It’s an unquestionably well accepted fact that, even if it’s just a couple of words and regardless of whether those words be wise or damaging, should those be instilled over a period of time in a child’s mind, they burrow their way in and stay embedded. Triggers! Which every now and then, almost subconsciously, pop up as autosuggestions guiding one’s actions through adulthood.
Were I to ask you to multiply both those factors – “A couple of words” and ”Over a period of time” manifold, you might be able to get a feel of where this story is leading.
Having been bunged into a boarding school when I was all of five years old, during the first couple of years while I was still figuring out how to tie my shoelaces and other similar complicated chores, at various times on special school occasions we little tots would hear the seniors singing the school song. It was just a very lively song with a lovely beat which meant nothing to me. A couple of years later, by which time, along with many other intricate tasks having been addressed and my shoelaces also tied in a neat bow knot, is when in addition to being taught the “three R’s”, we youngsters were also taught the lyrics so that we too, on those special occasions along with the seniors, could join in the singing of the school song. Looking back now it is patently obvious that in all those years leading up to my passing out from school in 1969 at the age of 16, while singing it with gusto innumerable times, the import of those lyrics never really sank in to mean anything consequential.
Even in later years at the occasional school reunions, while the day would always end with us belting out the school song, it remained just a bunch of words put to pulsating music which we enjoyed singing. Simply a sign of camaraderie.
Towards the end of the 1990s, one of our classmates, Anil Advani, having taken the initiative on his own and having set up a website for the Old Cottonions (which is what we, the products of Bishop Cotton School, are known as) Association, we were able to connect with school fellows who had all but disappeared off the face of the earth.
Taking advantage of the information available on that site, in 2006 on one of my regular forays to Canada, as a shot in the dark I reached out to someone in the Canada chapter of the OCA. The outcome being a dinner in some restaurant in Toronto where I met folk whom I did not know but who, like me, were all linked by our one common bond. Within that clutch of menfolk there being one solitary lady, I got into a conversation with her curious to know what connection she had with the school. Her mere mention of her father, Mr. Freddie Brown, having been the Senior Master in 1959 and ‘60 was almost like a trigger which yanked a lid off some remote part of my brain. Bursting out came long forgotten memories, vaulting over each other and tumbling out in short staccato sentences:
- “You must be Susan Brown!”
- “In the Senior Masters house compound your dad had built a large doll house for you.”
“The compound was next to the children’s park.” - “As a 5-year-old, when we kids were taken to the park in the evening, the matron Mrs. Goss would very often send me across to play with you in that dolls house.”
- “I so clearly remember many an evening spent with you in that quaint house.”
And then we both, allowing our memories free rein, looked back with eyes which were definitely moist.
This being de rigueur, that evening reunion ending with us belting out the school song. Left me feeling rather proud that it was I among that group who remembered and knew all the lyrics:
We sing of days now past and gone, we sing of days to be,
A song to fire the mind of youth and kindle memory,
We sing of one who built our school on Simla’s tree crowned hills,
Whose motto and who’s name it bears,
To spur us onward still.
And so, from those who’ve gone before, to those who’ve yet to come,
We pass our motto loud and clear, all evil overcome,
As true as is a brothers love, as close as ivy grows,
We’ll stand foursquare throughout our lives to every wind that blows.
And we’ll not forget that mottos, Cotton’s motto,
You must never, never, never be o’ercome,
When both friends and fortunes fail, when our fears and doubts assail,
With our motto we’ll prevail and o’ercome!
That, strangely, was also the day when the substance of those lyrics, long embedded in my subconscious, came to the fore and it hit me that what I had been parroting all those 45 years, were way more than just a jumble of words. Lyrics which have, since that day of realization, became and continue to be a guiding light for me.
On my daily evening walk conscious of the villagers who walk past me, I softly hum the school song to myself. However, and crazy as this may sound, on the days when I go for my round of golf heading out early in the morning on my motorcycle, with the 25KM stretch to Ooty being bereft of any traffic, I see no reason to restrain myself and belt out my school song loudly and with full passion.
Very often I do ask myself the question that have those lyrics, which were drummed into my head from the time when I was still wet behind the ears, moulded my character in any way? While I get no clearcut answer, what I do know is that through the almost 7 decades since I first heard that song, regardless of the trials and tribulations I have been through, and there has never been any dearth of those, I have been steadfast in my belief to:
NEVER BE OVERCOME!
