KVIIT Alumni Event - 14/8/10

Saturday,14th of August saw a grand Inter-school cultural event organized by the Alumni Association of KVIIT.

It always gives me great pleasure to visit my school and this was the first time that I saw the renovated building and the new auditorium.

Mr.PV.Rao and I were the chief guests for the inauguration of the cultural event.








(Picture quality is poor :-()


























There was a good turn-out of students from various schools.






















(In the picture from Left to right: Tirupal,P.V.Rao Sir, myself,Mrs.Amudha,Sameer)

KVIIT'ians meet over lunch...

How does it feel to meet schoolmates after a gap of 15-20 years? Well, it did feel great...Nostalgic memories..

Yesterday, four of us decided to meet for lunch at Flamingo restaurant,Besant Nagar,Chennai. Nalini,Vani,Jayashree and myself. I was eagerly expecting to see Fathima too- the last I met her was in 1990. She called up and said she was busy at office and hence couldn't join us.




(Sitting in front: L to R:Jayashree,her daughter Pragya,Vani.
Sitting at the back: Nalini on the right and myself on the left.)









Thanks to Jayashree for co-ordinating and arranging this small get-together..
We are hoping to meet a lot of our other classmates too whenever it is possible and also try and have occasions for all of us to meet our teachers too..

The irony is that Jayashree, Vani and I live just fifteen minutes away from each other in Chennai,but get to meet only when one of our friends from the US or London lands up here in Chennai :-). Life has become hectic for each one of us and such occasions help us re-living those wonderful memories of school life, college life etc..

It felt nice to share our experiences, how each of our careers has progressed over the years in different areas..Nalini is a software professional at Atlanta, Vani practises Pediatric Neurology, Jayashree is into Counselling and Clinical psychology and I am into a totally different profession :-)

When I thought of posting the photo taken yesterday, it struck me that it would be nice to recollect how we looked in our schooldays :-)

Hence here comes a photo of us taken in Class 5:-). ( I have labelled Jayashree,Nalini,Fathima and myself in this photo. Srihari joined KVIIT in Class 7 and Vani joined only in Class 11.)







(Sitting on bench, from L to R: 6th student in the row is Nalini (with a badge) and to her left is Fathima.)
(Sitting on ground,from L to R: myself, to my left is Jayashree.)





Through Jayashree, I got to talk to another classmate of mine,Srihari,who is based in Bangalore. When I told him that I was planning to post our class group photo here, he asked me to try and identify our classmates in the photo and mention their names ! I shall try as much as I can. A memory test of a different kind for me ! My apologies to those friends whose names I have not been able to recollect readily..

(Following photo was taken in Class 8 with Mrs.Shyamala as our class teacher.)



(Standing: Top Row: L to R: Raghuram,Kirubainathan,Peter(?),----,Srihari,Ramaiah,----,Amit Shukla,Charles,Vivek,Sanjay.
Standing: Second Row from Top: L to R:Venkateswara Rao,Deepak,Jaiganesh,Suresh,----,----,----,Vinoo,----,Sriram,Azeemuddin.

Standing: Third Row from Top: L to R:Priya,Jayashree,Sumitra,myself,----,Rosary,Yuvarani,Subhaja,Jayapradha,Jayalakshmi and Sonali.
Sitting on bench:From L to R: Sangamaheshwari,Sujatha,Srivani,Nalini,Mrs.Shyamala,----,Fathima,Jacqueline,Suchitra,Devi.)


Here is a photo taken in Class 11 in which Vani is present:






(Sitting on ground: 2nd from L is Vani and Jayashree is on the extreme right.
Standing: Second row from Top:6th from L to R is Fathima,8th from L to R is Nalini.
Srihari and I were shifted to the other section in Classes 11 and 12, away from our buddies of 10 years :-(,hence we are absent in this photo.)




Well, this is pretty much what I could gather together and post now..
Any friends who happen to see this post and can fill in the gaps in the names are most welcome:-)

Looking forward to more and more such occasions to meet up with old friends.

KVIIT revisited -Part2

Visits to the OAT(Open Air Theater):

Residents of the campus had the opportunity to see English movies screened at the OAT every Saturday at 8 p.m. If it was an exceptionally good one, my father used to take us for the movies once in a while. Once a month, movies in regional languages would be screened in turns-so maybe once in 4 or 5 months we would have a Tamil movie. Again, we would be taken there only if it was an exceptionally good movie ! 8 p.m would be an ideal time for us to go, after finishing dinner. My brother and I would have two shawls with us and invariably half way through the movie,we would have dozed away:-). OAT is nice in terms of the seating arrangement-it is a gallery kind of arrangement, in a semi-circular shape, no chairs anywhere. So we could just sit on the concrete steps, stretch our legs,relax and watch the movies !

Incidentally, OAT was the venue for our Annual School Day Functions till the SAC (Students Activity Center) got constructed.

Concerts at the Music Club,IIT Madras:

Concerts at the IIT Music Club would be conducted at CLT (Central Lecture Theater). Again, this was an excellent opportunity very early in my life to listen to some great concerts. CLT has been one of my favourite halls to listen to music (and to perform too !)

