Death of a classmate . . . and memories of school

At St Francis Grammar School, Quetta, the boys had regular debates and quiz sessions, often in competition with the girls who studied at St Joseph’s Convent School. Photo: Collected

It was in Junior Cambridge back in the year 1969. We were in a chemistry practical class, experimenting on a few subjects as directed by our teacher, the stern Chaudhry Ata Mohammad. My classmate Maxwell Uchong was at a desk right before mine. Suddenly, not knowing how I did it, I saw that his white shirt had a circular hole at the back. The flame from my Bunsen burner had done it. Fortunately, the flame did not touch Max's body. Surprisingly, he did not even know what had happened, until he and everyone else saw our teacher reprimanding me loudly for my carelessness.

I did not meet Maxwell since I left St Francis Grammar School, Quetta, in July 1971 and travelled to occupied Bangladesh with my parents and my siblings. In these fifty-two years, there was no communication between him and many of my other classmates, though I had heard that Max and his cousin, Raymond, another classmate, had both settled in Australia like all the other classmates who had settled in other places around the globe. 

Younas Noor Mohammad is in Canada and so is Walter Barnett. There is also Aqeel Quettawala in Canada. Yousaf Noor Mohammad is in Lahore, the happy father of three wonderful children. Agha Nadeem, who retired as secretary of Pakistan's central information ministry before holding the position of national ombudsman, is also in Lahore. Farrukh Siraj Afridi is in Dubai, while the siblings Reggie and Keith Wingson are both in California. 

Peter Tang, whose family owned Café China in Quetta, is somewhere in America, though I have not been in touch with him since we last met in 1971. Derek Nathaniel has remained in Quetta, a bachelor. Abdul Karim Panjwani has been a citizen of Mozambique for years, living in Maputo. I do not know where the affable Karlyne Peter Samuels or Yameen Khan are. Azad Nowsherwani, with roots in Quetta, practises medicine in Karachi.

Why do I write about all these friends and classmates? It was the remembrance of Maxwell which has given my memories a jog. The other evening Walter conveyed the sad message to me that Max had passed away in Australia. He had been ailing for quite a while, but despite that, no one expected him to pass into the grave so soon, when we, his classmates, were still mostly around. 

All these friends are or have been people with whom my association lasted a decade from the early 1960s to the early 1970s. Tonight, as the moon shines outside my window in London, it is the laughter and the humour we all shared in school, which come back into the courtyard. It is also that heart-breaking moment when I realise that Maxwell will not see the moon anymore, for he will lie in a cold, dark grave somewhere in Australia. He was always a cheerful lad in school, always had a smile wreathing his face. That moon will be there, but that smile will now be a memory.

Am I complaining? All of us who went to school all those decades ago are in our late sixties, in the twilight of life. This is the thought that Reggie, Reginald Wingson and I share when we speak of old times. The old pictures we have of ourselves in school - and there are not many of them - are so removed from how we happen to be physically these days. 

Some of us have grown beautiful beards, some are balding, some others have gone irreversibly bald. We do not speak about it, but you can be sure that in the recesses of our hearts, we are the young boys who have now lost teeth and walk around with dentures in their mouths. Our knees are giving way. We have, many of us, become grandfathers, watching the young and wishing life and time had stood still for us, had not let us leave school.

There are the monthly tests in class we remember, the half-yearly exams in summer that were a foretaste of how we would fare at the annual examinations in early December. In the large auditorium of the school, with four large stoves to keep the hall warm with loads of coal-burning fire, we shivered and minutes before the exams got underway, we warmed our cold, frost-bitten hands around those stoves. How else would we write our answers to the questions that would soon come our way?

There were the teachers we loved and yet were afraid of in those days. Our Urdu teacher, Sir Kareem, once asked us if anyone among us had ever been to some place called 'baitul khala.' All of us responded with a vigorous no. Our teacher was surprised, before explaining that we go there every day. Baitul khala, he explained with a wicked smile, was the bathroom. And so we learned a new term. 

In our school, run by Dutch missionaries, we were always on our toes whenever Father Joshua, the principal, happened to pass by. He and the other missionary fathers who administered the school had no time for nonsense. We had Islamiyat classes for Muslims, and Catechism classes for Christians. Our mornings began with a prayer from the Bible. It was wonderful to the ear as all of us, from nursery to Senior Cambridge, recited it at assembly every morning.

Our school made sure that we had singing lessons played to the accompaniment of the piano, under the supervision of Mr. Cardeaux, who in an earlier phase in life had served in the Maltese Air Force. Sir Allahyar Malik was the brilliant teacher who introduced us to Shakespeare, Dickens, Jerome K. Jerome and Trollope. The beautiful Kaniz Fatima, his sister, taught us history. The perfume she used was something I breathed in deeply in class. 

Often she would take my copy of the history textbook and ask me questions from the various chapters there. When she gave it back to me, the pages smelt of her perfume. I was in love with it. Did I have a crush on my teacher? Let that remain a secret. But twenty-five years after I had said goodbye to her in Quetta, I went back to the city and found my way to her home. She was as beautiful as ever.

At school, we had regular debates and quiz sessions, often in competition with the girls who studied in the institution opposite ours, St Joseph's Convent School. My sister was a student there, while my brothers were with me at St Francis Grammar. I recall Gulnar Kapadia, a good debater from Convent, with whom it was always a joy to compete. She was pretty, with that angelic smile brightening her features all the time.

In his passing, Maxwell Uchong has rekindled all these memories of lost times. I am not sure if he ever reflected on those days. 

A classmate once corrected me in my pronunciation of Pope Paul. I had made Paul sound like 'Paool', until the classmate, I think it was Walter, taught me the correct way of saying it. When once, in a classroom essay, I referred to my complexion as fair, Maxwell had a good laugh, telling me that I was in fact dark. I stood corrected.

And then there was that moment during recess when, angry with Shahid Bugti over something he had said to me, I challenged him to a boxing match to settle the issue. I thought that like Cassius Clay/Mohammad Ali, I could make him collapse in the way Sonny Liston had crashed on the canvas. Our match was swift. Bugti gave me one sharp blow, which sent me crashing to the school hockey field in a heap. He was the champion. Shahid Bugti lives in Karachi, having served as a senator in Pakistan's parliament.

The moon shines. Let its gleam gather on Maxwell's grave in its cold brilliance. Someday, we know, this same moon will shine on the resting places of all of us who, having been to school with Max, will one day join him in a region beyond the parameters of mortality. 

Syed Badrul Ahsan. Sketch: TBS

Syed Badrul Ahsan writes on politics, history and literature.