HEHMMHS

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My son’s house compound in Buon Me Thuot, the capital of Dak Lak Province in the Central Highlands Viet Nam shares a wall with a private playschool. Every morning between six and quarter past, children in red-and-white uniforms are brought by their mothers or fathers on two-wheelers. The tiny tots, hugging their schoolbags and flasks water-bottles romp about. There is cacophony in the neighbourood – cackle of toddlers, last-minute advice of mothers to the kids and the roar of the revving motorbikes as the parents return, leaving them behind.

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My mind travels back half a century.

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Thanks to the transfers my father, a central government employee, was subjected to ever so often, the list of schools I studied in is fairly long. They range from one adjudged the best in the district to another with a hoary past, having been founded by the European missionaries.

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My father had been transferred to Cochin by the time I passed out of Class VIII. His office was in Mattancherry, then part of the bustling Cochin town. (The neighbouring Ernakulam had not yet wrested its prominence from the twin.) We took up residence in Mattancherry and I was admitted to the nearest school. Proximity was the only factor that weighed with middleclass parents in those good old days. Reputation, alumni, lineage, snob value and other features which schools these days pride in apparently had not yet been invented.

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Thus was it that I joined the school that I passed my SSLC out of. It went by the somewhat longish name Hajee Essa Hajee Moosa Memorial High School. Even the abbreviation HEHMMHS was more than a mouthful.

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It was certainly no Sherwood or Doon, Mayo or Yercaud. It was not even comparable to the Britto’s in Fort Cochin or The Gujarati Vidyalaya or the Tirumala Devaswom High School closer by. There were many successive years when the school went ‘out for a duck’ in SSLC: no student presented by the school making the grade.

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The silver jubilee year, 1961, the year I passed out, was exceptional: out of the 52 that appeared, eight passed and one of them in first class. Pass of 16% was the highest in a long time. I recall that on the first working day of the next academic year, we were felicitated like war heroes. In a show of real sportsman spirit, all the 44 classmates too turned up to cheer us!

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It might have been a poor cousin of other schools and people had general disdain for its alumni, but it was always dear to me. The school was established by a benevolent businessman for the benefit of what is these days described by the media as ‘members of a certain community’. (How naïve the people in the media can get! They seem to think that this expression shrouds the ‘certain community’ and its members in anonymity!)

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However, I have not seen a more cosmopolitan school than HEHMMHS. It had teachers and students who spoke different languages – Kutchi to Konkani to Urdu to Malayalam to Gujarati – and professing diverse religions. It was indeed a melting pot.

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As the next generation in the founder’s family diversified into movie-making and the then sunrise industry of seafood, they could not devote their attention, time or money for the school. It was but natural that it soon fell into decadence. It was perennially starved of resources. There was no replacement for the teachers who left or retired and there was no material for the class earmarked for craft, sports and games. Predictably, the school did not have a laboratory.

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However, the teachers made up for all that. We had a devoted bunch of teachers. They went any lengths in their efforts to teach. And they encouraged the wards to do what they were good at. Like, the ones who were athletic were allowed to practice as long as they wanted. They romped home with prizes and championships at inter-school meets. The artistically gifted were encouraged and they went on to pick up prizes at the school your festivals. Though campus politics had taken toots elsewhere, those in HEHMMHS had no time for all that after their sports, music and plays.

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Mr Namboodiri who taught us Hindi would put the textbook aside and ask Mujib or Rex Joseph to sign a Hindi song. After the liting song from Chaudwin ka Chaand or Mughal-e-Azm, was rendered, he would explain the meaning and the figure of speech and take us through the nuances of the literature. Tell me, how many of you who have studies Hindi through textbooks know the meaning of words like tabassum, aftaab, ikraar, izaazat, nargis or kashish?

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If the Highland lass in William Wordsworth’s The Solitary Reaper is still before my eyes without my ever having set my eyes upon her, it is because of Mr Venceslaus in his starched white khadi shirt. With him teaching English, school was fun. While explaining the word ‘erase’ (as I ‘erased from memory’), he linked it to the pencil eraser (which we Mallus refer to as ‘rubber’ – little realizing that to most people in this world, it is a contraceptive device). When he spelt it for us – aar-you-ebb-ebb-ee-aar – we knew something was wrong, but did not know what exactly it was.

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And there was the stern and portly Mr Joseph who taught us History and whose cane taught us discipline, and Mr Sadanandan who used to recite Malayalam poems so mellifluously that teachers in the neighbouring classes would pause to listen. If anyone can draw a perfect circle freehand on the backboard, it would be our Mathematics teacher Mr Govindankutty Menon. Our reticent Headmaster Mr Mohamed Ali (Mammalikka to the promoter ad hence to everybody else) led the great team.

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On Fridays, the lunch recess was from 12:30 to 2:30 (instead of the sual 1:00 to 2:00) so that those belonging to a ‘certain community’ could offer their prayers.

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However, the attendance in the senior classes in the school would to trickle to single digits on Friday afternoons because of a neighbouring institution which had an organic link with HEHMMHS: the Star Theatre. It was on Fridays that the movie shown in the previous week would make way for a new one. Many would go for the movie and the others, confident that given the thin attendance, it would be only revision in Physics and Biology that would take place in the post-lunch session, would go home too.

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That brings us to Mrs Hallegua, our Biology Physics teacher. As she could not cover the syllabus because of the mandatory revision on Friday afternoons, she would hold extra classes on Saturdays (‘At 10.30, after the Church, please’). She could hardly move, or even breathe, because she was so obese. It always baffled us how the rickshaw-puller, half her weight, would haul her from her Jew Town home to the Synagogue, thence to the school and back.

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Whenever I see schoolchildren in smart uniforms trooping out of buses clutching schoolbags and water-bottles, I am reminded of those days in HEHMMHS which made me what I am.