My father was one of the office-bearers of the Music Club for a short period - so we have also had the fortune of hosting many great musicians like Sri.Lalgudi Jayaraman, Sri.Umayalpuram Sivaraman, Sri N.Ramani(Flute),Dr.S.Ramanathan and so on, over, for a cup of hot filter coffee at our residence (yes, C6/13 :-)) before they proceeded for the concert at the Music Club.



Very often,my evening "outings" after school would be to the Jalakanteshwarar temple and Durga Peeliamman temples within the campus:-)






(All set to go to the temple with my parents)
















Whenever I talk of IIT, I can never forget the very first car that we had- a bluish-green ambassador (MSR 876) :-). This was the car for the entire family - my cousins, grandparents, aunts,uncles etc ! We were so much accustomed to travelling as a group of 11-12 people inside the car at a time:-)




(A whole gang of us sitting on the "famous" car !)














(This is a view of the IIT park from our house. Unfortunately, only a B&W photo is available with me.)









My formal training in music began when I was 6.I started having my music lessons from my mother.






















I then continued my rigorous training and learning under Sri.Vaigal.S.Gnanaskandan.


























The next important thing that happened during my school days were the inter-school music competitions that I used to go to, representing my school. This gave me an excellent opportunity to learn songs of various composers and also gave me a lot of confidence right from the beginning, to go up on stage and perform.






(Receiving a prize from Dr.M.Balamuralikrishna)
















(Receiving a prize from Actor, Mr.Sivaji Ganesan)











I then started learning the violin, and began classes with the maestro,Lalgudi Sri.G.Jayaraman. I would travel from IIT to T.Nagar (by 5B bus)twice a week, for my violin classes :-)




This is the place where the school Assembly would take place:

















All prizes that students would win in various competitions would be announced in the Assembly and I would happily go and receive them (representing Asoka House :-))

(When I visited this place a few days back, I could feel the same old gentle breeze from all the surrounding neem trees in the Assembly area. The fragrance of the white flowers was very familiar, even after all these years :-))








(This is the famous corridor inside the school as soon as one enters the school).











On the right (where the little girl is facing towards) is the Biology lab and it was on this corridor that we used to sit and hurriedly finish our Biology Record Books and submit them:-)

On the left is the Arts Room and the Staff room.


(Will write more about the school in my next post.)

KVIIT revisited -Part 1

One of my blogger friends (Mrs.Pushkala) had suggested earlier that I write about my childhood, education, initiation into music, my concert experiences and so on, here on my blog.

I thought I would make a beginning now and gradually write about these various topics.

The first thing that comes to mind is my life inside the IIT campus (Chennai) as a kid !

My father was working with the Computer Science Department in IIT and hence we lived inside the campus for about eight years.

I vividly remember my days as a school-going kid inside the campus, with its calm and serene atmosphere. The huge IIT park (which had only trees,trees and trees) was just behind our house and hence we had frequent visitors in the form of snakes,spiders and what not:-)

I happened to meet one of my teachers,Krishnamurthy Sir a few days back and asked him if he would be interested in visiting the school sometime this week. He immediately agreed and we met at school yesterday.

On the way to school I stopped at the house in which we lived all those years and took a photo there. (I was very reluctant to move away from there- I was filled with old memories- how my brother and I would go cycling merrily round the campus and how my brother and his gang would invariably be outside the house playing cricket..)



















This was the house where we lived- C-6/13, 2nd Link Road,IIT..

[If you might notice in the photo, there are small square windows from the first floor landing upto the terrace level..One incident that immediately comes to my mind is this: The festival of Holi is always celebrated in a grand manner by the IIT students staying in the hostels. My brother and I would be terrified by the sight of these colors splashed on everyone's faces and every year, on the day of Holi, we used to get up early, shut all doors and windows in the house, stuff those small square windows with newspaper (we used to think that these students would somehow find their way even through these windows to throw colors on us!!) and leave just one window open, so that we could silently stand there and peer through it stealthily to see if any students approached our house !! ]

From here, I proceeded to school and here are a few snaps that I took at the entrance.





























(That's Krishnamurthy Sir in the photo. He had been a teacher here for 27 years he said !!! Isn't that a great achievement?! He was one of the best teachers whom I have had in school.)







Proceeding chronologically, I first went to the Primary School wing and took a photo outside my 1st standard classroom :-)





(This is currently the "Primary Resource Room" I was told.)












This is the classroom in which I sat and sang in a music competition for the very first time in my life-when I was in class 2. I sang mahAgaNapatE in the raga natanArAyaNi that day and I also remember that it was the first time in my life that I got a spanking from my mother that evening because I sang without putting the tALam that day:-).(That I got the first prize in the competition is another matter-but the spanking still stays in my mind- and this was the first and last time that I forgot to put the tALam while singing :-))







This photo was taken when I was in class 5 and received the "Best Student Award" at the Primary School level.














This photo was taken when I was in class 11 and appointed as Assistant Captain of "Nethaji House":-) (wearing the red badge).(I wore spectacles while I was in my Class 11 and Class 12 :-))









(Rest to be continued in my next post....)