There was hardly any question, a la Shakespeare, of creeping like snail, unwillingly to school. Because a bike ride gave you that power, the confidence and sense of coalesced fun, as we cycled in unison to Sacred Heart Convent, hardly a few minutes from home. As we sped along smooth roads, and tree-lined avenues, with nary a car in sight, one would oftentimes think of founder Jamshetji Tata who gave a steel city not just its business heart, but everything that made for a total quality of life.

A school bag wasn’t one of those hefty oversized contraptions of today which make kids look like they are going on an extended Himalayan expedition. Ours were slim satchels filled with neatly brown-papered text and exercise books, fiercely sharpened pencils and a Waterman’s pen in later years, waiting to be disgorged into disciplined desks. Discipline, timeliness, prayer, attention, motherly care that came from the primly-habited nuns—all of these a part of our early learnings.

The unique aspects came in when the school decided to introduce a parliamentary form of student governance. That’s where a new awareness dawned, and sparks of competitiveness kicked in. Who was going to stand for Prime Minister? And the rest of the Council of Ministers − what posts would they be assigned? I was one of the PM candidates, my symbol the rose, but I was soon to realize that a good-girl attitude failed miserably in the face of a more determined campaigning. I lost, but was made Speaker of the House as a consolation prize, perhaps. There was a Minister of Sanitation in the council. The girl who won was a good debater, became a lifelong friend, our sons matched in age, as did the third generation. I lost Aloka this year to her higher calling.

In our last years in school, as part of our social studies course, we were assigned small plots within the school grounds, where you could grow vegetables and track and document their progress. No other schools had something quite so unique. No book rote could have given us the findings, the joy

We elocuted, acted, wrote for the school magazine, engaged in all manner of sporting activity on the vast spaces and amongst our excursions was a month long one covering the whole of South India. No barring from temples, then. Lifelong learning, and we actually took in English, Hindi, Bengali and Sanskrit in our stride − not because we were all so bright, but it seemed like the most natural thing to do. Groundwork laid for the challenges of higher learning to come.

Parental influences were huge—books, journals of every kind and language, my father even teaching German to the Tata Steel graduate engineers; my mother a recognized writer; their birthing of a Literary Society. So it wasn’t unusual for me to get prizes every year from Shankar’s International Children’s Competition (goaded on by mother no doubt) and at 15 winning the coveted Prime Minister’s gold medal for the best piece of creative writing from amongst children of 70 countries.

School never forgot us. I was invited back to Jamshedpur with another Rita from Sacred Heart days, who is in corporate training, and a close friend till this day, to speak to the school students. No better rush of pride equals our myriad speaking assignments of today.

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There was hardly any question, a la Shakespeare, of creeping like snail, unwillingly to school. Because a bike ride gave you that power, the confidence and sense of coalesced fun, as we cycled in unison to Sacred Heart Convent, hardly a few minutes from home. As we sped along smooth roads, and tree-lined avenues, with nary a car in sight, one w