Check out the sports section…

Heh ppl as I am home and jobless and can’t at the mo find nethin 2 blog abt skool or colg or somethin I’m keepin myself busy by creating a sports section. Check it out if u r a sports fan and even if ur not coz i’m sure ne1 will hav somethin 2 gain or say once u read the articles here.

The link is given at the top of this page and if ur 2 lazy 2 scroll up then here:

Sports

Latest post:

Euro 2008 - updated on 13 June

Football: You make sense for once Mr. Blatter

IPL : Indian Premier (/Power) League

 

‘Cultural’ Fests…

Ever since LA Fest ‘96 was held, marking the first ever schools’ cultural fest in TVM, other schools have like always followed the Loyola way. The very next year St. Joseph’s came out with their Jo Fiesta which they even advertised in the papers as the 1st ever schools’ cultural fest in TVM… but they know and we know the truth and I guess that’s enough.

The Jo Fiesta didn’t carry on for a long time though, and soon Sarvodaya Vidyalaya introduced their fest… This too didnt last much longer. In between I believe Saint Thomas Residential School started a fest, but I am not sure. Anyway the bottom line is that that too didn’t stand the test of time. Very soon LA Fest was left without any competitor.

That changed when I reached the 10th. We had just gone for the ISC Schools’ cultural meet and were returning when we got the news that Sainik School were hosting a cultural fest. Our seniors jumped at the idea of going for it as could be expected - after all it was the only one where we could participate! But then we got the surprise news that Christ Nagar HSE was hosting a cultural fest and that too on the same day as the Kazhak’s fest. Our seniors in the 12th had already committed to going to Sainik and the guys in 11th were away on their excursion and thus it was that we got the chance to go to our first ever cultural fest. And that is how we ended up going to……

CHRIS GALA 2004

I still remember that inaugural year of the chris gala quite well. As i have already said it was the 1st fest that we were going to. Added to that, some stupid politician and later 2 or 3 “Fathers” of christ nagar gave rather lengthy and (as is obvious) boring speeches. That surely got the fest of to a rocking start - literally… everyone’s heads were nodding to and fro!…

Oh yeah…nearly forgot… the singing ’sensation’ Jassie Gift was present… This was about the time when ‘4 the people’ was released and his buffalo’s voice could be heard all over Kerala screaming ‘Lajaavathiye…’ Anyway Jassie didn’t ‘disappoint’ and bellowed on into his most famous number… When it ended the large indoor auditorium that was I guess hardly 1/4th full was still echoing with the lyrics of that song (the sound system was bad- 2 loud1!)…

Anyway the first event for the day was the group song and any pretense that the ‘Christ Nagarians’ were putting up about this event not being a rip-off of LA Fest soon disappeared as the compere came on and announced - ‘We are about to start with the 1st event of the day - HARMONY the group song event’… For those who are wondering what is funny about this then let me tell you that Harmony is the name of the group song event at LA Fest and has been the same since the beginning!… The real name that the organizers had put for the event was something else, but I guess when you are ripping off stuff…….old habits die hard!!!…

Anyway the event went quite smoothly after that. I guess the fact that teachers were doing everything from keeping score and time to literally writing down the stuff that the announcers were supposed to say, had an impact on this. But still we enjoyed ourselves to the fullest.

Out of the 4 events that were conducted we got a third in mime and in Contendre- a sort of pot pourri event for which AD, Pyangu and I had gone. I still remember the agony as we failed to get Michael Shumacher in the 20 questions round, and the ecstasy as we got ‘The Scorpion King’ in some 5 seconds in a round of Dumbsie… The next day in school Akhil found out that the certificates that we got were written on with some easily erasable ink as . He took our Contendre certies and changed the third to first!… I still have that 1 as I found out when I checked out all my old certies 4 an interview!…

But the real highlight event which I always remember first when I think abt that event is the dance. ‘Uyirin Uyire’, ‘Koi Kahe’ and ‘Hamma Hamma’ were the 3 songs 2 which my classmates were dancing. The day b4 the event at 3 in the evening they r busy in the lab editing their song. After this the whole team comes 2 my house 4 ‘practice’. We end up with eating quite a lot of food from my place and also playing a bit of cricket. If there was ne practice done thn it sure skipped my sight! The next day the team go on and dance and we scream our throats dry. Then Madhav gets his leg stuck between the 2 carpets on stage and falls. And then things jst get funny! It sure is memorable!… But still it was a start and 1 from which we sure learned.

