Foreword
Inderjit Badhwar
Mr. Badhwar is a prize winning novelist, columnist and former editor-in-chief of India Today.
Because childhood is special, this little book is precious. For within its brief pages unfolds the earliest rite of passage for children – those ten wonder years when they flower from virtual infancy to the dawning of youth. In this case, within the walls of boarding school, a unique institution that nurtures, parents, moulds and disciplines the child to face the long and often perilous journey to adulthood.
For the child, this institutional sojourn is fraught with trepidation, exhilaration and adventure. For the teacher it is a formidable, daunting, soul-drenching labour of love. I can particularly relate to this book because I was myself bundled off to a boarding school – The Welham Preparatory School (then only a boy’s school) in Dehradun—at the age of five, scared, miserable and homesick. Five year’s later I was in boarding at Doon School where we became teenagers and finished Senior Cambridge at age 15 (there was no 10+2 or CBSE or ICSE then). It was straight to college from there.
This book is singular in that, in plain, schoolboy English, describing a very special world in schoolboy language and expression, it manages to conjure up vividly what goes on in the minds of children newly admitted to a boarding school.
Its anecdotes are replete with a wide range of emotions and experiences: pranks that give you a bellyful of laughs, the power of silence within a huge gathering, the compelling energy of patriotism, the balm of the western sky in the setting sun. The boarder absorbs all.
Importantly, this book shatters pre-conceived notions and myths about boarding schools primarily that they cater to the whims of spoiled, privileged brats. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Standards, you will find, are rigorous and physical fitness and discipline are as scrupulously imposed as mental grooming, alertness and a sense of duty. If English is taught to boarding school students with meticulousness, then so too are Hindi and Sanskrit and Shastriya Sangeet.
As the author transports you into the world of the boarding school you become aware of an awesome force that makes these institutions so special: the bond between teacher and student, between the students themselves and their alma mater. This link transcends time and distance. It is a magical adhesive that materializes from a world that starts out as hostile and incomprehensible but ends in a universe of sharing, caring, achievement, and a respect for the dignity and freedom of all individuals.