If you have grown up in a boarding school, it lives in your mind not merely as a place on a map. It is engraved like a birth mark on the face that you just have to see every day in the mirror. Up to you, whether you love it or hate it. Tucked away in Mussoorie hills, Jharipani is nestled among groves of silver oak, where the leaves, when touched by the foggy winds, would shimmer and twist between green and silver like a secret breathing softly in the mountains. For those of us who grew up there, Jharipani was not a location. It was a rhythm, a story, a state of mind.
Just outside the school stood an old British circuit house, which now in the last few days has fired into popularity. Jharipani Castle was once a British-era retreat, for British travelers and soldiers. Later, apparently gifted to the Patiala royal family and we remember it as Patiala House even today. In our days, it was still a locked, infested with wild flora and fauna, quiet and mysterious place. It was long before it acquired the cozy charm and popularity it now enjoys as a homestay-style hotel. Today, of course, it has found new life and new fame, especially because of the lovely web series on Netflix about love, love lost and love lived forever, named Musafir Cafe. In our years, the place carried an entirely different aura. Till the late 2000s, people spoke of it as though it were haunted. No one particularly wished to stop there, and certainly no one wanted to test the rumours that floated around it in the usual boarding-school way — half fear, half exaggeration, and all imagination. The place had an enchanting view nonetheless. One could not help but look up while crossing it and feel that peculiar thrill that only hill stations can give — that mixture of beauty, loneliness, and old-world silence.
@SudipBajpai & I would always talk about going to school on off-times, i.e. when its not a Reunion. When its only the two of us. Even if not the two us; two like-minded batchmates. We would name boys like Nitin Mishra, Ajitesh Das and finally saying actually any Tagorian would do! In 2010, the two of us had made such a sudden plan during an Independence Day long weekend break. We were not sure of the stay. But Mr. Dubey & Juyal ensured a room in the school Guest House. No visit happened till 2018. When a week before Sports Day dates in 2018, he called again. And we just went! And we ended up staying at Jharipani Castle. Don’t remember how we ended up getting a room. Luck favors the lusty boys! The nearly famous 19th Century Café, did not even exist back then in 2018. A casual plan that later reveal to be an emotional pilgrimage of sorts.
This trip, we decided to take the train from our destinations and reached Doon station by 730 AM and Jharipani Castles by 8:45 AM. Like the old school, proud, immature boys who just wanted to be in the vicinity of Jharipani, we reached, just managed to see the room, walked up to the edge of the property’s fence to see Doon Valley and plonked ourselves from 9 AM sitting like dead like rocks until 1 p.m. We did not move. Not even to pee. We stayed planted on that chair, facing the endlessly beautiful Doon Valley, as though the view itself were enough to nourish us. In a sense, it was. There were probably 7-10 cups of tea and coffee each— mixed, matched, repeated, and over-relished — some cookies too, until the bearer, who had clearly started the day with patience and ended it with regret, stopped serving after the fourth order. It felt perfect - unhurried, indulgent, and slightly absurd.
But, we had not come merely to park ourselves as dinosaurs. We had come for Sports Day. The wrist watch shouted - Rocky Sir (@anandsinghrawat) must already have completed his Torch Bearer lap! The realization filled us with that familiar boarding-school shame. Not from guilt. The awareness that the day is slipping away while you are busy admiring Doon Valley. Plus, another rocket by the name @sunnybakshi would be waiting to fire his terse torpedos of abuses and curses on us! We finally picked ourselves, took bath with the reluctance of people being dragged away from a beloved dream, and prepared ourselves for the descent. Halfway down, I still felt like a sitting duck trying to behave like a walking whale. Yet there is something about the path to a school ground in the hills that restores you little by little. The air changes first. Then the sound. Then, almost without warning, the slope gives way to the open field, and the whole world seems to brighten. We were in the valley — just as it always had been. There is a particular magic to Sports Day in the hills, a magic that cannot be manufactured elsewhere. The virgin winter sun falls on the sweaty athletic bodies of boys and girls with a kind of affectionate warmth. The spikes bite into the earth, and from them rises the smell of fresh soil, sharp and honest and alive. The grass looks greener than green. The stands tremble with cheers. The races unfold with the fierce innocence of youth. Winning screams break out one after another, and every child seems to be carrying not just speed or strength, but a whole little universe of pride.
If Founders’ Day was the heart of Oak Grove School, Sports Day was the soul.
Sports Day, belonged to the children in a more intimate way. It was noisy, breathless, imperfect, gloriously human. It was where rivalries were born and dissolved, where house loyalties became sacred, where one cheer from the stands could make a runner believe he was destined for greatness, and where one glance from the field could make a girl in violet shorts seem like poetry itself. It was not merely about medals or rankings. It was about belonging. It was about honor. Honor of the House. It was also about - teachers pretending to be calm, boys trying to look athletic, girls carrying grace like a second skin, and the cheering party trying to be part of the same youthful symphony. You long, almost childishly, to go back and run that one race, cheer one more time for your house, or simply stand by and watch your childhood sweetheart in those violet shorts, as if the whole purpose of the day had secretly been that one fleeting glimpse.
After all the hulla of Sports Day ended, Bajpai and I sat on Covered Shed steps till it turned dark and silent. We then trudged back slowly to Jharipani Castle. But the day had not ended. The hills had one last trick left for us. Just as we were on the gates of Jharipani Castles, about twenty meters away, two young Bagheeras (Black Panthers) suddenly appearing from the hillside, leaped out on the dark grey slopy road coming from Nepal Palace. With the easy confidence of creatures who know the terrain better than any human ever will, the young cubs waved their tails at us in their own royal fashion, and vanished into the dark of the green bushes sliding down into the valley side. Before we could fully collect ourselves, they were gone. It was the kind of moment one never quite forgets. Not because it was dramatic, but because it felt so perfectly in tune with the place. The hills, time again reminds you that you are only a visitor in their world. That night, the conversation was Bagheeras, Lions, Tigers and Jim Corbett. We sat in the dining hall of Jharipani Castles, had fresh five cups of coffee. Finally, the bearer, with the weary resignation of a man who had seen enough of us for one day, said, “Sir, 11 baj gaye. Coffee, milk aur mera enthu — sab khatam.”
That is how boarding school remains in the end — not as a web series that starts and may be have a few seasons. It is a permanent weather living inside you. Our lives have become like web series, full of episodes, edits, and endless scrolling. Somewhere beneath all of this, we miss the 70 mm life - the hills, the virgin spirit, our Valley Green, the laughter, the longing, and the pure, unfiltered magic of Jharipani and its small castles.
1996 Batch
No comments:
Post a Comment