Hmmm….. that was Chris Gala 2004… But that’s not all… Coz even though the next year the Sainik Fest didn’t take place and we couldn’t go 4 Chris Gala as our seniors went 4 it, there still was a new one to go for. In 2005-06, Nirmala Bhavan came out with the…

‘Nymph’s Fiesta’ 2005

The first ever by a girls only school. It was quite well organized I must admit. The dare they threw when they asked some1 from each school 2 go on2 stage and do wat they say is somethin tat i’m sure i’l never 4get. I went up and was asked 2 dance - ME… DANCE!… I say tat i’m not the rt person 4 the job and that we shuld call some1 else and guess who turns up - Leander!… Well the rest as they say is history and yet it was quite fun. The second dare they threw was eating green chillies… this time AD goes up… takes 1 bite… drinks almost a whole bottle of coke tat they had kept and came down! Some poor guy actually ate abt 12 chillies in a minute 4 which he gt a packet of munch of which i dont think he even got 1 as his frnds fell upon the box as soon as he came off stage!

The event itself went quite well. First up was the song and I blv our team sang ‘One Love’ and got 2nd for it. Then there was a drama event pretty much a copy of ‘Comedia Dela Arte’(not sure abt the spellin) and ‘Roister Doister’ which were the 2 drama events of La Fest 2004 and 2005 respectively. Anyway our team, led by Chalu, Henry and with the star female role being played by Manu (she put up a very original show), did a spoof of Manichithrathazhu. The scene when Chalu(who was playin Mohanlal) ran across the stage 2 knock a glass of poisoned tea from Henry’s hand, is particularly memorable as the whole stage seemed 2 b trembling! Other events included Persona Grate or somethin like tat, which AD won quite easily and a dance for which we very nearly missed out on a third. Honestly I can’t remember the overall result. Did we win? (Somebody pls fill tat up 4 me).

But I do remember going 2 Minus 24 after tat… And I also do remember Chalu plannin 2 hit on some1 there as well…(or was tat after Chris Gala 2006???…I’m not sure…) Neway…

Chris Gala 2006:

Was the last cultural event tat we wnt 4 as a class. It was quite good and much better organized than the 1st 1 4 which we had gone. We went in2 this event with 0 preparation as it was immediately after our La Fest. The events were pretty much the same. Song - we sung the indian idol song (got 2nd i think)… Drama - we did the skit of Manichithrathazhu again (got nothing unfortunately)… Contendre - got 2nd only! (Ad, Thushar and me were the team and we did expect 2 win!…) Dance (the La Fest Dance though performed at only abt 70 % of the original still got us 2nd - the 1st time our dance team won nethin, i think) and finally Quiz… and the biggest surprise - we got nothin… Both our teams of usually brilliant quizzers didn’t even make the final. That was a major blow and one that finally cost us the trophy as we ended up 2nd to (I never thought i’d say this b4 that day…but…) St. Mary’s Poojapura!… No comments on tat pls!… But still the important thing is tat we had fun and loads of it. Made a lot of frnds and shouted a lot as well!!!… Worth everything I guess.

Resonance 2006:

St. Thomas residential school hosted resonance in late 2006 and our immediate juniors went 4 it. The event was on the day that we returned from our excursion 2 Bangalore, Hogenakkal and Ekm. We got back at abt 4 in the morning and still Chalu and I went 2 watch the event. it was quite smaller than I expected but being the first time that is ok i guess. The events were well planned out and hosted and tat was the most important thing. The personality contest when Devajyothi Ghosh tried 2 ‘fry’ the contestants was quite boring though. He really didn’t knw wat he was doing - dude if ur reading this then sorry, but that’s the truth. I dont really remember much of the event otherwise except 4 a couple of things.

