Seventh Day School, Madurai ...a place where the most part of my childhood was spent, and happily at that! The memories come surging back from the nethermost recesses of my brain. Picking up from where I left off in my earlier post, the chapel was the focal point of our mornings. Each day we would gather in it for our morning assembly of hymns, stories, thought for the day, and prayers. The chapel served like an auditorium of sorts, and considering that the school was still small in those fledgling days, it could easily accommodate all the students from Kindergarten to Grade 5. Our elocution contests would be held there, our guest speakers would address us there, our educational movies would be screened there, yet on Saturdays, when I attended church with my family there, it would take on an entirely new form, with the pastor preaching his sermon from the pulpit, and the tank behind him filled with water for the immersion baptism of new members inducted into the church. For the New Year's Day, the church would come alive with colourful festoons and shiny spangles and assorted decorations that brought about that special magic of the season. Come to think of it now, that chapel was an incongruent mix of the academic and the religious, I should say!
The classrooms on the campus were not that many in those days either. As the school strengthened and increased in numbers, tile-roofed classrooms were constructed along the back walls of the school campus. Global warming was not a major problem then, and the red-tiled rudimentary clasrooms were not a big discomfort even during the dog days of summer. Just behind the compound wall was a slum that teemed with a porcine population along with the human kind, and it was not uncommon to hear the pigs grunting and squealing as our classes went on. One of my childhood memories is of being chased by a pig that had strayed on to the school campus. I happened to go to the bathroom behind the chapel one evening, after school hours, and was rudely shocked to find the pig give chase. I remember turning tail and running for my dear life! There were a lot of casuarina saplings (must be huge trees now) that were planted around the campus, and on a rainy day, a naughty classmate would take me under them, promising to tell me a secret, and while I innocently stood under the young tree, would take hold of a branch and shake the water droplets on to me.
I also remember cartloads of sand being brought from the Vaigai River and spread around the school grounds. The sand was still damp and fresh, and we children would frolic in the huge mounds heaped in front, near the school gates. We would jump on to those mini mountains of sand and dirty our uniforms and shoes, and get shooed away by Moses Annan, the school watchman, and Joy Akka, his wife. The girls would put their thumbs and forefingers together in the wet sand and make molds shaped like betel leaves. There was a big tamarind tree on the right end in front of the school, and also guava trees, which we children used to raid continuously. There were huge tamarind trees at the back as well, but several of these were cut down to build the classrooms. As long as the trees lasted, we had a great time plucking and eating the guavas and tamarind. When the tamarind was out of season, we would still munch on the sour leaves. At times, when the guava or tamarind was beyond our reach, an ingenious classmate would climb on to the compound wall, jump like Tarzan and seize a branch and hold it down for us on the ground while we raided the branch and picked it clean. I was particularly addicted to the tender, unripe guavas, and I'm afraid I never let many of them ripen and complete their full life cycle! Oh for those days of mischief and gay abandon!
When the number of students outgrew the chapel, the morning assemblies were held outside, near the main gates of the school. I had the honour of hoisting the flag during the assemblies and would recite the National Pledge aloud ("India is my country and all Indians are my brothers and sisters," and so on), and all the students would repeat it after me. My brother Karikalan used to joke around at home saying, "You know, when you say all Indians are your brothers and sisters, you have to silently tell yourself, 'Except one'!" The assemblies were eventually reduced to twice a week, and then to once a week as time went by. It was around this time that a new campus was bought, the one in Ellis Nagar. The campus, as it was then, is still vivid in my memories. There were lots of coconut palms all around the campus and again, tile-roofed, rudimentary classrooms were built there to accommodate the primary classes of the school, and eventually the entire elementary section moved there. It was a pang to see many of our teachers and our loving juniors move to the new campus. The students in the higher classes felt sort of isolated, and the only time we got to go the new campus was for the weekly assemblies and our Physical Education (I think they were called PT) classes.
Memories will continue ...
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