A critical piece of writing is always lapped up; something praise enveloped in tenor, looked with slight suspicion about ulterior motives. That is the Post Truth Reality. Growing up in the 80s means different things to different persons living in this country. A recent urge to put pen to paper reiterated the belief that the dying decades of the last century were actually the living decades across both the centuries. Tucked away unassumingly among tall tress, the hard weather, the chill and terrain of the surreal Blue Mountains in the South of India are many schools that have been the foundation layers of many a grown person in this country and abroad. One such Residential institution to which I went as a Day student only for Primary classes is celebrating its 50th anniversary since inception. It is one without the flamboyance of commercialism or the vulgarity of richness reeking out of its advertised features. It is a calm, non noisy promise; unhurriedly providing all the features that encompass a sought after Boarding School in a Hill Station of colonial repute. While many schools have a British legacy in the Blue Mountains– the place synonymous with names like Ooty, Ootacamund, Udhagamandalam — this little kingdom of magic was visionarily named King in Latin. Christus Rex Senior Secondary School was bought from the Maharaja of Mysore whose Summer house it once served as. lt housed a residence, a hallway with classes to walk into, a vast ground and a concrete building initially. Now it has grown to be a phenomenon, an idea and a concept for rooted beginnings for any child that walks into it. On an experimental basis, four decades ago, a handful of girls were admitted in Primary classes to this school of hundreds of boys.
The non posh, non heavy and down to earth pitching of the early days of life from a well meaning institution has remained very close to the heart. A pastiche of the school song suggests itself to me as I put down lines. “High in the Hills where the cool mist spreads ,Rex School proudly stands, prouder her children without fear or dread, do good with willing hands… Fight for the right with all our might… Citius, Fortius, Audacius …This be our battle cry.. Humming to fetch the rest of lines, l manage to salvage this much from memory. As tiny tots and toddlers scrambling to the morning assembly in blazers , prim school uniforms , shining shoes , nervous gait and earnest obedience l remember us as babies singing , frequently looking at class teachers eyes, the school song, not a word of which was comprehensible then, in Standard l and ll.
Where Centenary, Bicentennial celebrations and grand announcements are norms, where words like Alumini and Alma Mater cliche, a school plainly turns 50, puts on its regular sweater, cardigan, and takes a caring walk for fitness, through the hills and comes back saying a hello through its spectacles to passerbys. Hundreds of old students are arriving on the hills in November for a celebration of a lifetime from different parts of the world and the country. Men are returning to become boys and collect their boarding day – student day memories. As for me, l only want to join Rex on that practical evening walk with a flask of tea and a cap in hand and celebrate by writing about goodnesses lost when the last century was lost.
They tell me Rex is 50 years old. For those of us who have been there and felt it, the school is neither old nor even an institution. It is a phenomenon. It is everything old school: authentic, unpretentious and unafraid to be its self.
For those have been through it, it is one of the best feelings of an entire lifetime.
No matter what others say in praise of their Boarding or Residential schools adding adjectives, superlative, Rex beats them all.This, a Rexian knows. lt has a glamourless warmth and a soft interior that those who walked its portals before the new century know and those after cannot comprehend.
Rex is that first Latin guy who introduced us to more Latin guys like Citius, Fortius , Audacius ! Rex is what you call now, a WhatsApp group that never has mental exits –a group you can call ” Where the cool mist spreads” ( with shield and muscle icons for Fight for the right and This be our battle cry)
Old boy Rex is the hope retainer in our mental ethos when the new world is corrupt, violent and selfish.We outgrow everything, even the most die-hard of embedded realities, we never outgrow pretty little putaways like the personality traits of this Miss, that Sir and this Father. Rex never had teachers or mentors. It had love disguised in kalaidescopes that got handed over to us during admission. Looking into those kalaidescopes as lonely, frightened, homesick Boarders or finicky, dazed Dayscholars you would see a Shresta and his Bee keeping, a Bertram and his officiating, a Paul and his typewriting, a Jayashekaran, an Augustine and his Carpentry, existing in pairs with a Jaya and her Wardening, an SUPW and all that it means, a Chapel and all its prayers,a dormitory junior, dormitory senior with all the misgivings, mischiefings, a ground with gallery and all its possibilities for childhood turning adolescence, a Sundaram, a Mackenzie, an eternally unchanged demeanor of a Stella and more unchanged appearance of Alphonse , the smiling wisdom of Bhanumathy, the accent, guitar and attitude of mighty Joe, the calm John in suit of Mathematics, the small eyes of big Chemistry Francis and big eyes of bigger Physics Ganapathiammal – Science was unsettling in name and classroom, the ‘Sonna’ (for son) utterance of a saintly Celine, the embracing matriarch in Fernandez, the roll eyes of Audrey, the fear imposing Rita, the endearing Janet, the active racer Sheela Krishnamoorty, the strict, curly, bellbottomed George, the goggled eye controller Jean, the quiet Computer symbol Selva, the meaning business Rita, the smile in the Sadhay, the Hindified Sukumar, the shy and quiet Elizabeth of Tamil, the stable beshawled Margaret for French, the fun Ann, the soft Art Paulose, the spirited Augustine on the tracks, with a loving Prem in eternal humour and whistle gear, the sprightly jump in the step of Suresh, the guarded eliteness of Llewellyn, the confidence of a Vineeta, the admirable Carmel, the perfection in a Raji, the composed Stephen, the Librarianing of a Manohari John ,the demure, pleasant Tessy, the calm Bhama, the liveliness of a CP. Ramachandran juxtaposed with the quietness of an S. Ramachandran, a dance embodying Suryakala, a Bio smart Rosalind, an agile Catherine, a stern Shyamala, a shoulder length hair six footer Benedict, a school driver’s permanence…. ( reminding here that every Rexian’s mind adds a Miss and Sir while reading because we respect them yet are taught by them to be grounded and not repetitively redundant , showy). Shadowing all in the pretty designs of the hand clutched kalaidescope is the terror embodying eternal icon in our young impressionable minds–the Rev. Fr Mathew Kottaram making his cassocky strides in his imposing dynamism. Behind him in the same strain appear a saintly Rev Fr. Abraham Joseph, a couple of important Rev. Fr. Thomases strict and soft respectively, and in the future a few more Fathers, Sirs, Misses, Correspondents, few more Heads, few more challenging students, a lot more able members of Staff , a Rev Fr. Maniangaat, a Ma’am Elizabeth and a Rev Sr ldaya.