First was singing Boulevard of Broken Dreams during the afternoon. Considering that I was singing it went quite better than can b expected! The Second Major Incident happened after the dance that the Santhomites put on. Chalu was tyring 2 talk 2 (oh god i dont blv this but i actually 4got her name, so I’ll call her…) ‘X’. Earlier in the day he had sent Avinash our ‘trusty little frnd’ 2 tell her tat he wants 2 talk 2 her. Avi being Avi spiced things up a bit, shall I say! So as Chalu tried 2 make conversation by saying tat 1of her dance partners had jst fainted(and tat actually did happen - I saw it myself), she went off the ‘long’ handle. She started off with ‘Heh if u wanna talk 2 me jst tel tat’ and ‘Wat do u think of me’ and so on and went on in that vein 4 a while. Even though her words weren’t directed at me, standing nxt 2 Chalu I also started feeling a bit flustered!… Poor Chalu… he never got out a word in the whole 2 minutes of the ‘conversation’!

Well these are some of the stories abt the cultural fests tat we went 2 in TVM. There r other stories tat I do not wish 2 speak abt… atleast not now… For now tat’s all then… Until next time!…

- Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam

- BiBinhio.

 

My Loyola… My Eyes…

For ages I have been coming to this page and thinking of all the things that I want to put down hear. I look at the two sorry posts abt Loyola that I have written and wonder what a bad job I am doing at putting down my feelings for this great institution that has made me what I am now. What that is… well lemme say… a human being with feelings and emotions atleast?… That I believe is the only thing Loyola ever wanted me to become…and that itself is a glory of Loyola - in Loyola, teaching morals matter more than academics anyday.

Anyway I am going to take one more step towards the first step of writing about Loyola through this post. A lot of my illustrious seniors, classmates and juniors have written quite a lot about their feelings for the school or their class or about their years in school. A lot of these posts have touched upon a lot of the things that first come to mind about Loyola when you think about it - like the LA Fest, youth festival, school day, sports day, the auditorium, the teachers and so on. A few have also mentioned quite a few unique experiences that they have had the pleasure of experiencing in Loyola. This post of mine is going to be all about the many small things that I miss most about Loyola, now that I am in college and staying away from home. To me, these small things that I am going to blog about, are the things that make Loyola, Loyola.

I am going to be writing about what I have seen of Loyola through my eyes… u could have an entirely different perspective. Include that and include your own memories about the things that I’ll be mentioning and only then will you truly be able to appreciate whatever it is that I mean.

Here goes… (Read all those things below as beginning with “I miss…”)

(.) the bell at 10:40… running outside to play Hide and Seek or Police and Robber in the middle of the old circular Junior School building with my classmates…

(.) the junior school Maths classes when we just had to add up 1 and 1 to get 100 marks… Renjini ma’am getting frustated with the time we took to do the same as we would all be in dream world thinking abt going back home…

(.) the brand new Stic Ink Pens that were our AK 47’s in 4th std… the blue t-shirts that we would go home with as a result of the same

(.) the flying wooden scales in 3rd std Shubha ma’am’s classes…. watching ppl get hit and laughing at tat…. and gettin hit on the head myself bcoz of the laughing…. (tat happened only once… I was always told tat I am a fast learner!!! now I realise y!!!…)

(.) staying back after junior school term exams bcoz my dad couldn’t come and pick me up…. going outside and playing cricket with the cardboard and paper ball…. coming back and playing book cricket with the book i am supposed to be studying for the next days exam

(.) Fr. M. M. Thomas’s birthday parties every year…. free sweets…. and every year father’s remarks that i am 2 old now 2 b celebrating birthdays….

