In a charming coincidence, I am wearing a white shirt, grey trousers and black shoes while meeting Ram Bhat to gather details about an upcoming reunion of the past pupils of Don Bosco Egmore. The get-together is expected to dwarf in planning and scale any other good times these boys have had in the past.
My outfit helps launch into the subject straight off the bat.
After acknowledging how closely it resembles the DB uniform, Ram points out where it deviates from what has been hallowed dress for generations of students: “We wore shirts with half sleeves and were not supposed to tuck them into our trousers.”
Getting accustomed to leaving one’s shirttails out early in life can help later on, when this may be the only weapon in the battle against the bulge. This thinking is believed to have had some bearing on the shirttails-out rule at DB. “According to a theory, it was introduced to save boys with noticeable tummies the embarrassment of having them displayed,” says Ram.
After a thoughtful pause, he dismisses it as highly improbable. Considering kids are generally not expected to have prominent tummies, it is probably one of those theories shaped purely by conjecture, explains Ram, main player in a Teacher’s Day initiative in 2008 that drew past pupils, togged up in proper DB uniform, for a poetry class by A. Selvadoray, one of the best loved teachers of the school.
The shirttails-out rule might have helped considerably then, as past pupils, numbering around 120 and spanning five decades, were in attendance for the class in which Selvadoray took Thomas Gray’s ‘Elegy On A Country Church Yard’.
The DB Converge, as the global reunion (July 26-27) is called, will have not one, but a string of classes, handled by popular DB teachers, for hundreds of alumni.
“Around 1,500 former pupils of the school are expected,” says P. Nanda, president of Don Bosco Past Pupils Association Egmore. “Around 30 alumni are on the team organising DB Converge, each bringing a different expertise to the table,” says Ashwin Rajagopal, event convenor.
DB reunions have generated considerable media attention, primarily due to the star dust they invariably raise. It has past pupils who have gained prominence in arenas that attract considerable public attention. In sports, the school has Vijay Amritraj, Viswanathan Anand and Armaan Ibrahim; in politics, Dayanidhi Maran and Karti P. Chidambaram; in cinema and entertainment, Y. Gee. Mahendra, Arvind Swami, Daggubati Venkatesh, Vijay Adhiraj and Niladri Bose.
The world outside DB Egmore and the media will be attracted to DB Converge, again for this reason. On July 26, an event titled ‘Celebrity Conclave – Secrets of Success’ will be organised at Hotel ITC Grand Chola, where prominent people who have studied at DB, will retrace their journey to success.
The speakers at the session, moderated by Sashi Kumar Menon, chairman of Asian College of Journalism and a DB past pupil, are Y. Gee Mahendra, Vijay Amritraj, Arvind Swami, V. Sumantran (advisor to the Hinduja Group), Antony Jacob (CEO, Apollo Munich Insurance), Keshav Murugesh (CEO, WNS Global), Sanjay Pinto (journalist) and Armaan Ebrahim (F2 racer).
Registrations for the event, open to the public, are invited at dbconverge.com. The schedule of the other events, which will be restricted to the school and its allied facilities on Casa Major Road at Egmore, are also up on the website.
“Given the wide talent pool, we have managed to get our past students to helm all the programmes, which include the Great DB quiz, a DB Car Rally and a concert,” says Ashwin.
The reunion will culminate in an awards function, where teaching and non-teaching staff who have served long at DB will be rewarded. Funds raised through the reunion have made this possible,” says the convenor.
A facility for the alumni to take a swing at Crocker, a sport born on DB soil, is another high point of DB Converge.
The efforts to revive Crocker symbolise the past pupils’ attachment to the school. Played with a baseball bat and a soft ball, Crocker fuses features of baseball and cricket and has engaged successive generations of DB students during the luncheon break, even the hair-thin time between classes. When the past pupils noticed the sport had lost ground, they began to organise matches to popularise it among present crops of students.
“On August 15, every year alumni from batches across the decades come and play in a Crocker tournament,” says Ram. “We have now even managed to find a sponsor for this event,” says Nanda.
For details about DB Converge, call 9840855875.
