Neel Kamal Puri on Yadavindra Public School celebrating 70 years
Yadavindra Public School (YPS) in Patiala turned 70 on February 2, 18. Not being far behind in years, we, the institution and I, share memories of those days when it was young and so was I, and it was turning coeducational from a dyed in the wool all boys, boisterous, belligerent, sporty school. Whilst YPS was finding its female feet, we girls, only thirty in number were equally lost in that very very male world.
In fact, I ended up becoming one of the thirty quite by default. My parents had visions of sending me to one of those all girls, up in the hills, English speaking, elite schools and they had secured admission for me. But since the session was to open after the winter abated, the then Principal, Mr HN Kashyap convinced them that I could make better use of my time attending classes in YPS in the interim. “She can always leave when the time comes,” he told my father.
Mr Kashyap, a short man of square build, with stubby fingers to match, was the antithesis to the founder of the school, Maharaja Yadavinder Singh, who was exceptionally tall and handsome. Together they were referred to as “the long and short of YPS,” in the school bulletin that featured them walking down the racetrack in the school stadium.
But when Mr Kashyap taught, he was no longer only five feet five. He would sail away into the sky as he recited Shelley’s nightingale or became as tall as Anthony when he rebuked his audiences for treachery against Julius Caesar. What he taught got committed to memory and I refused to leave YPS when schools reopened in the hills.
However, it was hard work surviving as part of a rather emaciated minority. We were tentative about walking down the corridor alone. Our ears were always trying to shut out those whistles and the not so pleasant remarks. But we not only had to walk the corridor but also had to make our way to the Phulkian House, one of the three hostels that housed the wolves that whistled from behind dark meshes, where all of us thirty girls were served lunch along with the boys of that hostel. And talking to boys or worse still, fitting into the now archaic description of "boyfriend-girlfriend" was certain to send our reputation into the nine concentric circles of hell.
Of course, in many ways, it was also easier for us girls. It was the boys who had to work twice as hard to prove themselves to be half as good. We earned our kudos quite easily. Plays offered female parts, debates offered female participation, the sports field offered events for women. And all this largesse had to be divided between so few of us.
The presence of girls, however, did kick-start a process of osmosis wherein we began to practice the "male" qualities of confidence and self-assertion and the boys began to learn the more gentle traits of courtesy and civilised interaction. Feminists label that as the concept of "ardhnareshwar", a blend of the male and female principle in a human being. Needless to say that it was a very slow process and with our limited vision at the age of sixteen in the seventies, we did not see it happening.
But it did happen. And when I went back to school to be part of its big moment during the Platinum Jubilee celebrations, I could see that no trace remained of that initial faultline. The girls and boys were unselfconscious, as much as one can be at that age, and celebrations were in the air.
When the chief guest of the day, Dr Karan Singh from Jammu & Kashmir, sat on a massive stage erected in the Olympic sized stadium amidst a star-studded line up featuring chief minister Amarinder Singh, his brother Malwinder Singh and the Director of the school, Gen Sanjiv Varma, the occasion had the magnitude of a Greek play amidst the rocks near the Aegean Sea. And when the chief guest, in a speech that was both lucid and erudite, exhorted the students to build mind, body, social skills and an inner spirituality, and to learn to distill wisdom from the explosion of information and to develop a largeness of mind and heart, I was revisited by the glamour that the school acquired by its association with the royal house of Patiala. I was glad to be a part of the school’s big moment.