(.) payasam that we used to get at one time during Onam

(.) the rainy season when the ‘ditch’ in front of the jr. school assembly steps would be overfilled with water…. taking the paper boats that others make and sailing them there…. (i still dunno how to make paper boats bcoz of tat)

(.) the slight tinge of shame every time i went into pee in the open toilet in jr. school… the same shame that evaporated the second i did up my fly…

(.) ping - pong - piss and london statue and ghost and the like on the school bus…

(.) the mad rush for the ’side seat’ (window seat) in the bus… Lasser uncle screamin at us as we got on2 the bus - ‘Lineil ninnittu keru’…

(.) eating some snack or the other in the bus every evening while in Jr. School… sharing those snacks with Madhav, Athul, Prithvi, Avinash, Sivakumar and others…. Athul remarking after we finish the snacks that he’s still hungry (he always was!)… Athul again remarking when the bus reached outside Mayoora Park that he can smell Parota and Chicken curry!

(.) playing in the now demolished Jr. School park… the ‘big’ black tyres on which we used to play collision course… ’swinging’ our way to the stars on the squeaky rickety old red and silver swings… kabbadi Royal Rumble style that we used to play with Don and Bijoy and Chintu and all in the small sand box in the afternoon after term exams….

(.) going home soaky wet after playing in the ground during rain… going home battered and bruised after falling down during playing and injuring myself… going home with a ‘communist shirt’ as my mom used to call it bcoz it would be completely red with dust… listening to mom saying - ‘ ni kelakkanano pokunne? ‘

(.) the 10 rs. that i used to get at the end of every term (3 glorious times a year) with which to buy a puff and icecream soda from the canteen…

(.) studying the days’ lessons or doing my homework and then answering mom’s questions back at home at the end of every day so that i could go and read Secret Seven or Famous Five or else go and watch TV…

(.) the seniority that we got from our juniors in the school bus once we made the giant leap with flying colors from 4th std to 5th std!…

(.) the orange candy tat used to make all our tongues ‘orange’ at the end of every lunch break during the middle school years… the icecream soda that we would have with relish everyday during the senior school days…

(.) chicken pickle and beef sambhar with stale parota from the one and only joseph uncle for 20 and 12 rs. respectively…

(.) athapookalam competitions that we used to hav 4 onam during the jr. and middle school days…

(.) the heavy bags that i used to lug 2 school every day during jr. and middle school …(i actually used 2 study well at tat time!!!)

(.) the rain during each and every one of my 12 sports days at Loyola!… three legged race, london bridge, palenquin, sack race, lemon and spoon race, book balancing race, wheel barrow race and all the other wacky competitions during sports day while in jr. school… cutting class 2 ‘organise’ the very same sports day while in senior school… march past at the beginning and end of every sports day… the LNCPE ppl who used 2 come 2 skool 2 improve our ‘physical strength’ and teach us various sports b4 evry sports day… aerobics displays and practising 4 those… the guys who used 2 give various excuses 2 miss these displays and practices (i myself once used an excuse that i was going 2 have a surgery done on my larynx - actually i was but it wasn’t needed in the end)…C. T. Varkey sir and all his famous English quotes during this time… doing ‘commentary’ 4 sports days on 2 occasions in senior skool (God help those who listened 2 me!)…

(.) the Loyola Junior Basketball competition…. looking on in awe as my seniors brought the roof down (even when there wasn’t 1!) with their cheering… being in the centre of the mad cheering crowd and leading it on with ’sabse aage’s’, ‘v-i-c-t-o-r-y’s’ and the rest during my senior days… the all 2 familiar - ‘Hum Honge Kaamiyab’…

(.) the various shows during the various school days… ‘candle dance’ and the 11th std drama (4got wat it was called) in particular…. oh yeah…nearly 4got… the disastrous ‘romeo and juliet musical’ in 9th :D…

(.) the complaint box tat Fr. Kuruvilla introduced… also the best section price - since there were only 2 divisions in every year it was always a direct fight!…

(.) all the fun and frolic of youth festivals… esp tableau, group song, group instrumental (always played the bass drum or triple drum!), english dramas (oh all those practice sessions!) mimicry and mono act and debates…

(.) ’sharing’ George’s dinner during senior school with most of the ppl in class excluding George :D…

(.) playing football during lunch break and 2nd trip… the countless shoes that i hav torn through this…

(.) chalk fights, paper and rubber band CS, using the lens of wrist watches to blind teachers using sunlight, and all the other tom foolery we used 2 do in class

(.) Physics pub sessions (a.k.a Physics lab)… chem labs… prabhu sir telling jaggu - shake the test tube well. go home and practice at night!… computer labs…. original CS!…

(.) farewell assemblies when the very teachers that push us on2 speak in front of the crowd would back down when asked to speak abt their retiring colleagues….

