Tag Archives: nostalgia

Yearning for school – Part 2

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The other day, GG and I were checking out various junior colleges where she may be interested and we came across the house system there. She was very happy on seeing this since secondary schools here have now abolished the house system and it’s more interclass competitions.

So I started talking to her about the houses in my school and that talk is the root behind today’s post. I have written previously about my alma mater and thought this is a good time to share more about my school.

In the secondary section, we were all divided into four houses. Our house names were very unique in that unlike the traditional house names which consisted of Indian freedom fighters or names of flowers or something else, our house names consisted of names of ancient Persian princesses. I am not sure if I have mentioned it before, but my school is a Parsi school and was quite steeped into the Parsi culture. We used to be quite proud of our houses and were extremely competitive about it. This used to peak during sports day, more about it later.

As mentioned, our houses were named after ancient Persian princesses – green house is named Shernaaz, blue house is Purandokth, red house is Godarfried and yellow house is Faranakh

We were also very democratic in nature, with the entire secondary school voting democratically (just like in an election) to get our Head Girls, Junior Head Girls, House Captains and Vice Captains. If I remember correctly, grade five was not allowed to vote for the head girl, but when I was in grade five, we were allowed to vote for our house captains. For the head girls, the finalists had to give speeches in the school hall to the entire secondary school and also campaign with posters across the secondary school. On the voting day, we all queued up, according to class and cast our votes with one ballot for the head girl and one for the junior head girl. The votes use to be counted in the presence of the principal and winner in each category would be declared as winners. The two runner-ups would then be selected as the assistant head girls in their category.

For house captains, the process was slightly more casual. One day at the beginning of the year, each house would assemble in a pre-determined spot and teachers would start asking for students to either nominate their choices or ask students to self nominate themselves. Once they got a pre-determined number of students in each category – Captain and Vice Captain, they would hold elections.

The elections would be by show of hands and when the teacher who heads the house announces the name of each person, we would raise our hands and a head count taken. Then the winners announced and cheers and commiserations. It used to be a very fun atmosphere, especially since the periods after lunch would become free due to elections. When I was in grade five, I remember one of my classmates had a sister in grade nine and the class was just next to ours. So that class came to our class and literally brainwash us to vote for students in their class for Vice Captain and this trick worked! A few years later, teachers got wind of what the seniors were up to and stopped grade five students from voting. You only voted when you were in grade six and had some idea of the house system and the prominent girls there who may become house leaders.

Our rivalry and competitiveness really came to fore during our sports day. This would usually be held on a Sunday at a sports ground not too far from our school. While the primary and kindergarten students could sit with their parents in another section, secondary students had to sit according to their houses. So when the events started, everyone in the houses section would start cheering and booing. Points from each event would be added up and the house that scored the most points (from events on the sports day plus tournaments of indoor sports like chess, carrom, badminton etc. which would have already been calculated) would have the chance to lead the march past. In my years in school (including in primary school), my house did not lead the march past on only one occasion! And that was because that year something very unprecedented happened. Three houses had the exact same points and they had to toss to see which house would lead the march past and who would follow. Red house won the toss that year and my house, which was the green house was second! We were so disappointed that year. We would also practice for the march past for a couple of months before the sports day and this meant all those of us who were in the march past contingent (around 30 girls from grade five to grade ten) would practise after lunch and miss lessons which were also a bonus to us!

It was really fun writing this post and looking back in time when the most important thing was thinking about school and friends. I wish I could go back to those innocent times.

What are your favourite memories of school?

Yearning for school – Part 1

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When I wrote about my school going life earlier this week, it made me nostalgic about my school. So this post is dedicated to my alma mater – J.B. Vachha High School. JBV is it was (and is still) called is the short form for the loong formal name of the school. The name which used to be printed on all our school note books for the 12 years that I spent there reads like this – J.B. Vachha High School for Parsi Girls & The Cawasji Jehangir Primary and Infant School. I can’t find the school website so there’s no link to the school, although I did remember checking it out a few years back!

The school badge

I studied in the same school right from Junior KG (or Kindergarten 1) till I completed my Secondary School Certificate or SSC exams. Most of the teachers who taught me, saw me grow from a naughty 4 year old to a mature 15 year old young lady. The school was a purely girls school and except for our Games master and Indian music teachers, all the teachers were also female. While I was growing up, this was the most popular school for girls around the area I lived in (this would mean the Dadar, Wadala, Matunga, Sion areas, but we did get students from other places like Chembur, Parel also). I also remember seeing huge queues of people waiting to get the admission forms for their daughters and this was at a time when school admission was not as difficult as it is today. My mother used to see the queues and say that they didn’t really have to queue up so much – they just went to the school in the morning, got the form and I was called for an interview, which I did well and just like that I was in! In fact my grand parents were against my joining JBV as they wanted me to go to the same school as my dad – this school was literally a hop, skip and jump away from home and more inportantly for them, was a south Indian school and hence to their eyes, had all the right values and attributes. But I am so glad that my parents, and especially my mom stood her ground and put me and later my sis in this school.

What we called the 'New Building'.

Those days, when it was just education all the time, this was one of the very few schools which had a big emphasis on extra curricular activities. From the time we were in third standard till we graduated these were the extra activities we did – embroidery, needlework, library, Indian music/Western music/Dancing (you had to choose one), cookery, gardening, laundry, girl guides/social service. We also did typing and economics as special subjects in the IX and X grades. We also had one period of drill or PE every week and from the VII grade till the X grade, we had to stay back after school once a week for around 90 minutes of games.

Since this is proving to be a loong post, I’ll stop here for Part 1 and do Part 2 another time.