The class of 1980

There were 39 students in our class in MCC. Ahmed Bary, Bilal Ahmed, Anthony James, Vinayak, B Y Ramesh, M Ramesh, H S Murali, Santhanam, D M Murali, M Srinivas, Ashok Ratnam, Usha Ramachandran, Geeeta Menon, Minal Dalal, Prasanna Ramakrishnan, Glory, Poornima D K, Shahin Farhana, Rama Naidu, Pushpalatha, Rosy, Ramarao S, Ramprasad S, Shirin, Chander, Shabir Ahmed, Budesh, H Prakash, Xavier, Abdul Jabbar, Ataur Rehman, Christopher Anil Rao, Ramdas Iyer, M R Jayachandran, Ravi Rahalkar, Ravi Shankar, Jairaj, Roslyn, Mohan. Of this Geeta Rama, JC, me and Santhanam were from Wadi. Mohan and Rosy are alas, dead. As I understand, Mohan killed himself and Rosy was murdered. Mohan was even then morose, but Rosy was fat and jolly. We all liked her company. She used to laugh a lot. Her violent end shocks and pains me. We all remember you Rosy and love you for what you were. We wouldn’t have called you Moti and hurt you had we known that you wouldn’t be laughing for long.

The Layout in Shahabad was slightly different. Since it wasn’t as important a railway station as Wadi, there was no railway colony as such. There were some quarters, but that didn’t make a colony. The Bal Vidya Mandir was located there. Many of the readers in this blog may be surprised to learn that I have never seen the Bal Vidya Mandir myself, even though several students from our class in Wadi, including Vidya Narwate was in BVM. If you came to Shahabad by rail, having emerged from Shahabad railway station, we walked straight ahead, passed part of the bajaar (many readers may wonder why I continue to write ‘bajaar’ rather than ‘bazaar’. That’s how we pronounced it there) and also part of the ACC colony – we actually never entered bajaar or ACC colony and walked straight to the ABL colony and joined the road coming from Wadi and onto ABL colony. First came the SSQs, then the JSQs, and then we turned left to the road that passed Chi Chi Po Po to reach MCC. On the northern side of MCC were the STRTs and the TRTs (they were the equivalent of LTRTs in Wadi, but they didn’t call them LTRTs there). Further north was Bhankur and on to Gulbarga. Bhankur was to Shahabad, what Rawoor was to Wadi. There were some excellent Jain era rock carvings in Bhankur. Jainism has a significant presence in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, contrary to the perception in the North of India. Gomateshwara of Sravanabelagola is a very well known site, but like Bhankur, there were several other unknown sites.

Unlike in Wadi, Shahabad had at that time two cinema theatres, one in the ACC colony and another called Tirandaz, owned and operated by the Iranis. It was in all respects a much bigger town than Wadi, and was like an elder brother. While recently talking to Ataur Rehman, he happened to mention that having seen my blog, his daughter wondered why people in those days traveled from Wadi to Shahabad to study, while now, it was the other way round. I, on the other hand wondered why children from Shahabad were now traveling to Wadi to study.