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Visit
to Tangy.
Friday, 7 December 2001
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| As Khurshid and I approached
Infant Jesus School, we stopped by the church. The ancient Portuguese-built
church we had all these years has been taken down and a new one is being
built there. The old church had got rather run-down, the Principal explained.
Since the new church will be larger, it will also occupy much of the open
ground in front. The graveyard remains, although some tombstones had to
be moved with the permission of the families concerned. |
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| This is what the grand, new
church will look like. I shot this drawing from a board placed by the builders
outside the construction site. (Don't let the harsh colors bother you: the
board painter has overdone them, especially the reds that represent terra-cotta
tiles.) |
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| The school's main building
got a facelift as you can see. Vice Principal Freddie is the man in the
photo (he's an old boy who studied here until 1962 but finished his schooling
in Singapore). Freddie took us around the school and showed us the new blocks,
the library, and the auditorium. |
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| On Fridays the boys now wear
blue T-shirts and have PT drills even in the morning. |
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| A 200-meter round for the
PT class. |
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| Kids at the
basketball court. It was during the morning interval that I shot this from
the first floor of the building that once housed junior boarders. (In this
photo's background, you can see right up to the main gate and the road.)
IJHS has no boarding now. They're planning to resume taking boarders after
a new dormitory building is finished. In my day, in the late 1960s, the
school had just about 450 boys. After the noisy interval, the boys all returned
to their classrooms and there was pin-drop silence on campus. Must be real
discipline at work, we reckoned — keeping today's 2400 buggers quiet. |
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| Office staff. They still
use good old Remington typewriters. This is the old Principal's office.
Vice Principal Freddie too has his office in this large room. The Principal
himself now occupies the next room, once our XI std classroom. |
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| The Principal
tells Khurshid to be good. In our day the Rev. Monsignor worked in the Bishop's
Palace. Surprisingly, after three decades, he looks much the same. |
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These are oil portraits
of Fr Elias Lopez (left) and Fr Thomas Thundiyil, former principals. They
hang, along with other portraits, in the school's new auditorium. Fr Elias
(Fally, for short) I thought, looked too young in this portrait. As for
Fr Thundiyil, he had the same expression when he caught me once for wearing
brown pants to school. "This is a fancy-dress competition,"
he'd remarked, "and you get the first prize. Go home and come back
in black trousers." I also had to pay a small fine that day.
The two principals had contrasting
styles. Fally was strict, flamboyant and loud while Thundiyil was quiet,
gentle and better liked. Fally's favorite expression was "KANNALEE!"
(cattle). His fines (for things like not wearing proper uniform) were
always a few rupees — large amounts in those days. Fr Thundiyil,
modest as ever, fined me just 20 paise that day!
Actually Fr Thundiyil too
was strict in his own way, but he somehow never was very good at being
all that strict. He'd come to IJHS in 1968 from St Michael's, Cannanore,
after expelling a boy named Suresh Raman there. But Suresh managed to
join IJHS in the XI th standard that year, weeks before Fr Thundiyil was
transferred here. So, like a bad penny, Fr Thundiyil got Suresh back!
I remember how he walked into our moral science class and spotted Suresh
for the first time. At first his jaw dropped, then he laughed as he asked
Suresh, "What are you doing here?"
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| If you visit
Tangy, don't miss the long beach, a short walk from the last bus stop. The
black fishermen's vallams of the past have now been replaced by boats
that use outboard motors. |
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| The boats looked so colorful
that Khurshid and I walked down and took a closer look. It was a lovely
scene with violet flowers growing in the foreground. |
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| The boats from another angle. |
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| Khurshid amidst the boats. |
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