A Lesson Learnt

Nostalgia is generally sentimental trivia. However some incidents stand out to define the core values that may give shape to a character. This is one of them.

          We were in middle school. The school started at 9.15 am daily. That day a hockey match was scheduled early in the morning before the start of a school day. It was a district level inter-school final. Our school team was one of the contenders. Everybody had been instructed to remain present on the venue to cheer our team. It was a vigorously played and vociferously cheered encounter. Our school emerged victorious at the end of the game. A glorious celebration was followed by a boisterous procession from the match venue towards the school premises. A kilometer or two of street revelry was a spectacle where in the team members were carried over shoulders accompanied by drum beating and dancing with the trophy occupying a prominent position in the entire show. The procession culminated at the school gate where the entire entourage of students, which must have been about 500 strong, started shouting the slogan “We want…Holiday!” The chant was booming and relentless.

          Our principal father Oswald D’souza was a strict disciplinarian. Everybody called him father Ousie. He had a stocky built. He was short in height, but towering in stature. That day he emerged out of the school building and planted himself, firmly and squarely against the whole mob of unruly slogan shouting students. He employed the arms folded over bosom posture, made well known by Swami Vivekananda, and kept rocking back and forth on his heels and feet balls in a slightly perceptible manner, all the while maintaining a steady gaze across eye level. After a long time of excruciating uncertainty and palpable tension the resistance crumbled. Everybody started to pour inside the school in single file from the left and right side of father Ousie. Every head was hung low in disappointment, but school started as usual at 9.15 am. At the end of second period, father Ousie announced a holiday through the teachers simultaneously in every classroom! A buzz of excitement rolled through the entire school building. Every one was happy once again. We left school for home in a state of confused joy. Confused because nobody could immediately comprehend the sequence of decision making which had resulted in a holiday! But we were young and lived from moment to moment and enjoyed whatever that became available.

          The incident is quiet unremarkable in the larger scheme of things. However, upon a more minute analysis, that day all of us learnt a lesson in the sublime art of wielding authority and commanding respect. No curriculum could have achieved what father Ousie taught his wards that day. Hats off, to an extraordinary, departed soul!