We just heard that Rajiv [1962-1974 Curzon] passed on at his home in Panchkula this morning the 29th June 2020. Rajiv had been unwell for a while. Further details awaited about any prayer meet and will be appended here
Monthly Archives: June 2020
Message from Mr. Deep C. Anand
I am deeply grieved to know the passing of Varinder K. Aggarwal (Sr. Toti)
who was in BCS during my time. I recall him as an outstanding sportsperson
and academic. His business sense was indeed great when he worked with
edgy fashion house in Connaught Place. I recall the family was living near
Clarks Hotel in Shimla. Toti had a great deal of charm and in true sense a
Cottonian whenever he represented India during his overseas visits.
I remember his wife a Sanawarian and also a charming lady.
I and my wife Kiran send our condolences to the family. Toti will always be
remembered by his fellow Cottonians.
Deep C. Anand
President Emeritus, OCA
A few more – from Suresh Sethi
COVID-19
Krishna,
I know you love to show off your magical powers—
To bring massive upheavals on this earth:
And then justify them with your old excuse—
‘ I have to reduce the burden of Mother Earth’.
Hence the great war of Mahabharata;
Followed by countless, wars, floods and famines—
And now Covid-19,
Your latest arrow from your armory of Maya.
( to add insult to injury you admit you could have prevented all of them)!
I admit and acknowledge:
That you are the Big Boss of the Cosmos—
And you are legally allowed to do anything you want to do:
But please for a change—
Can’t you send us the virus of: love, peace & happiness—
I mean just for a change?
Lullaby
Beloved, day has come to an end—
celestial fire gone over the city fence.
Now the night comes a timely reprieve
for a daily panic:
finicky like the street traffic.
Set down your limbs for solace
and seek a kiss of grace
Say with a faithful chant: for a lonely want—
a confessional prayer
and go over with reverential fear.
Beloved, for a few hours let all doubts subside
and seek shelter in the dark.
Gently go over to sleep;
never mind to-night:
for tomorrow’s chronic rise.
From my diary, November, 1979
Winterline
obscures likes wingtips
in the acataleptic shade.
Stars
coruscate like a tooth in the dark.
Pines
are silent in the accrescent cricket wails;
as wind
goes rustling through their blind eyes.
Chill
feeling my bones fuses sleep.
My mouth
is stale with nicotine.
Eyelids
flicker hesitantly like
much discussed ideas half-explained.
Legs
wobble and long for sleep.
Poem
Already the swollen crevices of the heart
flood the pores of veins;
and memory with her illusive taunts
throws fear’s goblet stains.
Outside, winter creeps on soft soles.
The men go about their ways.
Only an occasional exuberance of wind
tells the parting of summer days.
Soon the moon will be a copper coin
sky heavily painted with blood;
and my reverberations like ill-begotten sons
shall tear my bed loose.
On the last ride when siren’s wail
shall sear through the traffic lights,
and I flutter alone within cold walls;
beloved, please be by my side.
O God!
Some times:
let me suck at your breasts
for succor like a child.
Some times:
let me sleep in your lap,
my head resting with assurance on your strong thighs.
Some times:
with your vast wisdom
wean out my thread of life
from the entanglements of this world.
Some times:
show me the way out
from the confusions of dead ends.
Some times:
stop this incessant ticking
of the metronome of my head.
Some times:
lift me lovingly like a grandfather
who never asks any questions.
Obituary
Brilliant like the sun at noon,
and reporting like the nervous telephone;
the latest OCA News lies on my desk
with corporate graphs, minutes, tasks
of winter ahead. And embroidered here
on the last page of the year,
out and zeroed like a bomber’s target.
The little extra I know about you is
accidental, the rest between stodgy covers
like any reference stands
an index for the groping hands.
In a two minutes silence
(mutely staring at my buttons)
I pay an official condolence:
You, who were one of us.
We mourn the loss of 2 Senior OCs
Our deepest Condolences to the bereaved families.
- Virender Kumar Aggarwal (“Toti”) Lefroy 1954 batch, passed away on 17 Jun 2020, at Escorts Hospital New Delhi where he was undergoing treatment for COVID-19.
