Memories of an ordinary Indian :: 18 :: DAV School

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After clearing the Class VI exams I was taken off the Sarafa School and admitted in the local DAV School. It too was in the midst of a bazaar but it was enclosed from all sides and a massive gate would only allow access to the school. Once the school commenced the gate would be shut and we wouldn’t know what was happening outside in the bazaar. Inside the school the main building was located after a huge open space. There were some class rooms on top of the gate where three classes – class VI, class VII and class VIII used to be held.

None was allowed to go out of the school premises during the recess. Children – we were all children at that age – would play whatever games that could possibly be played in that enclosed space. I do not remember whether we of the senior classes played any games; what I remember is the noise that would be raised by shrieking and screaming children of the lower classes. It was virtually pandemonium. One must give it to the School administration; they never came out to shout at the children for those high decibels that were raised by them. Perhaps, they realized that as the children couldn’t go out they had to have some place to play and use up their energy.

A boys’ school, DAV school was run by Arya Samaj, a Hindu reform movement that promotes values and beliefs of Vedas that they think are infallible. In the school, however, I never came across any event that promoted the Arya Samaj philosophy barring the Hawan that was conducted first thing before the classes every morning. Close to the main building there was a small temple-like structure in which there was a hawan kund, a place for conducting the sacred purifying ritual. It was a square depression on the floor where the fire used to be raised with four people sitting on four sides of the kund pronounced Sanskrit mantras, offering ghee and other objects like sandalwood, honey etc.

Right in front of the temple-like structure there was a long and narrow paved surface on which everyone was supposed to sit. Hawans were where everyone was encouraged to pronounce the Sanskrit mantras loudly. I did not know Sanskrit even one bit, hence I used to only listen but I was never hauled up for this failure. Occasionally, I too was picked up for performing the Hawan and would reluctantly comply. What I did not like about the whole process was the smoke that was raised from the kund and would get into the eyes. But I gradually learnt the Gayatri Mantra: “Om bhurbuvah swaha tatsa virturvarenyam bhargo devasya dhee mahi diyo yonah prachodayat swaha“. Having repeated it numerous times during those two years at the DAV school it seems to have sunk deep into my consciousness - so much so that I can repeat it even now after almost seven decades. Some say it was formulated by Vishwamitra and I have heard some saying it was conceived in the Bamiyan Valley of Afghanistan. Whatever might be the truth it is reckoned as the seed mantra from the Rig Veda and Gayatri is the Vedic metre in which it was composed.

DAV was one of the very few private schools in the town of those days. I do not remember any Christian missionary school being there at Gwalior. Miss Hill’s School was not a missionary school. It was opened by an American who later migrated back to her home town and occasionally would send some money. It was a good school and children of middle or upper class families used to study there. The DAV could be called a Hindu missionary school but there was no proselytisng although Arya Samaj was free to proselytise to bring non-Hindus to the Hindu fold.

Be that as it may, the DAV had good teaching standards. I still remember the names of a few teachers who made a deep impression on me. There was Vasant Singh who used to teach Geography, Bharat Bhushan Tyagi who used to teach Hindi and was bit of a Hindi chauvinist; English used to be taught by the Headmaster Ravindra Singh himself and Arithmetic by Seva Ram Choube, our own private tutor. Seva Ram-ji had to leave when I was in Class VIII as he was selected for appointment in the Government High School which I had to join later at class IX. I still remember how he shed copious tears when we gave him a farewell party in which he was gifted with stainless steel utensils. Stainless steel was uncommon in those days and was unaffordable by middle class families. Seva Ram-ji proved his mettle as he distinguished himself as a teacher and was deputed to the United States by the Government of India in an exchange programme of teachers.

The Class VIII was considered a watershed in the careers of many students. We in Gwalior had a board examination that was conducted by the Board of Secondary Education of Gwalior State and later by the Madhya Bharat Government after independence. It was a tough examination and many a bright boy faced his moment of truth and for many of lesser means it used to prove the end of their educational career. The board examination was later done away with as two years later one had to appear at the Matriculation Examination which, I presume, is now called Higher Secondary Examination.

In the DAV I picked up  some very good friends one of whom remained a friend for long years. Others I somehow lost touch with but one of them I met up with in Washington DC in 1998. He was a senior official in the US Commerce & Diplomatic Service. He made us stay with him and one morning took us out on a trip around Washington, topping it up with a lunch in one of his favourite restaurants in Alexandria, Georgia.

I knew I was not a brilliant boy but I did reasonably well in Middle Board Examination fetching a II Division. Having done the Middle Board I was now ripe for Matriculation, the exam for which used to be very tough. But for appearing at that I had to move over to the Victoria Collegiate High School on the outskirts of the town and spend another 2 years there.

Memories of an ordinary Indian :: 8

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Raja Man Singh's Palace, Fort, Gwalior

On summer nights we used to sleep out in the open on the terrace over the second floor rooms. It was a biggish terrace which used to be cooled with a lot of water earlier in the evening before the beds were made up right on the floor. We had a water outlet on the second floor and it used to get the public supply with enormous pressure. There were no personal tanks or pumps for water those days. It was 24/7 metred uninterrupted supply with such pressure that it would facilely climb on to the terrace. What is more, we could drink it right off the tap without any fears of infection; it was so well filtered and treated. It seems to be crime today to have wasted all those hundreds of litres of water for cooling the cement terrace that relentlessly received the heat during the long summer days from the overhead sun. But, there was no alternative. Separate lines for untreated water were just not there.

From the terrace we could see the famed Gwalior Fort that was built on a 300 to 400 ft high hill dominating the town on the north. Its ramparts used to face us. Beyond them were the Houses which had the dormitories of the boys of the Scindia School, a public school for the children of the feudal gentry or those who could afford those high expenses on their wards. One such House was visible from our terrace with its dim lights. What was, perhaps, more interesting was that guns used to boom twice daily from behind the ramparts marking the hours of 12 noon and 9.30 at night. I wonder whether these would boom were meant to tell the people the time as most of the households could not afford watches and time-pieces or whether it was a practice continued since it was an army cantonment of the Scindias. The guns ceased to boom after the state was merged in the Indian Union.

The Fort remained a mystery for quite some time until the family went up to meet a former neighbour who was appointed a teacher at the School. The Fort has two approaches – one from the north that steeply climbs on to the Fort through a series of gates ending at Man Singh’s Palace. The climb was so steep that no motor vehicle could make it to the top in those days. One daring Air Force officer posted at Gwalior during the fag end of the Great War drove his station wagon up to Man Singh’s Palace creating quite a flutter in the town. However, for those who did not have motorised conveyance this was the access that was used as tongas would go right up to the entrance around which the Old Gwalior town had developed. Likewise, for the return trip tongas would be available down below. I remember going with the family climbing the steep slope on foot and then trudging about a kilometre and a half to the House where our acquaintance used to reside being the warden of the dorm.

The other approach was from the west and it was a more gradual climb to allow motor vehicles to go up. It climbs on to the fort with precipices on both sides with thick vegetation down below where tigers were reported to have been seen. On one side, across the precipice, there were huge rock cuts of Jain Tirthankaras on the rock face. This approach was the access for all those who used to visit the Fort or the Scindia School. I have fuzzy memories of the historic monuments located on the Fort but I clearly remember the elation I felt on spotting father’s Victoria College as I looked down from the parapets at the town sprawled in front. The Maharaja’s Jai Vilas Palace, of course, could very easily be spotted with its expansive grounds full of trees and manicured lawns.

Photo from internet