Loyola School, Jamshedpur - Loyola Revisted

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Loyola Revisted

Wednesday, 18 December 1996

Hartmut Feige

In March 1994 my brother Axel ] and I returned to India for the first time after 27 years. From 1957 to 1967 we had spent our childhood and teenage years in Jamshedpur, so for Axe! and me this “Passage to India” was a journey back in time in search of our roots. It turned out to be a kind of homecoming too, due to the heartwarming welcome we received from our old Indian friends in Jamshedpur, who had not forgotten us in all those years.

Significantly, the first place we revisited during our stay in Jamshedpur was neither our one-time family home, the Kaiser Bungalow, at 18, Inner Circle Road, nor our old stamping grounds at Beldih Club. The place that we were most eager to see again was Loyola, our old school, where we had spent the best part of our most impressionable and formative years.

The quadrangle with its new centrepiece

On entering the school compound, the first thing we noticed rather regretfully was that the huge old tree next to the assembly yard was no longer there. We German “pale-faces” (or “lal-bunders” as some of our Indian classmates teasingly used to call us) would have surely suffered from sun or heatstrokes if that tree had not been there in our days. In almost reverent silence my brother and I walked on and passed through the carport into the heart of Loyola School the somewhat awe-inspiring quadrangle with its only outwardly new centrepiece, the statue of Saint Ignatius. Quite apparently, the principles of St. Ignatius and the Jesuit spirit have always been the core of the special atmosphere at Loyola School. As I gazed round the quadrangle, trying to recall in which of the many classrooms I and my classmates had sweltered three decades ago, more and more memories of my seven school years at Loyola came back to my mind.

When I was first admitted to Standard III B on January 18th, 1960 I hardly knew any English. Mrs. Irani, who was my first class teacher at Loyola, helped me to cope with this problem by explaining things to me in mime, by drawing pictures or by gesticulating wildly. That would result in funny misunderstandings sometimes, but on the whole, her method was very efficient, for it did not take long before I could follow all lessons in English without any problems. To my own and everybody else’s surprise I even ranked first in class at the end of that year and was awarded my first honour card. Unfortunately, from then on I became a bit too obsessed with being “No 1” in class and obtaining honour cards. As I proceeded from “navy-blue” to “khaki-short” and “khaki-long”, the competition among pupils became fiercer and the hours in which I endlessly mugged facts and formulas for tests and exams grew longer. For this I was regularly rewarded with Loyola’s traditional tokens of scholastic success and as a result, my highly cherished collection of “white” and “blue” honour cards kept growing. So did my aspirations and my (American) dream of being “NO 1”, of climbing the ladder of success and of becoming a real “big shot” one day.

Well-epuipped laboratory

My high-flying aspirations were fuelled even further, when I left Loyola in February 1967 and returned to Germany to study three more years for my Abitur-exam (the German equivalent of English A- Levels). My teachers were so impressed by the extensive scope of factual knowledge I had acquired at Loyola that they immediately gave me a double-promotion. Unlike my German fellow-pupils, I had also been taught to study efficiently at Loyola with the help of the “SQ3R”-method propagated by Father Power. This method not only helped me to pass my Abitur-exam easily in 1969, ranking first in a class of circa fifty students, I also benefited from it later on, when I studied Mathematics and English at Heidelberg University in the 1970s.

Preparing environment concious citizens

The late 1960’s and early 1970’s were the years of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and a time of great social changes in Europe and America. “The times they are a’changing” sang Bob Dylan. But not at Loyola School, Jamshedpur, India. I remember that in 1966, some boys in my class (Standard XB) had ventured to let their hair grow just a little bit longer, furtively imitating the popular Beatle-mop hair-style. Then one day — it was the first day of our final exams — Father Hunt, who was principal at that time, suddenly walked into class and told all conspicuous Beatles-fans to “get out and have a haircut” before going on with their exams. I don’t know how, but somehow they managed to get hold of a pair of scissors, to cut each other’s hair and to return to the class room with miraculously mutilated mops in less than fifteen minutes.