This cocooning environment that cared for us as Rexians insulated the sombre atmospheric chill with a homegrown warmth, helped Boarders miss home a lot less , taught us to be selfless, original, respectful beyond whims and be genuine and brave. The value systems that our bonding with elders at school embedded in us are rich and ironically outdated for the new world yet upheld meaningfully in the crossroads of our lives sailing through the Millennium. They taught us lessons of living by simply being real and being themselves.
While Boarders remember with a wink the gimmicks, sorrows , clandestine naughtinesses and shenanigans, flustering the Chaechis (Nannies) in the dormitories, Day students remember the taboo but tempting cheap titbits sold by Radha kka outside the gate with another winking emoji.
If anyone’s name is missed out in the recollection after 42 or more years, which l enlisted from memory, not seeking my family’s help, they would understand and not register a cribbing complaint. That’s Rex for you that understands if l say l studied from Std l to Std lV there and though am a teacher’s daughter, and lived Rex in the home as though it were my next sibling, did not hear persons discussed in my home, only problems.
As a child l remember the first computer ; hard , bold, heavy and intriguing placed for display in the inner Assembly hall, Marshall Chettan ( Bhaiyya) of ” big standard” and his big made classmates making us scurrily run into our Std Il classes from passageways lest they come and lovingly throw us in the air and catch us for fun, since girls were the terrible minority and attention puller kids happily dotting the campus .
When Joe Sir would walk in to make noisy classroom boys stand up on the bench to give a whacking on the ooh-aahing butts, it was our skirts that got hit hard and not us, l learnt later. l remember body painted seniors in black doing an African dance ‘Osibesa’ and some others singing an awe inspiring incomprehensible ‘Malaika Nakupenda…’ in swaying melody.
I saw the fruit dates for the first time as a child when Sheela Miss brought it to display in a lll std class about Deserts and Oases. I saw Rasheen Chettan ( later Actor Rahman ) in bat-like School Pupil leader gown for the investiure ceremony and never had guts to stand in his vicinity thereafter.
l drew two long horizontal lines on classroom boards after writing the talking students’ name list , standing on teachers’ chair and kept adding vertical lines between them each time the talker talked, because l had too much ego as class monitor to admit before 33 boys in a class of 36 that l’m confused whether I V or V l comes after lll.
l could not afford the luxury of an attention-affection giving mother as a child because she was lost in her duties for Rex. l waited yearningly at my doorstep all my childhood for my mother to pick me in her arms after her special classes, her cultural programmes for lnterschool competitions at the Stadium, her Stationery distribution, her tuitions, her consolidated marksheets, her lnterschool Sports support and frenzy, her Hindi, History preparations and Notes of lesson, amidst caring for other two young sons , a long distance travelling husband, bedridden mother in law who never gave her peace and the harmless, respectable father-in-law, alongside financial and domestic hard struggles in the family to boot. I had no complaints because Rex was another sibling in the family, another child of my already bogged down but happy- go- lucky, enterprising, balancing mother.
All who studied in Rex have bitter and sweet memories of childhood. Yet we carry Rex like a trophy in our souls; we adore the legacy it represents, we cherish the calming tradition of goodness it personifies and the non advertised outreach it always had,with its motto of do good with willing hands.
Rex was so close to my heart that l remember as a primary school kid going to the chapel and not just placing the water at the entrance on my forehead but thinking of the water in the flat flowervases on the altar too as being holy , dabbing a little of it on my forehead , tip toeing in slippery pair of socks, bowing umpteen times with folded hands till the neck ached, returning feeling super blessed to take on the all boys school and all scary teachers.
Rex deserves a resurrection of its past warmth that all those who read this article identify gently with ; it is a harboured emotion, a revisit beyond nostalgia.
Rex is a feel, to come home to. It is a promise to never let go. lt is not a place where we studied. It is everything that is not there in the world today. You know it.We know it.To say anything more would steal the charm from an Age of innocence,slow paced , that was not media looted, world tutored.
Smitha Janet Nilgiris is a Poet and an Academician.
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