SUNRISE FROM MANSA DEVI-HARIDWAR..

The home-journal is an interesting place to reflect on the different ways the family lived many years ago.

            I have kept journals-diaries of different types for over thirty years.  In this –the Home Journal- as a place where one records events-thoughts-themes uniquely related to the home has a unique dynamism.

A LETTER FROM YESTERDAY

            A few days back, I was recording in my ‘home-journal’ what life was in the Banaras of 1950s/1960s. The contours of life in E 10 –BHU Campus where my grandfather used to stay.

Then I received a unique letter “from yesterday” from an old friend, with whom I used to go for motorcycle rides in Pune, with my parents sometimes chasing us- Where are you off to? Those were the college days – and I was visiting the same streets where I had grown up as a small school boy-studying in Vincent’s , in a very different way.

My friend and his family know us for three generations-right from the days when the families would stay in the BHU campus. Then he shifted to Pune and we came to know each other in a different way. Now, many years later- he wrote- “I was remembering you all a lot, and with the use of modern technology, was able to locate you,” …

many memories came rushing back with this unique family friend…we go back a long long way.

REMEMBERING HAROLD SIR

            I am a Vincentian (from Pune) at heart. I still remember the unique drills which Harold sir, our Physical training instructor would make us go through. There were two other PT instructors who would not make the students do as many drills. At times, in our 10 to 12 year brains, we would even resent Herald sir. But we realized that this teacher was paying more attention and could easily give us a football and sit in his office.

Over the years, I have had the good fortune of having many such teachers-mentors who shaped me in many ways-in medical field, social work, photography, walks, readings, life.

            Last year Harold sir passed away in Kerala.

The school has initiated a scholarship in his memory

http://www.stvincentspune.com/HaroldJosephScholarship.jpg

WHEN ARE YOU LEAVING…A LONG TALK WITH ANOTHER TEACHER

            Had another long talk with one of my teachers-again from Kerala (Just like Harold Sir).

I have had some close teachers from Kerala. This friend of mine, one of the initiators of the –Tripoli Reading Group- helped me see the formative questions of Spivak and Fanon in a new light.  This helped shape many discussions over the years – understand the modernism movement in its many contours and realize the truth in Virginia Woolf’s words

            VIRGINIA WOOLF-ON HOW TO READ

Yet who reads to bring about an end, however desirable? Are there not some pursuits that we practice because they are good in themselves, and some pleasures that are final? And is not this among them? I have sometimes dreamt, at least, that when the Day of Judgment dawns and the great conquerors and lawyers and statesmen come to receive their rewards — their crowns, their laurels, their names carved indelibly upon imperishable marble — the Almighty will turn to Peter and will say, not without a certain envy when he sees us coming with our books under our arms, “Look, these need no reward. We have nothing to give them here. They have loved reading.”

PASHAN MEMORIES

            Every holiday , visiting my parents from hostel life in medical college in Delhi, I would go to Vincent, the church in front and also climb up the Chattersinghi temple in Pashan. From the hill-top one can see Loyola- my first school-where I studied for 2 years before joining Vincents. That was a long time ago.

            A letter from a friend, brought back memories of our trips to Urli Kanchan, talks at Wanowrie, movies at Rahul Theater-Shivaji Nagar.

….All recorded in my “Home Journal”..a sweet place to look back on the years and lifetimes gone by.

OTHER POSTS OF INTEREST

Walkers at Lullanagar

https://prashantbhatt.com/2008/08/19/walkers-at-lullanagar/

Packing and unpacking my library

https://prashantbhatt.com/2011/10/05/unpacking-and-packing-my-library/