It was a Saturday but the ground-floor classrooms at South Point High School were brimming. The reunion of the Association of South Point Ex Students (Aspexs), in association with The Telegraph, was underway and to mark the 30th anniversary, the event was not only back on the campus but also drew the alumni into the classrooms.
“They taught you once. They’ll teach you again” was the tagline of the event. And invited by the Aspexs Care wing, which stays in touch with retired teachers and looks after ailing ones, about 30 teachers had volunteered to take mock classes.
As the bell rang, they made their way in, following a schedule, copies of which were placed at key spots for the alumni to choose their teacher from.
One of the first classes to fill up was Rana Das’s. “Where is your cane, sir?” asked one, bringing back memories of the discipline he imposed on unruly boys. The junior school mathematics teacher wrote out the multiplication table of 9 and stopped at five times nine. “You don’t need to memorise any more. Just reverse the digits,” he said, as his adult pupils reversed 45 to get 54 for six times nine and so on.
In Aparajita Roy’s Bengali class, she spoke about the technique of short story writing while assuring her class that “ami Bangla sahityer itihash porachchhi na” and triggering laughter.
Across the corridor, Anuradha Goswami was drawing a cross-section of a kidney on the smart board. Sujoy Majumdar, a senior endocrinologist, stood up to express his gratitude to the school’s biology teachers for free tuition that helped him clear the medical college entrance test. The 78-year-old Goswami said she had picked up writing on smart boards post-retirement.
But most teachers, who used blackboards through their careers, steered clear. “Amar toh oi board dekhei bhoy korlo,” laughed Shukla Karmakar, who had retired in 2008. Her colleague Sakuntala Dutta, a 2018 retiree, said she avoided teaching in class that day as “facing me were doctors, engineers and university teachers”. Chaitali Ghosh, 72, shared how an ex-pupil walked up to her to say that he was a doctor but had failed in her life science exam in school. Rama Bose was upset that her class could not answer basic questions on Tagore. “They have little interest in Bengali literature,” the 84-year-old teacher was heard complaining to her former colleagues.
A dozen alumni, who are current teachers, were assigned duties as class monitors. “I was a backbencher, so I never became a monitor,” smiled commerce teacher Rajarshi Barman, flaunting his monitor badge.
The action soon shifted to the stage outside. Non-resident Pointers launched two global chapters of Aspexs — in North America and Europe. “We have held an informal Pointers' meet in The Hague,” said Parthapratim Banerjee, of the Madhyamik batch of 1981, adding that country chapters would be opened.
Another reunion tradition was cake-cutting by jubilee passouts. First up was the batch marking 50 years of school-leaving. “We were the first Madhyamik batch to pass out — in 1976,” said Ranjana Chakraborty, one of the seven attending batchmates. The eighth member, Aditya Pandey, who had gone out for a smoke and missed the photo-op, was chided by friends.
A contrast in attendance was the batch that cut the silver-jubilee cake. “We need over 70 pieces. This cake won’t suffice. Let’s just take selfies with it,” suggested Nayana Palit. “Cake-er arati kora hok,” joked Sagnik Roy.
Through the evening, Pointer alumni were on song. One of the last on stage was Pranab Chatterjee, who belted out Bachchan hits. He was also seeing brisk sales in the food court, where his outlet Royal Bengal Tiger Café had finished stocks by sunset. “We are on the fourth or fifth restocking run now,” he said.
Indeed, the half-a-dozen food stalls, run by Pointers in the food business, had seen such business that by 7pm, none except a sweets shop, had much left to sell. Oudh still had people wanting to deposit advances for biryani, which was reportedly on the way.
Piya Roy Chowdhury, of Calcutta Calling, recalled her morning dash to catch the connecting flight after her return flight from Cairo was delayed by three hours. “My Calcutta connection was from a different terminal but I couldn’t miss the reunion,” said the Madhyamik 1999 entrepreneur.
“This time we thought of holding the reunion in school as we are completing 30 years and with the new building coming up in Mukundapur, this might be the last time that we get to host it on campus. The administration extended full support. The response is fabulous. We had to stop registration once we reached 1,600 to avoid a stampede,” said Aspexs secretary Meghnath Roy Chowdhury, from the class of Madhyamik 1990.
“We are supposed to get the handover of the building by end-2026. The junior school will probably move first,” the school’s director (academics) Rupa Sanyal Bhattacharjee told Metro.
The evening concluded to the beat of Urban Monkz.