Monthly Archives: November 2009

RLV update 26/11/09

11-26-09 [1]Dear  brother OC’s 

I attach some latest snaps of the developments further to my last correspondence. This is the construction of the kitchen, we have converted his verandah to a kitchen and then have managed also easier access to the toilet and bath.

He personally is keeping well and I am visiting him every day with his daily quota of fruits for him and his son as well. 

I will be out of town and in Delhi till the 30th of this month. Further developments will be communicated as expected.  

Enclosed pics show a comparison ” Before and After”.

Warm regards 

Karan Sarin
mob: 9816047047

 

 

 

WORK IN PROGRESS [click the small pictures for a full view]:

11-26-09 [2]11-26-09 [3]26-11-09 [3]

26th Nov 2009.

RLV update 20/11/09

latest snaps 025Dear Oc’s

Please find attached herewith snaps of the renovation being conducted at Roshan Lal Sir’s House.

The Plastering has been completed, the paint job will commence tomorrow. As you can see, the building material has reached the site for construction of the kitchen and renovation of the toilet and bath. Two masons are on the job and the painter will come tomorrow. We hope to shift him back to his house as soon as the paint job is over.

Accounts statement will be mailed by tomorrow.

Warm Regards

Karan Sarin
9816047047

Spotlight on OCs: RAKESH CHOPRA

RakeshChopra-ocaRear Admiral Dr RAKESH CHOPRA.
IN, VSM (Retd) MSc (Madras University), MSc Nautical Science (Cochin University of Science &Technology), MBA (JBIMS, Mumbai), MPhil & PhD (Mumbai University) 

Dr Rakesh Chopra is an MSc from Madras University and an MBA from B school, JBIMS, in Mumbai. After an MPhil from Mumbai University was thereafter awarded PhD for his thesis on ‘The Strategic Significance of Oil and Gas for the Security of India’. Also an amateur historian, he is a member of the Indian History Congress in recognition of his being the Vice Chairman of the Maritime History Society of South India. 

He studied at Bishop Cotton School, Shimla, and on graduation joined the National Defence Academy for a military career. After serving in the Indian Navy for 38 years he retired in the rank of Rear Admiral in 2006 and took up appointment on the faculty of XLRI Jamshedpur, as Professor of Strategy.

Dr Rakesh Chopra is also a Senior Visiting Research Fellow with the “Oxford Leverhulme Programme on the Changing Character of War” at Oxford University. He is a founder member and on the Board of Directors of a think tank “Peace Operations Institute” in Washington DC, USA.

Dr R Chopra has also had a commendable academic and instructional career in the military. An alumnus of the Defence Services Staff College, he has also been on the faculty as Directing Staff. He was a founding member and Chief Instructor of the College of Naval Warfare at Karanja, Mumbai, and the Chief Instructor of the Navigation & Direction School where officers specialize in the planning and conduct of maritime operations.

A specialist in Navigation & Direction and diving, he has navigated several ships, controlled aircraft from the carrier and commanded three major IN Ships. He has been the Additional Director General of the National Cadet Corps, Flag Officer Offshore Defence (FODAG), Flag Officer Sea Training (FOST) and the Assistant Chief of the Integrated Defence Staff (IDS), Joint Operations, Information Warfare and Weapon Systems. He has been involved with strategy and policy formulation and implementation as also human resource development for senior positions in the military.

He commanded a ship in the 1971 Indo Pak war in the Eastern Theatre and was a member of the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) in Sri Lanka in 1988 where he was awarded ‘Mention in Dispatches’ for gallantry. Subsequently he was awarded the Vishisht Seva Medal by the President of India for exemplary service.

He is a yachtsman of national stature; a qualified International Race Officer, a national judge in sailing and was the Hon Treasurer of the Yachting Association of India. He is an avid golfer. He is married and has two sons.

BCS Sesquicentennial – Collection of press-cuttings

img001BCS Sesquicentennial 2009.

Mrs. Dorothy Chahal and Mrs. Napinder Chahal collected as many press-cuttings as they could find in various papers and sent a bunch of these for all OCs to enjoy, especially for those who could not attend.

Thank you!

The collection is available in a PDF file to download [6.5mb in size, so please be patient while the file downloads].

Departures….

 …My bags all packed, I’m ready to go; leaving on a jet plane.

Yes, making sure we were up (had set at least 3 alarm clocks); no one really slept; clock-watching every 20mins….agonizing…..and then dead tired, red, burning eyes at the shrill sounding ‘wake up’ call….exhausted. Finally getting there; checking in….the boarding card with your designated seat number. Security. Waiting…in the Departure Lounge.

Departure lounges come in many facades, shapes, sizes; degrees from mundane to the opulent to the ultra-mod, ultra-tech or the stains on the fire-proof carpets of coffee, red wine and chewing gum, even holes after a well worn heel has ground the end of the ‘camels’ stub….ash. Grey, black, white.

When the young, the youth and the fountains of life are where they are, in their hurried journeys, the impatient gang waste but little time to sit and sip and shoot the breeze. They whizz through the departure lounge to head for their destinations pronto!

The sesquicentennial celebrations of Great Bishop Cotton School were the culmination of 150 years!! And what a celebration that was!!! To put it in clear terms; no other public school could have logistically made it happen; the reasons are myriad but there is no need to neither expand nor explain.

We moved through Departures and clambered on anything and everything from jaunty jalopies, to the latest flying machines and the ‘Old Cottonian Express’. As we waited in the Departures Lounge at Kalka so that the guys from Delhi and beyond would connect. The Red Carpet was laid and the banners hung, ‘four squares throughout our lives’ to the School Flag….and yes the Coolie….as when I asked him how long he had been working the platforms, his quick reply was ‘Sau Saal’. A hundred years and he looked sharp in his red garb, the metal badge strapped on to his arm and his Gandhi glasses. … Even the hydraulic buffers at the main platform looked the way they were a hundred years ago…and so did the Departure Lounge.

….and I am told, even today, right there, right now and in the late evening when you stand near the benches and look down at the second flat…you can still hear the laughter and screams and shouts of Ye Ole Cottonians who congregated at our sacred alma mater…..the 4th October 2009 was a Full Moon. The sesquicentennial was in full swing…..there is no stopping us now… even after we all have gone (through Departures) and left the sanctuary of School the pull is felt. For me at least.

Its Sunday the 8th of November 2009, Deje Sweden: We coaxed my Mother-in-law to pack her bags; then carefully removed her most prized and familiar possessions; two oil paintings, seven photographs of her grand children, a book shelf, her rodenstock sandals, her TV set and the ‘recent wedded photograph of her and her husband, 56 years ago. Yes, I placed all of these in her Departure Lounge before we walked her in, in her ‘A’ state. It felt extremely sad and heart breaking….yes this was her final gate, her final wait before the flight. A slow, slow wait.

I just pray to God. Please Sir; please do try not to give me the ‘A’ state. Because what I at least want when I am in the Departures Lounge is to REMEMBER and at the least, say: ‘Bishop Cotton School….You Gave Me Everything’

‘A’ state = Alzheimer’s

Vivek Bhasin
(Lefroy 1961-1970)