For the love of poems..

21-Mar was World Poetry Day, and I am reminded of the poems we studied in school.

Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost
Night of the Scorpion by Nissim Ezekiel
Tiger by William Blake
The Solitary Reaper by William Wordsworth
She walks in Beauty by Lord Byron

...these are only a few of them.

Thanks to Mr.SP Das, for making us appreciate the beauty in poetry. His classes were magical and he brought out the dreamer in all of us...dreaming with our eyes open, quite literally!!

Nostalgic...

Ides of March...floods me with so many memories...School, Julius Caesar, Shakespeare, Mr. Patro’s classes in the first period...not in any specific order!

The image of a quiet class comes to my mind, waiting for Sir to enter after the morning assembly. Absolute silence during the entire period, and letting the world of Shakespeare's drama take over... at least for me! How I wish I could see Julius Caesar as a drama, the Romans in all their grandeur with their flowing robes and their arrogant faces! Mark Antony was the hero for me...calm, intelligent, brave. Brutus was stoic.. I remember hearing this word for the first time and how I loved it...I still do.

Cassius the villain and Julius Caesar, of course, who is there throughout, driving all the characters’ even after he is dead. And how can I forget all the beautiful metaphors of Shakespeare.

Ides of March was also the day our ICSE exams began and coincidentally, it was the English papers on that day. Shakespeare was with us on that day too, maybe lurking behind some of the answer sheets!

Those 15 days of the final exams just flew by. Most of us were not mature enough to be aware of how important a milestone it was for us, both in our school life and our academics. We just took on each day as it came, with no baggage from yesterday and no parcel for tomorrow. Exams got over on 1-Apr-1991 and life moved on, albeit with changed priorities and friendships.

I often wonder if we would have behaved any differently during the last few days of school, if we had known that we would not be meeting each other (at least most of us) for more than 2 decades. Would we have interacted more, shown more empathy towards all our classmates, more respect towards our teachers and invested more time in building friendships.

Life has taken numerous twists & turns for all of us, and made us older and wiser through the years. What do we have to say to our children about school life, do we have any experiences/lessons to share which would help them deal with life in a better way! In today's world of virtual friendships, long-distance relationships, can they even relate to our experiences! Thoughts to ponder...

Class photos

5D

4D

8D
Top->Bottom,L->R: Himadri Kanungo, Siddhartha Das, XX, Avijit Pal,Sumeet Sharma, Partho Ghosh,XX,Abhijit Das,Santak Das, Bidhan Roy,Rajeev Das;
Faisal, Abdul Sajid,Rohit Mohanty,Rajiv Chaki,XX,XX,Saddique Warsi;
Neelamadhav Sahoo,XX,Chandrashekar C,Shoaib Zaheer,Abdul Rashid,Mr.Routray,Payal Panda,Krishna Leena,Lalita Ch,Sabita

10B

Top->Bottom,L->R:Samikhya Das,Rajesh Ram,Manas Swain, Debabrata Das, Suvra Prakash Naik, Saideep Mohanty,Biswajit Soor,Arvind Singh, Subranshu Mishra;

Ashish Acharya, Sidhartha Bose,Rajiv Chaki, Vikas Sahoo, Mohammed Iqbal,Amrit Swain,Subranshu Dutta, Moksh Kohli;

Lalita Ch,Priti Modi,Payal Panda,Mrs.Mathur,Abdul Rashid,Ajay Chopra,Abdul Sajid,Vaneet Mehre,Satyajit Ray

7B

8C
Top->Bottom,L->R:Harpreet Singh,Ashish Acharya,Manish Mishra,XX,Kamaldeep Das,Anirban Kanungo,Amrit Sahoo,Arvind Singh,Tasawar Noor, XX;
XX, XX, Samarendra Mahapatra,Rakesh Pattnaik, Rashmi Ranjan Mohanty, Siddhartha Bose,XX,Pradeep Chowdhary, Amrit Pattnaik, Subranshu Mishra, Rajendra Sahoo,Satyajit Ray, Vivek Kumar Moda;
Ian Unger, Ashutosh Jha,XX,Jogesh Bharalewala,Vijay Bharalewala, Subranshu Dutta, Vivek Agarwal,Satyajit Das,AlotJhunjhuwala, Amrit Pattnaik, Nilesh Parekh, Md.Iqbal;
Sushri Das,Padma Mohanty, Yasmin Banu,Soma Das,Mr.Thankur.Lopa mudra Acharya, Anwesha Swain, Runa Das,Anju Jain, Lipika Mishra.