- HARISH TREHAN House Captain, Ibbetson House, Batch of 1968, lost to cancer 19th June 2020.
Remembrance : Brig Rajendra Shamsher Singh Kohli [Curzon 1927-37] – on his 1st death anniversary
Brig Kohli’s daughter, Sheela, sent in a photograph [taken at Nathu La in 1965] of her father a year since he passed on at the age of 99
Take me….by Himār Arjun Singh
Take me to the mountains in the form of ashes and dust for that’s where I begun and that’s where I would like to finally rest silently…
Bishop Cotton School — how Asia’s oldest boarding school is coping with the pandemic
Football season, a mountaineering expedition, a cricket tournament, an inter-school debate competition – these are some of the events which have been canceled or postponed due to the pandemic at the Bishop Cotton School in Shimla, one of Asia’s oldest boarding schools for boys.
Though students are attending regular virtual classes from home, they are missing out on a number of sports and other activities, apart from the experience of community-living in the residential school, said Simon David Weale [MA Oxon] the school’s director.
“We’re eager for the campus to fill up with students again. They are attending 44 hours of virtual classes every week, and our teachers have improvised well and come up with innovative, teaching methods. But students are not obliged to attend all these classes as too much screen time could be unhealthy. Besides, the essence of holistic education provided here is the residential environment. That’s why even local students from Shimla live inside the campus,” said Weale.
A typical day at school begins at 6 in the morning and lasts till 10 at night, during which boarders are engaged in physical training, classes, organised games, prep and co-curricular activities such as public speaking, art and drama.
In summer, the school also organises outward-bound activities such as treks and adventure sports, and a month-long mountaineering training course for the outgoing batch, which have all been delayed this year. “The mountaineering course is usually followed by an expedition, and so far, there have been seven successful expeditions to Himalayan peaks above the altitude of 20,000 feet. For those who have missed the course this year, we are planning to rearrange it for them next year,” said Weale.
The school has a strength of about 450 students and 160 staff members. Though a majority of the students are from Himachal and neighbouring states of Haryana, Punjab and Delhi, there are students from all corners of the country, including Mizoram and Odisha, and some foreign students as well.
When the state government ordered closure of schools on March 14, around 70 per cent of the students left for their homes. Those appearing for their board examinations stayed back but left soon after the Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations (CICSE) canceled the exams. Three boys from Thailand stayed back till as late as May but left as restoration of normalcy seemed distant.
Not the first disruption in school’s history
For many institutions, the pandemic crisis is unprecedented, but BCS has survived several such disruptions since it first opened for students in March 1863. On a Sunday in May 1905, when the boys were away for an outing, most of the school was destroyed in a fire. The students were shifted to other lodgings in town, and the school was rebuilt and occupied two years later in July 1907.
An outbreak of influenza in 1922 also affected the school, and the then headmaster FR Gillespy’s wife died while treating the children, said Weale.
After partition and independence, an exodus of Muslim, British and European boys led to the closure of the prep school in Chhota Shimla.
“We have also heard of some other disease outbreaks such as that of yellow fever during the school’s long history. And there was no internet back then to impart distance learning to the students, as is happening now,” said the director.
Legacy
BCS was founded as the first ‘public school’ in India (along the lines of the British ‘public school’ system, which incorporates a house system, a prefectorial body and a system of organised games) by George Edward Lynch Cotton, the then Bishop of Calcutta, in July 1859. First established at Jutogh, it opened for students in March 1863 with Frederick Naylor as the first student. The school moved to its present site at the south end of the Knollswood Spur in September 1868. Suren Tagore was the first Indian boy admitted to the school in 1881.
BCS has a long list of distinguished alumni such as writer Ruskin Bond, six-time Himachal CM Virbhadra Singh and Major Roy Farran (Curzon), a decorated officer in the British Army. The school also has an infamous alumnus, Reginald Dyer, a British general remembered for his role in the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in 1919. The motto of the school is: “Overcome Evil with Good”.
Thank you Mr. Praveen Dharma for sending this in.