(.) the same Christmas drama tat we would hav every year without even a single spottable difference…. Joy 2 the world!…

(.) dodgeball with some fluffy ball that AD would bring in the small grassy area outside the place which is now the college mess…

(.) maintaining a sports book during the 9th and 10th std’s when i used 2 b even more crazy abt sports than i am now…(Manipalites who read this dont wonder abt this 2 much - it is true!)

(.) LA Fest!

(.) loads and loads of awesome moments that happen every day that would make me laugh out loud for days later when i thought abt it but which i’ve now 4gotten 4 they were the sort of things tat u hav 2 b there 2 njoy…

(.) loads and loads of moments that made me sit up and think and helped in moulding me in2 a man…

(.) loads and loads of moments that made me think and still make me think that Loyola is my 2nd home……………………

I could go on in this vein 4 a long long time… But I stop now rather deliberately… Many things I have still left out… Those are 4 u 2 fill in coz the story of Loyola can be told only by every student who studied their together bcoz every1 has their own view of Loyola… As i already said… Every1 has seen Loyola in a slightly different way through their eyes….

I hope tat those Loyolites who read this will come forward and put down their memories of this great place as well….

Long live Loyola!…

“Growing stronger and stronger, As fighting lasts longer,

And purer and purer, To make heaven surer,

With crosses and trials, And many denials,

We’ll stop.

But to die true,

Loyal to our King who reigns on high.

Ignatius lead us on,

Till we die!”

Cheer Loyola’s Sons…

Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam!

- BiBinhio.

 

Time to get busy at MIC…

Its been over 5 months and 1 semester but finally the Manipal Institute of Communication is getting busy in anticipation of a BIG couple of months. 2 national level events in the span of just about 2 weeks is, i guess, enough to make every one a bit edgy with hope, work and through it all - FUN!… Be it running around for sponsorships, drawing up a program plan, going around sticking posters or even making popcorn for a pre-event…. there is in every sense of the phrase - ‘Something for everyone’, especially as ‘everyone’ is just about 270 people!!!…

Article 19 (the national level communication fest of MIC) and the Manipal Media Students’ Convention (a first time venture without any parallel in any other college in the country) are going to take place within two weeks of each other during late March and mid April. Article 19 is a communication fest that recognizes and appreciates talent among students in the core communication fields such as radio, documentaries, ad’s, photography and so on. The center-piece event of Article 19 is the Express awards which has awards in 7 different categories. On the other hand the Manipal Media Students’ Convention is an event that draws inspiration from the vision of Dr. M. V. Kamath, (Chairman of Prasar Bharti and Hon. Dir. MIC) to setup a Media Council with Manipal as its apex. MMSC looks to focus upon one specific area in media every year and this being the first, the topic chosen in deliberate referral to the times is ‘New Media‘ or specifically the Communication through the World Wide Web. Both these national level events are quite reasonably expected to draw huge interest among media as well as non-media students from around the country and this is keeping all MICians on tiptoes in the days leading up to the events. Whether you are a media student or not, there is no doubting that come March - April, Manipal is ‘the’ place to be to have some big time fun tempered with some very serious discussions and debates. Cya all there :D…

Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam

- BiBinhio

 

The BEST and the WORST of skool life…

“Yes folks, I’ve seen it all”!…Every politician tells you that right… but as far as Loyola is concerned and my 12 years there especially, then yeah, I’ve seen it all!!!…

When good times come….they linger on for a few days….          When bad times come….they come to stay!!!…

They say life without strife is not worth living…I say those who say that have had very little to laugh about in life!… But still how much of strife can you have in plain, innocent, school life???… A LOT!!!…

Best moments in school life would definitely include the two   LA Fests of ‘06 and ‘07. It would also include the youth festival that our class hosted in ‘06, the various cultural festivals we went 2 and won, all those School Day’s and sports days and basketball tournaments(our teams lost but we still enjoyed cheering 4 a lost cause!) and also the football tournaments where we used to win for a change. But these are the obvious things….here, i’d like to dwell on few other things….

