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Having
cleared the tough Middle examination of the Gwalior Board I was ready for high
school. Middle examination was, in fact, the terminal examination for the stage
of primary education. After this was the
matriculation examination that was as tough as they come. We didn’t have higher
secondary in our time. It was two years of matriculation that prepared one for
college education, then known as higher education, culminating in a bachelor’s
degree. In early 1940s Gwalior did not have post graduation in the only degree
college that we had in the entire state. There were even no law classes and
Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the former Prime Minister, had to go out to Lucknow to
study Law after he cleared the BA examination from the Victoria College
conducted by the Agra University.
There
were very few schools which used to run the matriculation courses. The closest to
our place was the Jiwajirao Intermediate College which, apart from
matriculation, used to run the 2-year Intermediate courses. Somehow it was considered a college for
Marathas and non-Marathas never tried to get admitted there. The only option
for me, therefore, was to seek admission in the VC (Victoria Collegiate) High
School from where all my three elder brothers had done Matriculation.
VC
High School was located at quite a distance from our place. It was much beyond
the College where my father used to teach. It was around a couple of miles from
our house which was quite a distance for us as we did not have any mechanical
means of locomotion. To leg it up to that distance we had to start off around
half an hour earlier and walk it up, go past the then up-coming memorial of
Madhav Rao Scindia (Sr.). The school was located in a huge property of the
government that was inherited from the Maharaja’s estate. While we used to
enter the premises from its rear gate that was around a furlong from the
building, the building itself fronted on the Jhansi Road with a big iron
two-piece gate, from where there was a circular drive-way to a biggish porch.
It must have been residence of a big and wealthy man in Maharaja’s
establishment and, as was the wont of Scindias, finding no better use, it was
later handed over for the school.
Father
took me to the headmaster for my admission. The headmaster was a Maharashtrian
gentleman called Bhise. His room was at one end of the building. A biggish room,
a little cluttered up with furniture and papers, I happened to notice that it
was, in fact, a bath-cum-toilet. I saw a chain from a cistern mounted up on the
wall still hanging, the marble of the wall had faded with deposits of dirt. The
floor was covered with white square tiles as used to be the case those days.
This was seventy or more years ago and howsoever rich a feudal might have been
he obviously couldn’t have achieved better than this. My question was, as I
posed it to father, why should the headmaster have had to run his office from a
bath. He could have opted for some other room. My father’s reply was he could
have, but he didn’t and that was it.
At
the back of the building there was a fairly big enclosed area which also had a bi-cycle
stand. And, there were a number of mango trees which in the month of July were
loaded with fruits. As used to happen, the school administration would lease
the trees out to a contractor to harvest the fruits. One day as I entered the
area I heard somebody shout “Barso Bhola”. And the unseen Bhola from a first
floor balcony let loose a well directed
missile that brought down more than half a dozen mangoes. The contractor’s man
was, to begin with, nonplussed not finding anybody whom he could pin down but
later he adopted aggressive attitude – threatening and intimidating virtually
everyone. Bhola, nonetheless, remained elusive for him and kept raining down
mangoes whenever his friends down below gave him the call on slackening of the
watch.
That
Bhola was the same Bhola whom we had known from childhood I came to realize
when I came up against him. He had passed out of the Miss Hills’ School and had
joined VC High School and, as luck would have it, was in my section in Class
IX. His father was a railways official and his mother used to be my mother’s
best friend. They used to live not far from our house as we would frequently
see him running to the school with his school bag on his back to catch up the
time. His name was Prasoon Kumar Guha but was popularly known as Bhola, meaning
a simpleton, which he was certainly not.
Bhola
became a very good friend along with another very decent boy Mahendra Sharma
and we three were virtually inseparables at the school. In course of time Bhola
endeared himself to everyone in my family, especially my mother who was very
fond of him. Much later after I had done with the College and everybody else in
the family was busy elsewhere earning their respective keeps he would be
spending the hot afternoons with us, mother and me, during his vacations from
his B. Tech course that he was pursuing in Bombay. When a telegram arrived in May
1961 from my oldest brother about my selection in the Civil Services it was he
who received it and read it out to mother.
As
the hot season changed and was heading towards cold weather Bhola too turned
his attention towards guavas. In the school complex there was a huge guava
orchard that too was leased out to a contractor for its fruits. The two years
that we were in the school he was up against Bhola for whom no obstacle was difficult
enough to get at the luscious and sweet guavas. Once I remember he crawled into
the contractor’s store wearing his new double-breasted grey jacket – all for a
few guavas. It was not the fruit that attracted him it was rather the challenge
to get at whatever was being contrived to be kept away from him.
Both
of us were not fond of studies at that point of time and used to bunk classes
with impunity. Leaving all the lectures behind we would go all the way to the Gwalior
Mela, All India Scindia Hockey Gold Cup matches at the Race Course or even the
Polo Ground where once a mishit of the Maharaja whizzed past him missing him by
inches. He was happy to see the Maharaja gallop by saying “sorry”, “sorry”
under his breath.
In
course of time the Head Master Bhise got changed by a Maratha from Baroda (whose
name I forget). He had played cricket with Vijay Hazare, the captain of the
Indian Cricket Team around that time. He could bowl a steady length around
middle-and-off but age had taken its toll. Nonetheless, with his arrival
cricket got a fillip and all the other games for which equipment were available
were promoted. So we played Badminton and Table Tennis in addition to
cricket.
A
Badminton tournament was conducted in the winter of 1950 in which I won the singles
trophy and reached the doubles final with Late Rajni Nagarkar as the partner.
Somehow he didn’t turn up for the match and I was asked by the organizer
whether I could play without my partner. I played the match all by myself and
won it. This was mentioned at the time of distribution of prizes by Roop Singh,
the Olympic Hockey legend. In fact, the opposition should have been given a
walkover, but, no, this was only a school match. And Bhola, noticing the stale
biscuits in the well-packed cardboard boxes given away as the prizes to me,
thrust them into the hands of the organizer asking him to feed them to his
children.
As
both of us, Bhola and I, did not study hard enough for our Matriculation
examination we did not do well. While Bhola flunked I scraped through in III
Division. It was Arithmetic and Science that killed me. In rest of the subjects
I did pretty well. I realized I had no brain for Mathematics, Physics and
Chemistry and that I should shun them in the college. However, later it did not
turn out that way.
*Since a photo of VC High School could not be procured I have borrowed a picture from internet of Amity University indicating modernised education in Gwalior
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