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Whales in Darjeeling town Whales in Darjeeling town One of the greatest memories that I have from MHS is winning the Swimming Shield for Knowles house. It was a challenging year because Dewey always had good swimmers, especially with the girls contributing to the overall points. I remember thinking, “Goodness, if we don’t get the girls to come to the pool, even from the D, E, and F divisions, we won’t win.” The second challenge was that the day scholars would not stay behind after 3 pm for standards and heats. Fortunately, MHS being a small school and everybody being friendly, one just needed students to stay back, and we had good turnouts. Lavinia Chen was the girls’ captain in the senior school and I pestered her quite a bit to force the girls to come down from their high up dormitories. Every soul wearing the green counted for all I quietly cared, eh? She was a great sport and would work hard and she too would be there in the pool. We all know that “standards” was for qualifications and points from “heats” went toward the overall house points. We did well, since members from Knowles house showed up and were getting there, just next to Dewey. It carried on for a two-three weeks with junior school and then senior school, even if it was raining or cold, this/that…on we went! When I reflect back to the days in MHS, the many sport facilities we had would never be possible without Mr. Wadkar. I think Mr. Wadkar did everything related to sports. I mean…he organized and encouraged, sometimes shouting, “YOU BURGER, sha-tan ka auolad.” But, what can we do? The kids in MHS couldn’t but do anything by taking advantage of the great khud sides. All of us, even the quiet ones were naughty…trust me! I remember no one being an angel. Everybody bunked to eat outside. We all had our share of hiking around in the tea bushes without TOD permissions. It was great, including the sports facilities of MHS. So there we were, Knowles house during Swimming Gala. Yup, I am sure we all remember standing around the swimming pool cheering your houses, right? Particularly that year, we had so many new swimmers, thanks to Mr. Das. All of them, I mean…all of them did the backstroke. Mr. Das actually also took the school team to win the Burns Shield at SAS. I believe MHS had not won for quite a few, until the “Das Intervention.” In any case, it was a glorious day and I think it rained the previous evening, so the pool was over flowing, which meant that it would be more difficult to swim faster than usual. In the end, it didn’t matter…all the houses did well and Knowles took the shield. Hip hip hoorah! By : Samdup Graduated : ICSE 96/97 Date : 15/3/2005 16:56 |
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