I saw syam’s post: 49 clowns…… I didn’t read the whole thing(mate its huge!), so i don’t know if he has already covered the things i’m gonna say…But anyway I’m gonna say it, coz heh, I’m a loyolite as well!!!…

Let me start of with the experiences of a back-bencher during Lakshmi ma’ams, Math classes!!!… While she was busy speaking Greek(or Russian or Belarussian or Andorian 4 all i care) me and usually Syam or George would be very busy. Not taking down notes….oh no….don’t even think about it!!!….

What we’d do was, first write down the numbers from 40 to 0, b4 she enters the class and then at the end of every minute cross off 1 number….a primitive countdown machine!!!…(No wonder stopwatches were invented!). In between, during those precious 59 seconds, we’d either be gazing longingly at the football field(if it was george sitting with me) or writing down, in alphabetical order, the full names of all the characters in Harry Potter(that is if Syam was next to me). Those were the times……..

Another fun time was when CS fever hit the class….We used to head to the computer lab to play Counter Strike and come back and share it with the Bio students and computer droppers!…How???…With old fashioned rubber-band catapults and paper missiles…. And all this used to happen while some1 was taking class, mind!!!…I still remember in 1 of Joy sir’s classes in the 11th, Ganesh hitting Henry right on the head with a well aimed hit and screaming HEADSHOT!… Poor Joy sir, he had no idea of what was happening every time he turned to face the board!!!…

Something else I absolutely loved about school was cutting classes…. There was a time when my classmates were pushing me on writing a book on 101 ways to cut classes….and i could have written it, u know….[:D]…Then again, maybe I can still right one!… If it was Youth festival and La fest work in the 1st term, then it was Sports day in the 2nd term and School Day and drama and all that in the 3rd… How i managed 2 clear my boards…I’ll never know…

Another thing I’ve got 2 mention is Madhu uncle…(or Madhu sir as we called him….the current 12th call him Madhu father i hear!!!)… Anyway the situation i’m reminiscing about is in the middle of the 10th standard Geography board exam!… With around half an hour to go, Madhu uncle came in to take away the remaining sheets or something… And as he’s about to leave the hall, he shouts out in a way only he can….”India map, Contour map, Outline map, Asia map, World map, Any map, anybody?”… The visiting examiners were stunned…we, the students, stuffing our fists into our mouths, doubled up with laughter… For those who have not heard Madhu Sir, let me tell you… the way he says that is sort of the way in which the vendors call out ‘chai chai’ at railway stations!…Hope you can understand what is funny…

And 1 last thing, something i don’t think many people know… Once after football practice early in the morning, we were heading to the taps to wash our faces when we were greeted with a rather pleasant scene… The construction of the yet uncompleted Indoor ‘monumental ruin’ Stadium was going on… The workers had laid some cement mould out on the sands to dry and our genius of a principal, walked right over those, destroying them. So, when we came there, we saw the contractor yelling at Fr. Principal saying that if he keeps poking his long nose in there and destroying everything they make, then there’s no way the deadline is going to be met!… So now you know why the thing isn’t finished![:D]

Now coming to the worst moments of school life….

Well…maybe I should make that another post, coz this one has grown longer than I like and also India’s game against New Zealand is just about to start….so…. watch out for “The BEST and the WORST of skool life…PART II”…

Till then…

Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam

- BiBinhio.

 

Top Quotes…

Best quote of the week….

“I find these sorts of polls hindering to my career. I’m an actress, not a sex object, and should be treated as such.” — Scarlett Johansson annoyed at being voted world’s most beautiful woman.

Other funny quotes :

” I recently found out that almost all our imports come from outside of our country” - George. W. Bush Jr.

