Calcutta, Jan 4 :    Calcutta, Jan 4:  The Trinamul Congress' call for a dawn-to-dusk strike on Friday is not going to hold up at least one event in Calcutta. Sailendra Sircar Vidyalaya, on Shyampukur Street, is determined to felicitate its most illustrious student, chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, bandh or no bandh. 'As far as we are concerned, our programme is scheduled for 4.30 pm,' said headmaster Prasanta Kumar Roy Chowdhury. The bandh call did nothing to dampen the spirit of students, laying out a giant alpana in the school yard for Friday's function. The chief minister, during his visit to the school, will pay homage to his headmaster, Jyotirbikash Mitra, on his birth centenary. Mitra had left 'a lasting impression' on Bhattacharjee. He will also inaugurate a library named after Mitra. During his school days, the Bhattacharjees would live in a rented house on Ramdhan Mitra Lane, from where Buddhadeb would walk to school. He passed his Higher Secondary examination from the school in 1961 after studying there for 11 years. Other distinguished students of the school include former Bengal Governor Shyamal Kumar Sen, cricketers Shute Banerjee and Ambar Roy, and Purnendu Sengupta, chairman of the former Calcutta civic board. 'I project Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee as a role model to my students. He was a very good student. Honesty and politeness were his hallmark. I tell my boys to be like him and cultivate a similar strength of character,' Roy Chowdhury said. The chief minister's classmates fondly remember their days with 'Buddha' - playing cricket, gearing up for debate and essay-writing competitions. 'I still remember the inter-class match between Class X A and Class X B. Buddha, who opened for X A, was given out by the umpire, but the catch appeared doubtful. Buddha did not argue with the umpire and in his typical polite way, walked off unperturbed... He played cricket in the true spirit of the game,' remembered Tapan Bhattacharya, a classmate who's now a school teacher. The chief minister, his classmates say, was a fine gymnast, besides being a good cricketer. 'He was a deft gymnast and played a pivotal role during where we made formations of a 'lotus' or 'Sailendra', the name of our school,' said Bhattacharya. Other classmates, like Diptendu Ghosh, remembered the long adda sessions at Jagat Mukherjee Park, near Shyambazar, after their Higher Secondary exams. 'We have very fond memories of a group of friends which included Buddha... Like the mad scramble for the two most popular children's magazines of our times - Shuktara and Mouchak,' smiled Ghosh. Punctuality, recall peers, was another of Buddha's traits. 'He would enter with the chime of the huge, imposing iron bell in our school five minutes before classes began at 11 am... That sense of punctuality is something you see even today,' said Bhattacharya. Netai Pada Kapat, one of the few teachers around who taught Bhattacharjee in school, recounted memories of 'an upright and honest student'. 'He often brought flowers for the teachers from his terrace-garden... He had such a kind heart that he could not bear to see his friends being punished in school. Whenever I punished someone from his class, Buddha would come rushing and say, 'Sir, please don't punish him, he is my friend'...,' recalled Kapat.