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Sale Day Sale Day – Then and now. Thanks to this web site, I have been able to get in touch with several old friends – some I last saw in 1971!! It is so incredible to be alive at a time when you can type something on a computer and click ‘Send’ and a message is transported almost instantly to the furthest points of the planet. Thanks also to this site, I have made a few new friends. Here is an email from one of them, with a brief description of Sale Day 2002. I got in touch with Ankur before he made the trip up to Darjeeling for Sale Day and asked him if he would tell me something about it on his return. I also asked him if he would mention to current students the existence of this site in the hope that from their input students, teachers and well-wishers from another time would have the opportunity of a glimpse into the lives, times and language of Hermonites today. utdsoul182@hotmail.com wrote: Hi sir, How are you? Again, sorry for the late reply. I am actually studying quite hard these days. It is great to know that you have a very strong link with Bangalore. Actually, I am from Bangladesh ..studying here...I did my class 10 in MH and am continuing with 11 & 12 here in Bishop Cotton’s Boys’ School. I was not keen on leaving MH but my Dad said that competition was what he needed in my school environment because he wants me to get into the Indian Institute of Technology. I have to agree that my chances are better here since it is really very competitive and I have to work very hard to keep up with the pace. That’s why I’m studying here in B'lore. A few weeks ago I travelled from Bangalore to Darjeeling so that I could visit MH during the 2002 Sale Day. Sale Day was held on the Main field and was the same old interesting Sale Day. Nonetheless, I got quite sentimental later on, when it was all over and time to leave.. We were in charge of the REQUEST stall ! It was GREAT playing music there. Some of the stalls were: Darts, Lucky Dip, Chocolates, Lunch Stall, Ice Cream, Cakes, Basketball, Shooting, Burgers, Chicken items, Jail, Cold Drinks, Kill-the-rat, Toys, Gifts, Momos, Fruits, Weigh-the-cake, and many more. The most surprising and really exciting thing was that my friend from Bangalore (who also studied in MH with me) ...won the ‘Guess the weight of the cake’ competition. The cake was 2lb. and he guessed it was 1.99lb. He is a pure mathematician. Ha! Ha! Ha! He always scored in the 90s in Maths and still does the same. The prize was announced by Mr. Rongong (the Vice Principal) at the end of the sale day and we all were delighted. It was as if we were so welcomed by MH. I played Basketball, Darts, Coin-in-the- bucket and other games of chance - just to win a toy ! ! I stayed mostly in the request stall and requested so many songs - without paying for the requests with coupons (ha!ha!ha!) - it was our guys after all. The school might have suffered some loss!!! (Sorry MH). But . . . the request stall was always full.Hey! some guys requested some songs for Mr. Fernandez and Mr. Rongong [the Principal & Vice Principal, respectively] and requested them with special endearments like – "To the bad boys of MH" . . . so funny - no?? I have not yet emailed Mr. Fernandez . I will do that now and tell him about the website - ok?? Anyway, sir - plz do keep in touch Thanx! Goodnite..Hermonite!!(I love joking!!) Ankur Reading this email brought back memories of Sale Days in the 1960s and 70s – when I was in MH as a student. I wonder if they are still using the same apparatus for ‘Kill the Rat’ that we used when we were in school ! ! ! [In the same way, I often wonder if my name is still carved in with scores of others on the wooden walls in the wings of Stage Right in the school Hall where I was part of many a ‘Major Production’ ! ]. We always had our Sale Day in and around the Main Building and even extending down to the gymnasium. I remember so many different things from all the Sale Days I was blessed to be at. I know that the memories are from different years but I don’t think, from this distant perspective in time, it really matters which specific years I’m talking about. The late sixties, when I was first a student at MH to the mid eighties, when I last taught there doesn’t seem like such a large window in time anymore now that I can look over the entire period and capture the multitudes of impressions from it in my mind in an instant. At the entrance to the school, near the end of the drive that led from the school gate to the Main Building, just outside the Study Hall, was the main coupon stall where all visitors and students could purchase coupons to use in the different stalls. I never worked in the coupon stall but I know that it was always manned by teachers. I’m not sure if students ever helped out. Around the Main Building and in the Main Building Quadrangle were various games like Skittles, Golf, Cricket, Ten Pins, Coconut Shy, Football through the Tyre and so on. Under the shed in the Stewart Building Quadrangle were the food stalls. The main attractions at all the Sale Days were always the Momos and the Chinese food from the stall that the Hungs of New Dish put up in school, and the other food stalls and of course the Ice Cream Stall. I don’t remember a time when the students and teachers who helped Sulee, Sinee and their siblings man the Momo and Chinese Food Stall ever got a chance to rest. Inside the Main building were the request stall for music requests, an exhibition stall where works of art by students of the school were put up for sale to the highest bidder. I have forgotten a lot of the finer details of the various stalls, but here are a few of my memories and impressions. Everywhere there were long streamers with bright-coloured triangular flags hanging with their tips pointing downwards. Wherever you went was loud music blaring from horn loudspeakers. Every time you passed a stall you would be accosted with cries of, “Roll Up . . . Roll Up . . . come and try . . .”