“I’m honored to shake the hand of a brave Iraqi citizen who had his hand cut off by Saddam Hussein.” (Bush in Washington, D.C., May 25, 2004)

“You never know what your history is going to be like until long after you’re gone.” (Bush in Washington, D.C., May 5, 2006)

When you are waiting for the bus and someone asks, “Has the bus come yet?”. If the bus came would I be standing here?
– Billy Connoly

“And there goes Juantorena down the back straight, opening his legs and showing his class.”
– David Coleman

“He is accelerating all the time. That last lap was run in 64 seconds and the one before in 62.”
– David Coleman

“The Republic-of-China - back in the Olympic Games for the first time.”
– David Coleman

“That’s the fastest time ever run - but it’s not as fast as the world record.”
– David Coleman

“And Britain defeats the rest of the world to pick up the bronze medal.”
– Unknown

One of my movies was called “True Lies.” It’s what the Democrats should have called their convention.
– Arnold Schwarzenegger

“Today, the L.A. Times accused Arnold Schwarzenegger of groping six women. I’m telling you, this guy is presidential material.”
– Dave Letterman

“Politics is not a bad profession. If you succeed there are many rewards, if you disgrace yourself you can always write a book.”
– Ronald Reagan

“A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.”
– H. L. Mencken

“My father hated radio and could not wait for television to be invented so he could hate that too.”
– Peter De Vries

 

Just Another Day…In Paradise…

Any one who has studied for even a year at Loyola School Tvm, will always sing its praise at any venue anywhere around the world just because of the fond memories of those remarkable days spent there that he holds on to. Having studied at Loyola for 12 years I am well known to many students from other schools as having done just that many a number of times….at many an occassion.

At all these places people have asked me to describe Loyola in one word…and for me that word is - PARADISE!… A home away from home? no…a real home…

But its sad to say that like many batches of senior loyolites before us…it is finally time for us…the BOTS(Batch Of Two thousand Seven) to bid farewell to this glorious Jesuit instituition.

But what is even sadder is the hard cold realisation that the next time we return to Loyola…only the signs saying ‘Loyola School Trivandrum’ will serve as a reminder of the fact that this was once our school…more correctly…our home for thirteen years…

Development is good…but it should not be at the cost of heritage and tradition…

A fellow BOT - Syam Nath and I once made a speech at our school assembly about what has changed over the last 13 years at Loyola and what has not… We were very sad to find that there was a catalogue of things that have changed but very few that has not…In fact in the end we had to resort to naming our uncles and a handful of teachers to stress the fact that this is the same Loyola school that we joined back in ‘94.

Gone is the old Baker made Junior school building…
Gone soon will be the Baker made chapel-auditorium complex…or atleast its use…
Gone is the once dense, thick ’forest’ to the side of the old junior school park…and gone also is the football ground that repaced it…
Gone is that very same junior school park with its swings…slides and what not…
Gone also are the trees that used to provide shade to all those young - ‘to be the generation of tomorrow’- kids who used to play in that park…Their new use…to provide wood for the new state of the art auditorium cum indoor stadium that has replaced that old forest…
Gone is the Baker style of the old canteen…now replaced by a far more ‘modern’ look…
Gone also is the old 5 metre jumping pit that has produced many a Carl Lewis!…no wonder Indians never jum 8m…the pit is only 5m long!!!
Gone is the small sand pit beside the canteen… replaced by a hard tarred road…try long jumping there!!!
And gone I am sure are many other things that my seniors will remember but I don’t because I am just too young…
But most dearly missed of all i believe…the most grievous loss…and yet inevitable… is the age forced retirement of all those great teachers over the years and also of the members of the non teaching staff who quite easily are the heart and soul of Loyola…
From when I and my classmates joined Loyola in ‘94…just 4 high school teachers remain- Anne madam, D.P, Joy sir and Thomaskutty Sir…but thankfully a major share of those brilliant junior school teachers remain. Bhanumathi madam, Grace madam, Elizabeth madam, Murray madam, Maithri madam, Renjini madam and Elain madam are still at the school… and so are Joseph uncle, Athul uncle(both retired and yet continuing), Madhu uncle(who retires early this year), Jose uncle, Laser uncle…all still remain…but gone are Rajappan uncle and Varghese uncle…

I read in Ashok Chandran’s blog that till date the construction of the indoor stadium cum auditorium has taken up 40 million rupees…and thats not the worst news… there is still an estimated 6 months of construction left. Our youth festival crowds are at best empty currently…move that to this new 3000-5000 capacity indoor stadium and it will appear emptier than the crowds that come in to see Priyadarshan’s malayalam to hindi converted movies!!!..

