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I spent 11 happy years in the Bharda New High School from Standard I to XI (10 plus 2 was round the corner) after being jettisoned from St Xavier’s School by a Jesuit priest who would not admit a four-year-old to the first standard (God bless his soul for multiple reasons). Bharda, of course, had no such qualms. I completed the admission test within 10 minutes flat thanks to the disciplinarian Tehmi Kothawalla who ran a kindergarten at Merewether Road in Colaba and over-prepared children to pass the second standard finals. My schoolteacher mother was horrified until assured by the Bharda teacher that her son had done very well. The teacher however added in Gujarati, he is so tiny and underage, how will he go down the staircase ("Bau nallo chhé! Aatla motta dadar uper thi é kém nicché utersé)?” I was gorging on buttered pao (sliced bread had not yet arrived) and potato chips, and smiled stupidly at her. Just then a huge gong was struck with great ferocity which made me drop my tiffin box and I began to howl. That was the only time I cried during those 11 years.

 

 

 

 

For the first six months, a burly classmate who was a foot taller than I, helped me to go down the stairs, step by step, after all the boys had rushed out as if the school was on fire. It was a middle, middle class cosmopolitan school then with Gujaratis, Bohris, Khojas and Parsis. Woe betide the occasional Maharashtrian or South Indian boy who did not know Gujarati which was the medium of instruction even in the English division. Octogenarian teachers (the art teacher, Tawaria, who taught me, had taught my father’s boss, the late Muncherji Cama, of The Bombay Samachar, 64 years earlier) often forgot whether they were addressing the English or Gujarati division. Tawaria directed five-year-olds to draw grotesque figures including ghosts, witches and funerals, and hated the color red in any shade.
He was joined by an exceptionally short history teacher who wore, in the classroom, a hard white fire brigade hat and consciously aped the mannerisms of Napoleon Bonaparte; and a maths teacher who explained the equation X=Y=Z, as whether a person’s head is in the east or the west, his posterior would always be in the center (in Gujarati, this sounded terribly vulgar). The Gujarati teacher was in love with a middle aged divorcee music teacher; the latter never wore underwear, a fact routinely ascertained by students deliberately dropping their pencils on the floor.
It was common practice in the dining room, situated next to the urinals, which were intolerably filthy, for students to throw bones, after sucking them dry, on each other. Anyone who cringed or complained about these missiles was dead meat, with scores violently settled after school in the Azad Maidan across the street. One had to display an identity card to enter the dining room and push and jostle for a place. For obvious reasons, Gujarati boys would never enter the dining room. My stentorian grandmother could never fathom how food stains appeared on the back of my shirt.
The Bharda boys were tough as nails. Teachers routinely flung blackboard dusters at erring students and no one complained. During the long recess, fights between toughies were watched with great fascination, with supporters egging on the combatants to further action. However, strangely, there was no ragging or bullying the weak and the meek; all coexisted peacefully.
Dadar Parsi Colony Parsis would have had an inferiority complex listening to the mastery of the most colorful vocabulary by Bharda boys. One had to make a humongous effort not to unwittingly display such learnings at home.
All the teachers had nicknames known by successive generations of boys. The principal loved being called Hitler, and sported the dictator’s moustache. His wife, a strict disciplinarian, was dreaded by teachers and students alike. Her cherubic pout earned her the nickname, Rasgulli (a popular Bengali sweet). Two rowdy brothers from Anjuman-e-Islam School were admitted to Bharda New High School. They hid behind pillars and shouted "Rasgulli,” much to the consternation of the principal, who managed to catch the younger brother and wallop him. The incensed elder fellow dumped four kilos of sugar into the carburetor of the principal’s tiny car, compelling the couple to travel by taxi for a few months. After that they posted a school peon to stand next to the car and guard it from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
One day, during school hours, a rumor spread that the principal’s missus had fallen from the balcony. All naturally rushed to that famously tilting balcony on the third floor, thinking the cabin (along with her) had smashed to the ground. Soon they learnt to their disappointment that it was not his wife but his mother who, after some minor domestic altercation, had consumed kerosene, and then, out of abundant caution, jumped out of the fifth floor rear window of their residence, to instant death.
Cricket was religion for the School which had produced Vijay Merchant, Nari Contractor, Polly Umrigar, Rusi Surti and a host of India Test players. The School won the Harris Shield for a record 16 consecutive years until the more aggressive boys (some were 19 years old) of the neighboring Anjuman-e-Islam School became the new champions. Strangely, today the School is almost indistinguishable from its long-time rival; Hindi, not Gujarati, is now the unofficial medium of communication.
Girls were interplanetary beings. At inter school meets, the boys watched these strange beings as if they were orangutans. Once a group of senior girls from Bengalee Girls High School visited Bharda for a science exhibition. Boys crowded around the bannisters catcalling and expressing matters which this publication wouldn’t print even 50 years later.
And Bharda is now going co-ed.