. Every now and then there would be an eruption of laughter and cheers as someone won at a game or as a group of students laughed at something or the other. For once in the year, students from many of the Darjeeling schools, St. Paul’s, Loreto Convent, St. Joseph’s and others would mingle happily with Hermonites. Senior boys from the football, cricket and basketball teams of their schools would talk happily with their counterparts from other schools. In our days, for some reason, no one wanted to talk with Paulites. I actually made a couple of good friends from St. Paul’s and I don’t think anyone ever held it against them or me ! ! Inevitably, there would be reports of the beginnings of an incident between hot-blooded boys from different schools sizing each other up. We always blamed these incidents on the ‘Spadgies’ [why did we call St. Joseph’s boys ‘Spadgies’?] and the Paulites fighting for the affections of the Loreto girls who had dances and socials with both of them In 1973 – my last year as a student at MH, Mr. Bill Moore insisted that I help him at the Cricket Stall. This is how it went. I padded up to bat and anyone who wanted could deposit coupons and bowl an over at me in the nets that had been set up along the front of the Main Building. Every time someone was able to bowl me out, they got a prize. My job was to make sure that no one got a prize. Their goal was to get a prize. My advantage was that I was all geared up for cricket whereas the bowlers had all come dressed up to look good. With a few clear instructions from Mr. Bill Moore and Mr. Murray about using my feet and using my pads and playing defensive, it was not difficult to keep the ball from hitting the stumps. There was no umpire so there was no LBW – and the only catches allowed were those made by a bowler off his own bowling. If Sale Day had been at the beginning of the cricket season instead of at the end, I would have had an incredible cricket season from the practice I got batting against the best bowlers from other schools and St Joseph’s College. I think the highlight was when Kishore Daju, one of our non-teaching Staff for as long as I remember, decided to come and bowl and try and get me out. Being such a popular figure in MH, among teachers, students and other Staff, he had a large entourage with him when he began his run up to bowl to me. He was not the most graceful of bowlers but made up for it with his natural strength and skill as a sportsman. As a naturally defensive player, it was not difficult for me to get on the front foot, keep bat and pad close together and defend against most balls. No one thought of unsettling me with a couple of good bouncers or beamers to the head to unsettle me and then bowling a yorker to get under my bat when I was not sure what to expect next. Everyone tried to bowl conventional good-length deliveries to try and take my wicket!! Oh well . . .. Another year – [I think it was 1971, my ISC year, but it may have been 1970] – there was a big exhibition of art works by the students put up in what used to be the school Library and later became one of our Lounges – just east of the Principal’s office in the Main Building, facing the front of the school. Most students never even went in there. I walked briskly through, without a pause and then, without a second thought, went about the real business at hand – eating and having fun. However, that one year, this particular exhibit made headline news in the school because several paintings by one of my classmates, Tashi Wangyal, were purchased for prices in excess of five hundred rupees. I’m not sure what happened to the money but I know that everyone in the school was more impressed than ever with Tashi. He was already something of a reluctant hero in school because of his brilliance in cricket and football and this artistic acclaim only added to his stature among students and teachers. Once the news spread like wildfire through the campus, there was a sudden surge of students wanting to see what kind of paintings would fetch that kind of money. I remember one of them was a landscape with flowers and grass in sharp focus in the foreground and the sunset-tinged Kanchenjunga Range dominating the rest of the canvas. With the little piece of paper saying, “SOLD” taped to the bottom corner – it suddenly looked a lot better than when I had walked through earlier in the afternoon. One of my favourite memories, however, is from 1969 when, along with Tashi Dorjee, Pradip Verma and Nitin Amlani, my main goal had been to eat well and do as little work as possible without getting into trouble. We were in charge of the Golf stall, and for some strange reason it was real easy that year to win prizes at our stall. Before we knew it, we had run out of prizes!! We tried to get more prizes – really – but when no one wanted to give us any, we tore down the decorations stacked them neatly according to instructions and then spent the rest of the afternoon running from stall to stall, spending our coupons on games and food or checking out the beauties from Loreto Convent as they walked around from stall to stall with an army of admirers not far behind pretending not to be following them! At the end of Sale Day, there was always a movie up in the ‘Great Hall’ and by the time we went to bed at night, we had laid to rest our desire to be able to win many prizes kicking the football through a swinging rubber car tyre or fishing to put a ring around the neck of a bottle immersed in water or knock coconuts off metal spikes. By : Robin Sengupta Graduated : ISC 1971; HSC 1973. Date : 11/6/2002 13:26 |
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