7C

Top->Bottom,L->R:Rajeev Das,XX,Rajiv Chaki,Raghunandan Mohapatra,XX,Abdul Sajid,Faisal,XX,XX,Satyajit Ray,XX;

Shane Ignatius, Poonam Singh,Suraj Dutta,Dennis Lee,Manas Ranjan Chowdhary,XX,Subhasis Mishra,Siddhartha Bose,Tanveer Ali,Alok Rath,Rashmi Ranjan Mohanty,XX,XX,Ajay Chopra;

Manas Swain,Amrit Swain,XX,XX,Sanjeev Das,Ashutosh Jha,XX,XX,XX,XX;

Anita Mishra,Rekha Rani Singh,Purnima,Lopamudra Acharya,Mr.Sattar,Priti Modi,Lalita B,Anju Jain,Lipika Mishra

                                                                          2A

                                                                           5C
Top->Bottom,L->R:Vivek Agarwal, ××,××,×× Bidhan  Roy, xx,Vivek Moda, Saswat  Kar, AbdulS ajid, Shahbaz Javed khan, Abhijit Das,Vineet Sodhani;
xx,Abdul Rashid,Punit Vyas,Chandan Baskem Manas Choudhury ,Biplab  Behera, xx,xx,xx
Avijit pal,Subhasis das,xx,Rishi  Kapoor;
Debmeet  Patro,  Sabyasachi Rath  , vivek moda, satyajit ray,××,satyajit  dash anubhav , ?,sk afsar, harpreet;
vijay bharalewala xx,xx,××,××, nihar mohanty   , Mrs. Snigdha, Lopamudra Acharya, Rekha Rani Sharma, Anindita Mishra,Runa Das,Sangita Thakur                  

4C

                                                                             5B

                                                                         5A

                                                                       6D

2D

Top->Bottom,L->R: Himadri Kanungo,XX,Samikhya Das,Jogesh Bharalewala,Rashmi Ranjan Mohanty,XX,Sanjeev Das;

Amrit Pattnaik,XX,Zaheer Khan,Neelamadhav Sahoo,Riteish Rawley,Anil Agarwal, Sudeep Das,Pushparaj Das,Amit Agarwal;

Shoaib Zahir,Ajay Agarwal,XX,SudeshnaMukherjee,Soma Das,Mrs Dutta, Yasmin Banu,Monalisa Routray,Susheela Naidu,Shyamalika Das,Saddique Warsi.

I write this in memory of our ex principal Mr. Ashok patra. I choose to blog to pay my sincere respect to him.

If my memory serves me right he was a tall, dark slender man always smartly dressed and he used to teach us Julius ceasar in class10. My understanding of english literature used to somewhat poor in those days and i had to struggle to get through Julius Ceasar.

Everytime after his lectures he used to enquire for doubts and i being a timid girl in those days used to keep quiet. One day he somehow understood my plight and asked me to meet him in his office after school hours.

I was very very nervous literally shaking when i went to meet him the very first time but what i found was a very warm person, very kind and great simplicity in character.

He continued to personally teach me for few weeks after school in his office and each time after the session my respect for him only grew.

It is all because of him i still remember everything of Julius Ceasar and its conversations. Today even after so many years i still feel priviledged of having learnt from him and his kind gesture will always remain in my memory.

DEAR SIR YOU WILL ALWAYS CONTINUE TO INSPIRE ME.

Lipika.

Friends, please share your best memories or thoughts on any of our teachers by emailing to the following email id: stewart91memoirs@gmail.com
Editorial group will select and publish few good entries in the memoir.
It could be any of the teachers from kindergarten till 10th.
Looking forward to your valuable and interesting contributions.