From 1962-1966, I studied at Vivek Vardhini High School in Hyderabad. The school was in the news recently during Mahatma Gandhi’s 150 birth anniversary as he visited it in 1929. He had addressed a public meeting in the school grounds and collected a then princely sum of `15,000 for the freedom struggle.
The 112-year-old school was established by the Maharashtrian community settled in Hyderabad during the Nizam era. It has a massive building and a large playground in the front, and is located in the busy Jambagh-Mozamjahi Market area. It was hemmed in by Ashok and Navarang Cinemas on its east and west. (The theatres have since closed after the present day onslaught of multiplexes and real-estate projects.) Though the faculty and administration at Vivek Vardhini were predominantly Maharashtrian, the students were from different linguistic communities—Telugu, Hindi, Tamil, etc., reflecting the composite cultural ethos of Hyderabad.
I was just an above average student upto Class 10. During a farewell meeting on his retirement, our Headmaster C A Chary, an authoritative figure, exhorted the students to “have high ambitions” in his booming voice.
If any words have left an indelible impression on my mind, it were these three. I left every distraction, even the ones I enjoyed, and became a man possessed. With the help of a senior, I worked on the Class 11 syllabus during summer vacation. I prayed devoutly to the deity of Hanuman Temple in Esamia Bazar to help me with maths. Lo and behold, I improved a lot. And maths was my weakest subject. I became the undisputed topper in all subjects.
Then a major crisis occurred in my family of seven. My father lost his job and his health deteriorated, largely due to worries over running the family that had five children. He died at the end of my Class 11. It was an agonising situation. Even the funeral had to be performed on borrowed money. My whole class and teachers turned up to console me and insisted on my continuing school. The school supported me for a year with scholarship and a monthly allowance. I passed with top rank in the board exam and joined an engineering college on a merit scholarship.
The charged words from my former headmaster had for me a clairvoyant tinge, as if my transformation was in anticipation of the travails lying ahead and to equip me to face them.