A class of its own

This photo was taken in 1965 when I was in class seven at Malleswaram Sishu Vihar (MSV). It was our send-off celebrations and every student was given an atlas.

At that time, our school was in 5th Cross Malleswaram and had a big playground. MSV was started in 1953 by Thirumalamma, an efficient and dedicated educationist.

Here we learnt self-discipline, self-confidence, humility, empathy, dedication and loyalty without effort. In addition to the normal curriculum, the children were taught 'shlokas' and prayers, sports, dramatics, artwork etc.

Every teacher who taught us were dedicated, selfless and disciplined to the core including non-teaching staff.

After seventh standard, I went to Gandhinagar High School, then to MES College to complete B Sc and then to University Visvesvaraya College of Engineering for BE.

But after 1965, I was occasionally in touch with my classmates Prasad and C Sridhar for some years.

In 1978, I went to Bhadravathi to work with The Mysore Paper Mills Ltd and in those days as there was no email or WhatsApp I could not communicate with many of my friends.

Among my middle school classmates was D Balakrishna, the son of famous veena 'vidwan' Doraiswamy Iyengar. He worked in the Reserve Bank and is a full- fledged veena artiste. Chandrakanth was a professor at UAS, now he is the director of Institute for Social and Economic Change.

In February 2013, I was in Bhadravathi and got a surprise phone call from my classmate Chandrakanth and Ramamani that a MSV Alumni Meet has been organised and the felicitation of our teachers have been arranged at Canara Union. I attended the 'Guruvandana' programme and it was a joy to see our teachers being felicitated for the great service they had rendered.

I could meet some of my teachers and few classmates after 48 years. That was really wonderful time because we were small children when we parted in 1965 and met again in 2013  when we were on the verge of retirement.At that time, I could meet C Sridhar, Chandrakanth, Ramamani, Chandrika and Vijayalakshmi. I don't know where they are. Recently, I met S Anantharam at a function after a gap of 52 years.

I sincerely hope this group photo will help my middle-school classmates wherever they are to communicate to me through my email so that we can meet once in a while and share our post middle-school life with one another.

(The author can be contacted at [e-mail])