CAROLS 2010

For the tenth year the best way to bring in Christmas happens on St. Anthony's Road.Suzy Q,Tara,Cyril and Megan,Ramon Ibrahim,Gsus,Clarry Devisser Neale Murray& Megan Brian Tellis Dominique Elvis Sid Meghani Rajiv Raja The Fun Bunch Denzil Smith
Santa The Glee Hive Coco & Hot Chocolate & Minelli and more.
See you on Sat 18th Dec 6.30 p.m. on St. Anthony's Road.

Hold hands and don't let go.

Once a year we were taken for a picnic. The venues varied. All within an hours driving distance. So that you could get there and back in the course of a school day.
We were told to bring our water bottles and sandwiches. A cap to keep away the sun and to visit the toilet before boarding the bus. We were assigned partners and told to hang onto our partners when crossing the road.For starters we were taken to the aeroplane park. A concrete aircraft parked at the end of Linking road. Where we took turns at being pilots and making vrrooom vroom noises during imagined take offs and landings. Until we were rounded up and made to sit in a circle. A community lunch. With foil packets being opened. Sandwiches of egg, ham salami cucumber tomato and meatloaf. You knew who to sit next to because if someones mother gave them a good lunch on a daily basis it was a safe bet that they'd have an even better lunch at the picnic. Hot dogs. The Mumbai kind. Bread rolls with mince. A slice of lettuce adding colour and vitamins. Water bottles that had been badly depleted in squirting unsuspecting pedestrians and each other on the bus ride were squeezed to give up their spirit.
With the passing of years our horizons were broadened. To Vihar lake where we were told to keep away from the crocodiles. To chotta Kashmir in the aarey milk colony. Is there a chota mumbai in Kashmir. A place of noise and crowds in that vale of flowers? A visit to the parle biscuit factory which was heralded with stories of largesse. That you were allowed to eat as many biscuits as you wanted to. For free. And drink as manyThums ups as you wanted to when you visited the thumbs up factory. Neither of which held up even though you'd avoided breakfast so that you could eat more biscuits. Glucose D. Which you now knew to stand for Dreams. As in , in your dreams would there be unlimited biscuits. The Old ladies shoe at the hanging gardens. With it's hedges in the shapes of animals. Green elephants and peacocks. Deer chased by tigers that would never catch them. While in the middle of a game of cricket retrieving the ball would cause kissitus interruptus to bodies huddled behind the bushes.
There was a cloud to this silver lining. Which surfaced the next day when you had to write a one page essay on My Class picnic.

Citius, Altius, Fortius.

There would be try outs. No stop watches or starters pistols. No tapes to mark the finish line. Just mr. pandey at one end and mr. Tamhane on the other. With fifty boys running from one of them to the other. With nobody allowed to start until the go as in get ... Set... Tamhane would then sweep up the first five or six and they'd have qualified for the finals. While the rest of us went back to our disorganised games of football and hockey with the football sometimes coming in the way up a hockey stick or an offending hockey ball being kicked aside by a future Ronaldinho. Trials for the long jump were time bound. Pandey had to chose the best long jumpers from fifty in a thirty minute PT( physical training ) period. This gave rise to the simultaneous long jump. With us lined up four abreast. Taking of together and landing into the sand pit in a tangle that made us Siamese quadruplets. Body parts that were furtherest away were traced back to their point of origin establishing the qualifier. March pasts were the grab bag of participation for anyone whose mind was willing but the flesh too weak to make it to any of the events. And if even in their marching were they challenged then they'd be hidden away in the centre of the marching squad so that their left left left right left which came out tangled was apparent to none of the spectators and definitely not to the chief guest who had the honour of judging the best house . The band visually had drums flute players, trumpets, triangles and bugles. Aurally just drums.
Relays and races were cheered with more gusto than a Rajnikanth appearance in Matunga. The tug of war brought the house down with spectators leaning this way or that in ESP like connections to their teams. There was a race for the teachers, a race for the peons and a race for the ex students. Sporting heroes of years gone by who would have taken the afternoon off from their sports quota jobs.
Golds silvers and bronzes would be tallied for the overall championship. While cups and salvers were lined up in impressive arrays. The chief guest extracted his revenge for an afternoon of watching us by reiterating sportsmanship and winning is nt everything platitudes in ten different ways. His wife who by now could have walked to the winners podium blindfolded looked more shaken than stirred by the heat of the afternoon, the dust of the field and the enthusiasm of fifteen hundred boys struggling for glory. The principal in his speech would declare the next day a holiday so that we could sleep in late. While we dreamt of how we would run the perfect hundred metre Hurdles, without dropping even one. Or not fumble the baton passing or run the hundred metres in 12 seconds flat. And to later have Miss Nigli hang a pretending to be gold medal around our ever willing necks.

Go here and Enjoy!

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