Does your school window open to a view of the magnificent Kanchenjunga? Does your school boast of many royal students? St. Joseph’s School (North Point), Darjeeling, does. On both counts. Since its inception in 1888, it includes on its rolls former king of Bhutan, Jigme Singye Wangchuck. Celebrating the completion of 125 years, the North Point 125 Anniversary Reunion held in the first week of October brought together many North Pointers from across the world for an informal gathering. After a stopover at Calcutta for a Mega Reunion and Annual Dinner on October 1 at The Palladian Lounge, the group moved up to the hills to visit their alma mater over three days. Catching up with the 50-odd alumnus while in the city, t2 got a rare glimpse into the life of the boys who call the hills their ‘second home’.

Sreyoshi Dey,Pictures: B. Halder

Song sung true: Hurrah for our home in the mountains! Hurrah for the monarchs of snow! For the land of the forests and fountains, And the torrents that ever flow!
The school song brought back a flood of memories for the North Pointers at The Palladian Lounge. Monishi Sanyal (left) and Kalyan Gupta led the others in the chorus before breaking into endless cheers for the school.

Buddies in arms: Emile LaFrenais (left), batch of 1948, and Vashu Gulab, batch of 1949, were the oldest North Pointers present at the do. “It feels like I am young again,” laughed Gulab as the two walked up to the front arm-in-arm.

Coin for a cause: Coins to represent each year of the school were auctioned and the money raised would go towards the school’s development. The coins numbered 1 and 125 were, of course, most in demand.

Dancing Queen: City-based band Euphony belted out songs like Stupid Cupid and Ob-La-Di,Ob-La-Da as the North Pointers took a twirl with their Loreto partners just like the good ol’ days. Few even had their better halves to match steps with and bag the award of the Best Dancing Couple. But some women just got footloose by themselves (picture left). And Leonard Ryan aka Lenny, working with Singapore Airlines, didn’t really care for a partner — after all, you just had to have the groove.

Matchless memories: Deb Mukherjee (right), an advocate in Calcutta High Court, and Ranabir Sen (second from right), director of McLeod Russel and Glenburn Tea Estate, were the deadly duo for most rival schools of North Point when it came to cricket. “We have been together since 1958 and used to take the pants off our rival schools,” laughed Mukherjee, as he was joined by old boys Aniruddha Lahiri (far left) and Monishi Sanyal.

(L-R) Subir Chakraborty, Siddhartha Roy, Sumit Ray and Supratim Dutta at the Calcutta Management Summit 2013. Picture: B. Halder

The Calcutta Management Summit 2013, presented by Calcutta Management Association and McDowell’s No.1 Platinum Soda, in association with The Telegraph, at the Indian Chamber of Commerce on September 28, dealt with capturing growth opportunities in emerging economies such as India, Africa, China, Brazil and Russia and how they could catch up with the developed economies under the aegis of the topic ‘Opportunities & Challenges in Emerging Economies’.

Sumit Ray, COO at Embee Software Pvt. Ltd, moderated the first session ‘Capturing the growth of opportunities in Emerging Economies’. The panel included Siddhartha Roy, economic adviser at Tata Group, Subir Chakraborty, director-industrial at Exide Industries Ltd, and Supratim Dutta, executive vice-president and head of corporate finance, ITC Ltd. While Siddhartha Roy spoke about deregulation and availability of a young workforce as advantages and corruption and higher transaction costs as challenges of emerging economies, Subir Chakraborty spoke about how despite being labelled a
‘Refusing to Develop Country’, 15 per cent of India’s population is set to become a part of the workforce by 2015. Supratim Dutta pointed out how ITC has penetrated the smaller markets using region-specific marketing to reach a larger population.

The second session on ‘Emerging Economies — Aiming for the New International’ was moderated by Siddhartha Chatterjee, country head of Trustline Securities. Speaking first, Dipak Dasgupta, principal economic adviser, ministry of finance, government of India, slammed the gold exports worth $55 billion and spoke about the need to invest massively in physical infrastructure and basic education if emerging economies were to make the international cut. Arbind Prasad, director general of FICCI, and Saugata Bhattacharya, senior vice-president and chief economist at Axis Bank, spoke about developments in the fields of labour, industrial and economic infrastructure and
participation of a well-trained workforce to make emerging economies a new international order.

Saptarshi Dutta

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