ‘frog jump’. Have you ever seen anyone doing a frog jump? I did it but got quite irritated by it. I went back home and told my elder brother about it.
Now my brother, heavily built, had a bully-like reputation. He went straight to the boys’ hostel and shouted dramatically, ‘Jisne bhi maa ka doodh piya hai wo bahar aao!’ The next day, everyone was on their best behaviour with me. I had no clue my brother had done that. There were also a few romances brewing up in class, nothing serious but we knew who liked whom. For me, I found two Rakhi brothers, who one day came and said, ‘kya aap hamein raakhi baandh sakti hain?’ We continued our Rakhi tradition after that,” she recollected.
Fatema Juju Khan, a class fellow of Nandita, says the years at HPS were some of the most pleasant years of her education. “I was a shy girl who came from NASR, an all-girls school. I had never had the attention I received here and I was thrilled with it. I just loved being at school than home which was rather unusual. I was interested in classical music and participated in almost every competition that took place.
The schools’s diamond jubilee celebrations were on when we were in the 11th grade. So there were a lot of people who had come and performed at school at that time, including the ghazal singer, Talat Aziz. I was always picked out for music and was known as the Nightingale of HPS. Initially, I was very uncomfortable because it was a co-education. I was not used to having boys around. But to my pleasure, it was the greatest experience as they turned out to be such warm, sweet, friendly people. I had never thought that the opposite sex would be so fun-loving and so kind. HPS provided the best atmosphere for anyone to flower. That was the beauty of that school,” she says.
While some experiences are fostered within the school, some become prominent after the school days. Another 1986 fellow, Beenu Kaura met her husband Sandeep from the same batch much later in life.
Being in the commerce section, she never talked to the guy from the Science class while they were still in school but met him later and married him. She has shared some pictures with us and as someone who graduated as a topper, a gold medalist, she remembers the schoolhouses and curriculum perfectly.
Sunita Jaitly, from the batch of 1988 says she was quite a shy person in HPS and had difficulty adjusting in school. However, she met most of her classmates after 25 years of graduating from school and now they catch up every time they are in Hyderabad and even plan trips together.
Sriram Panchu, senior advocate and mediator at Madras High Court, graduated from HPS in 1969. He recollects that there were rivalries with other schools as well as within their own school. “But the whole idea of a boarding school is that you get to overcome rivalries,” he says. However, this did not stop him and his classmates from bullying freshers. “Of course, we would rag freshers. They all had these big-big pots of pickles made by their mothers.
So we would promptly cut all those pickles and add them for ourselves. Have you heard about the food in HPS? Every HPS boy’s mouth salivates when he talks about the food,” says Panchu and then breaks into a story, “We had a nice superintendent, Mister Sardaar. Very courteous, elegant gentleman. He always wore a Sherwani. We found that during Ramzan, boys were getting very good food. We went to Mister Sardaar and said Muslim boys are getting much better food than us. He said, ‘beta, you keep the fast and I will give you the same food.’ So we all kept the fast. Just to get the food.” After this, Panchu begins to sing the school song, with the lyrics and tune all in place, like a twinkle across time.