Moreover, all our desperate attempts to wear either tight or bell-bottomed khaki trousers were rigorously suppressed. Minor changes in the school uniform went unnoticed, however. Mr. Reynold D’Souza, who was one of the most popular teachers in those days, created and promoted some crazy fads and fashions — whether intentionally or accidentally, I cannot say. For example, he became the unparalleled master of the eccentric belt-buckle. By imitating him and shifting our belt buckles a few inches left or right “off centre”, we ostensibly tried to give our school uniforms an individual touch. Along with the Beatles, Mr Reynold D’Souza also served as our main role-model regarding Cuban-heeled shoes. I still keep wondering, whether he received any royalties from the shoemakers in Bistupur, who must have made a fortune in those days by attaching Cuban heels to the black shoes of Loyola students.

Senior Student Council - leaders of tomorrow

Seriously though, it must also be said that Mr. D’Souza was not only a dedicated follower of fashion and a role- model regarding Cuban heels — he was also an extremely dedicated and talented teacher. His lessons were both, thought-provoking and gripping, and so were the lessons of many other teachers, like those of Mr. Allencherry and Mr. Arun Narasimham, for example. During my last year at Loyola, Father Roberts taught me to appreciate Shakespeare in a very amusing way and Father Lacey kindled my interest in modern American authors like Faulkner, Hemingway and J.D. Salinger. Moreover, the Jesuit Fathers were within easy reach all day and had time for you, whenever you had a burning question to be answered or a personal problem you wanted to discuss. They were always responsive and sympathetic, showing that they cared for you not only as a student but also as an individual. These were the things that had a much more enduring influence on me than Loyola’s competitive rank and honour cards system, which had boosted my ego and my ambitions in my teenage years. Fortunately, however, I realized this early enough in my mid-twenties, when I gave up my “pipe-dreams” of becoming an industrial “big-shot” one day. I chose to become a teacher instead if possible, a committed and dedicated teacher like the ones I had had at Loyola. In 1978, I obtained my Master’s degrees in Mathematics and English at Heidelberg University and since then I have been teaching these subjects at a secondary grammar school in Mannheim.

So, when I revisited Loyola in 1994, I saw my old school not only from the nostalgic perspective of an “Old Boy”, but through the eyes of an experienced teacher and I must say that I was very impressed by what I saw. As far as academic standards are concerned, Loyola can surely compete with any secondary school in Germany and it is certainly superior to most comprehensive schools in Great Britain or public high schools in America. Moreover, Loyola is well-equipped with science laboratories, three libraries and a spacious computer-room and can thus prepare its students for the high-tech challenges of our modern world. As the long list of circa thirty school clubs shows, Loyola can offer its students a wide range of extra-curricular activities than many German schools can. But what seems to be even more important to me, is that Loyola has clearer educational objectives and places much greater emphasis on moral education, character formation and social values than most schools in Germany do.

Tops as usual

At the end of my visit to Loyola in 1994, I was personally able to taste some of the freshest fruits of Loyola’s educational efforts, when Father Pius Fernandes gave me the opportunity to talk to a class of senior students. The boys and girls in this class were avid for information about the way India was depicted in the German media, which showed me how concerned they were about their country and its image abroad. I was astonished to see how well-informed they were about political and economic problems in Germany after its reunification. They confronted me with quite a number of critical questions regarding neo-nationalist and xenophobic tendencies in Germany. However, their criticism was never unfair or vociferous. It was quite evident that they took great pains not to upset or offend me by any of their critical questions or remarks. This remarkable exhibition of knowledge and intellectual alertness in a pleasant atmosphere of mutual respect convinced me that Loyola still was a “good tree that brings forth good fruit’. Let us do all we can to keep this good tree alive and flourishing in the future. God bless Loyola.

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