Moving on…Loyolites used to make a habit of winning any and all cultural programmes that they attended…thankfully that still remains the same…Chris Gala 2006(hosted by Christ Nagar H.S.C), Nymphs Fiesta 2006(hosted by Nirmala Bhavan) and Resonance 2007 (hosted by STRS) serve as testimonies to this fact. Loyola’s dominance inthe quizzing field is still existent…maybe not quite at the peaks it once achieved but still…close enough…Our new found source of inspiration in sports comes from the football field… Winning the tournaments held at K.V.Pattom in 2006…Strs in 2004-05 and becoming finalists at the Christ Nagar tournament in the same year all point toward this fact.

But the emergence of football and also cricket through the well built up Loyola Cricket Academy have come at a very heavy price…the 1929esque depression in the skill, fate and form of the once legendary Loyola basketball team… We still have the same court..the same level of crowd support…but just no results to show for it… I guess it would be fair to say that Loyola has not seen a basketball team of any worthwhile mention after the passing out of Vishnu.V, Shankar.R.A and their batch…

Its been eight years since the Loyola Junior Basketball Trophy has remained in Loyola…lets just hope for a miracle this upcoming year…because that is what is needed…a miracle!…

Senior loyolites reading this might think…hey thats not too bad…if basketball is the only thing that has deteriorated in loyola over the years and that too due to the emergence of 2 other sports then…that’s not bad at all…. But the problem lies in the fact that basketball is not all that has deteriorated… Punctuality…that great trademark of a Loyolite is almost non-existent…The author himself is living proof of this… Even our school days that used to run like clockwork now finish 2 or 3 hours late!…

Speaking in English….speaking in what???….ENGLISH???… why???…thats the attitude of the current loyolites…and i’m including my batch and a few batches before us in this category as well… The result…real bad standards in English… any ex-Loyolite visiting the school will notice this.

Even small morals like showing respect to an elder…seems to have waltzed out the front door… I feel the students aren’t the only ones to blame for this though.

No one likes to be a foreteller of doom but without drastic changes - in the standard of education and not in the appearance of the campus - doom is what is likely to befall this school….the doom of disrespect from others…

Recently a few students from 10th std went to some government office to get some paperwork through for their fellow mates… they were made to wait for close to an hour by which time our ‘heroes’ grew extremely fidgety. When they told the clerk that they were from Loyola school and asked the reason for the delay they got the reply that the officials thought that they were from Model school or St.Joseph’s school….Now no disrespect to those two schools…but this is what happened… Our ‘heroes’ come back to school and make a big scene rubbishing the uniform and the non-existent dress codes among other things… But truthfully there should have been no disbelief in the fact that the govt. officials took them for coming from some other school…the way our boys dressed ensured that…shirt carefully tucked in so that half was in and half out…long coloured hair falling away in packets…unmatted and untented for what looks like ages…bathroom slippers and cheap sandals to match and unironed clothes….they looked every inch the part of a street walker…let alone a student of any school!!!…

If this is what Loyola is becoming then maybe it is time to disband the O.B.A….I’m only joking….I still want membership…ok!!!… But seriously its not just the basketball team that is on a slump….the whole school is….and thats a cruel yet true fact…

But having studied in Loyola for 12 years has taught me one thing…never discount the Jesuits…they surely will pull something out of the bag…I only hope its not 2 late when they do…

But its always nice to remember Fr. Joseph Edassery’s words: “Loyola’s advertisement is the students and thankfully the students always mature enough to sent out the right sort of advertisement to the world”…. Lets just hope that Fr. is right and that there will be many a great batch to come after the BOTS…

To end quoting the Jesuit motto:

Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam…

“For The Greater Glory of God.”