by Chandramohan Nair
‘Well done, yaaron,’ exclaimed Amarjeet, perched comfortably on the lowest branch of a tall tree.
He was a cheerful and stocky eight-year-old Sardar boy with his hair neatly tied in pigtails. Ashok, Pande and I gave him a thumbs-up. We were still catching our breath and trying to find a secure place on the branch for ourselves. This tree had defied our attempts until then and we felt a satisfaction similar to that of a mountaineering expedition conquering a stubborn peak. Once settled, we crunched into some nashpatis which Pande had thoughtfully carried, using his handkerchief as an improvised bag, and surveyed the scene below.
The tree was in the corner of a large compound which housed our school, Shishu Niketan, in a white two-storeyed building of uncertain age. Other than half a dozen trees and the patch of garden in front, the rest of the compound was covered with hard brown soil. There was no sign of any activity inside or outside the building.
‘Do you think Ma’am will be waiting for us?’ ventured Ashok, chubby-faced and the most conscientious in our group.
The mild Kathmandu sun was almost directly above us. Ma’am had allowed us a break after her first class at nine o’clock so this was a rather longer break. We slithered down the tree and headed for our classroom.
‘Ma’am’ was Mrs Khanna – a plump woman of middle-age with a cheerful presence. She was our Headmistress, our sole teacher and the owner of Shishu Niketan. The school was also her residence and our classroom was one end of the Khanna dining table.
Ma’am was in the kitchen but soon made her appearance.
‘Children, I hope you enjoyed your break. Now, we just have time for a quick English lesson before the lunch-break,’ she announced with her customary beam.
We spent the next half-hour identifying the subject, object and predicate in some simple sentences. Ma’am religiously followed a well-thumbed copy of Wren & Martin. I was fascinated by the book’s appearance: a tome of impressive thickness with a bold, black title in medieval font imprinted on its burgundy cloth cover. It was wholly suggestive of divine contents.
Most days at Shishu Niketan followed this pattern of boundless play interspersed with short classes. When we were not in class or climbing trees, we would play tag and run, have friendly wrestling bouts, practice long jumps or just engage in banter sitting cross-legged on the cool verandah floor. Ma’am, unwilling to risk damage to her property, was okay with any game that did not involve an accessory such as a bat or a ball.
The only undesirable consequence of our generous play-time was that we would often find ourselves hungry as the lunch we packed from home was pitifully inadequate to fuel our energy needs. The nashpatis, lichis and assorted fruits were treats that we could procure only infrequently and Mrs Khanna’s kitchen was strictly a no-go area for us.
The commute to and from school was stress-free. I used to mostly walk to school, from our quarters in the Indian Aid Mission, taking the road skirting the royal palace and reach school within half an hour. Traffic was light and safety was not a concern.
On the way back, especially when my hunger pangs would be severe, I would take a short detour and go with Ashok to his house where his mother would treat me to some delicious hot idlis and chutney.
Homework was non-existent and we were not burdened with heavy school-bags – I recollect having no more than a few exercise books and a textbook each for English, Science and Arithmetic. If I told you that other than taking a few revision tests, we didn’t sit for quarterly, half-yearly or annual examinations nor did we have progress reports or parent-teacher meetings, then surely some eyebrows would be raised.
It was some years later that I realised that what we had attended was not really a school. In those days there weren’t many schooling options in Nepal for the children of middle-class expats. There were government schools following the state syllabus and some elite schools such as St Xaviers and St Mary’s that followed the General Certificate of Education syllabus. The elite schools were expensive and located on the outskirts of Kathmandu.
Expats, especially those from India, who were on short-term assignments and with children in the primary school age-group, then started looking for institutions that could provide tuition based on an Indian school syllabus. They saw this as a cost-effective alternative that would also ensure continuity in studies for the children, making it easier for them to get readmission on their return to India. Sishu Niketan was started with this clientele in mind and thus as an eight-year-old I was enrolled with them while my elder sisters got admitted to St Mary’s.
As it turned out, the tuition concept never took off as most people finally decided to home tutor the children or send the families back to India after a year. Sishu Niketan ended up with just the four of us, forcing poor Mrs Khanna to manage the school single-handedly, balancing her teaching responsibilities and her household chores.
The generous play time at Sishu Niketan did little to curb my appetite for the fun and games that the dozen of us children of the staff had in our compound at the Indian Aid Mission, a stately building with a well-tended garden at the entrance. We flew paper planes that circled elegantly around us, played risky gilli danda using crudely fashioned pieces of wood, enjoyed the adrenaline rush of playing saat-pattar and came down to earth occasionally to play absorbing games of goli.
Our two years in Nepal soon flew by and we got busy preparing for another relocation. For me it would mean getting back again to a formal, albeit foreign, education system.
When I finally resumed academic studies in India, after all my peregrinations, I had to struggle quite a bit and would envy students who had done their entire schooling at one institution. After tuitions and class-work I had very little time for recreation of any kind and it took me a few years to come out of that studious mode. My parents thought that my unsettled schooling had affected my career choices and felt especially guilty about what they considered the two lost years of schooling in Kathmandu. Sometimes I also wondered whether there had been a bit too much of play and too little of study.
Today, however, when I look back at those two years lived entirely in the present without a care in the world and contrast them with subsequent years spent in anxious pursuit of some goal or the other, adhering all the while to rules, regulations and deadlines, I realise that my Kathmandu days were probably the best days of my life.
Such a pity it lasted just the two years.