Best wishes,
OCA WEbmaster
MY TIME AT BCS – David Wood-Robinson 1940/4
I and my brother Mark were among the batch of boys from England who came out to India after the fall of France in WW2 and spent most of the war years at BCS. My other younger brother Colin started at the prep school and later moved up to BCS. I started in the Headmaster’s House and later moved to Aicheson (?) House near the school gate but I do not remember which school house I was in.. I have lots of wonderful memories, most of them naughty, like climbing over the barbed wire fence to raid bhuttas from the fields below the school. We roasted them in the school boiler. We made strings for our kites by crushing bottles in tin cans and gluing the powder onto the kite strings with flour paste so that they would cut the strings of other kites.. We also made catapults from tyre rubber and tried to shoot flying “sqiggies”, never successively! But I was also given a love for classical music by seeing Disney’s “Fantasia” at the cinema near the Mall and got some good Cambridge School Certificate results which later enabled me to become a Naval Architect but I became a Christian at Glasgow university and later spent many years in Japan trying to tell the folk there about God’s love.
Batch of ‘04 – from Raghav Kumar
Hi Folks,Hope you doing well!
This would be my 1st mail to you. It’s been 16 years since my batch and I, have passed out of school and life has taken us to various places.
My batch created a small whatsapp group, so that we can all be in touch. This year has been hard for most of us. Some of my friends lost their jobs, while others were sitting at home getting low pay or no pay.
Since, most of my batchmates were undergoing stress, Amos (Ibbetson), Parmeet (Curzon) and I, took an initiative of asking my schoolmates about their best memories at school and how life been after school.
We were lucky enough to get some responses, I am assertive that we would get more responses of my batchmates and uplift their confidence.
I thought of sharing some clips of them, for people who chose to send their clips.
I hope that you would like the glimpse of these nostalgic videos.
Raghav Kumar
Lefroy House
Batch of 2004
Bishop Cotton School
Sharing some BCS memories – Rohan Charanji [Curzon 2006]
Hi there
Sharing some images I have with me.
From my dad Ravi Charanji 69 and me Rohan Charanji 06
Thanks and be well
We’ve asked Rohan to send in a mail with names of the persons who appear in the photos and possibly the year in which each was taken. Those who know Ravi and Rohan will recognize them immediately and also be able to identify many others….
The Dear Departed – by Ateek Gupta
THE DEAR DEPARTED
IT FEELS LIKE YESTERDAY THAT YOU LEFT
GOD TAKING YOU AWAY FROM ME
WILL ALWAYS BE HIS GREATEST THEFT
I DO NOTHING NOW BUT WEEP
BECAUSE THERE WAS A PROMISE
YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO KEEP
NOW MY LIFE IS CLEAVED
IF YOU WERE HERE
I WOULD HAVE FELT SO RELIEVED
NOW I KEEP YOUR BELONGINGS CLOSE
BECAUSE YOU ARE A DRUG
I WOULD LIKE TO OVERDOSE
THE TIME SEEMS TO COME TO A STANDSTILL
THERE ARE MEMORIES I WANT TO KILL
BUT MY LIFE NOW HAS BECOME A BASTILLE
LIFE NOW SEEMS SO TOUGH
THE PATH TO MOVE FORWARD
IS WAY TOO ROUGH
LIFE NOW HAS BECOME LIKE HELL
SO DARK AND BLEAK
A HAPPY FACE NOW I CANNOT KEEP
I FEEL BACKED AWAY IN A CORNER
IN YOU I FIND SOME HOPE
TO COME OUT STRONGER
IT FEELS LIKE A PART OF ME IS SHATTERED
BECAUSE TO ME
IT WAS YOU WHO ALWAYS MATTERED
AROUND YOU I FELT SO SAFE
BECAUSE YOU WERE MY SUPERHERO
WITHOUT A CAPE
WITH YOU I FELT SO LOVED
THERE WASN’T A OBSTACLE
I COUDN’T HAVE CRUSHED
YOU MADE ME WISE
NOW I FEEL THAT
YOU WERE MY BIGGEST PRIZE
IT WAS A GLORIOUS RIDE
THAT WE PASSED IN HAPPY STRIDES
AND LIVED WITH PRIDE
ATEEK GUPTA
Rivaz House, Batch of 2018
“OVERCOME EVIL WITH GOOD”