The Diamond Jubilee of the SealyMemorialHigh School, Tattamangalam marks the culmination of sixty years of fruitful achievement, sixty milestones in the path of progress. From a modest Middle School, with two or three hundred pupils, accommodated in a pair of ramshackle buildings, to a full-fledged High School under State management, containing 898 pupils, is indeed a record of growth that one may view with pride and satisfaction. As an old boy of the school it give me real pleasure to take a retrospective view of school life forty years ago in this venerable institution.

          The school, named after a former D.P.I. of Cochin State, Mr. Sealy, was then an aided institution managed by the late Mr. Parakkat Vasu Menon. The standard of education was then very high, especially in English, in Cochin State schools and the high rank I used to get in English in my subsequent school and college examinations was partly due to this and partly due to the grounding I got from my revered father, who was a voracious reader of English books.

          The recollections of those past days have been blurred in my memory by the passage of time and the crowding of more recent occurrences and experiences but there are a few personalities and events that stand out in fairly bold relief, against the hazy back-ground of the past.

          There was a Rama Menon who was a teacher in Arithmetic in my second class. He was stern, severe and efficient. With his well-ironed close coat and immaculate white turban and the menacing cane in his right hand, he succeeded in hammering arithmetic into the most inattentive brains. Mr.Ram Menon, with all his stern exterior in the class-room, was a popular man in his village and used to take an active part in the “Kanniarkali”, the annual folk-dance festival of Tattamangalam. He was an expert in some of the dances and I have watched with amusement and admiration the face of the stern task-master of the class relax into softer moods, as his feet kept pace with the back-ground music.

          No one could easily forget Mr. Vaidyanatha Iyer, bald and bespectacled and strongly reminiscent of Goldsmith’s Village School-master. Few were the boys who could escape the rigour of his relentless discipline, which sometimes went even to sadistic excesses. I remember how he once knocked the head of an unfortunate boy against the wall until a big bump appeared there and made another knock his knuckles against the desk until it became all black and blue. More severe punishments have also been attributed to him like tattooing a boy’s forehead with a pen etc. I believe he was a teacher of English Grammar and a very earnest teacher who perhaps literally followed the English dictum “spare the rod and spoil the child”. Like his famous prototype in Goldsmith’s poem it might be that in his case also 

“………………………. if severe in aught  

The love he bore to learning was in fault”.

          Mr. Kunhikrishna Panikkar, the Headmaster, was another who has left an indelible impression in my mind. Meticulously neat in his dress, grave and dignified in his bearing, precise and authoritative in his speech, he was then a picture of the model Headmaster who inspired us with awe and admiration. He had the Napoleonic eagle glance which surveyed the classes at work from his platform at one end and compelled obedience and unbroken discipline. I had since had occasion to meet Mr. Panikkar at close quarters and on friendly terms and though the absence of the vantage ground of position and authority had dispelled to a large extent the magic influence of the past, he was still the veteran educationist, carrying on his noble task in the face of great difficulties.

A succession of less conspicuous figures pass before my mind-Mahadeva Iyer the good old class-master of the First form, greatly addicted to snuff, Pitchu Iyer, fat and benignant, Avanashi Master, my class-master in the third standard who had a personal liking for me and made me monitor and used to ask me to take lessons for the class (a dreaded ordeal indeed!), Vasu master the famous Drill instructor, Kutta Menon, the Sanskrit master with his protuberant belly and pompous manner etc, etc.

            It would be impossible to forget the good old “Patti” who used to sit on the stone railings of the Mannathukavu near by and sell Thairuvadais and Ravaladus to the pupils during the mid-day interval.

            Among the high-lights of my experiences at school could me mentioned the Coronation Day Celebrations of December 1911. Those were days of ultra-loyalty to the Crown and the day’s celebrations were devoted to eulogies the King-Emperor George V and wish him long life and happiness. Processions with portraits of Their Majesties, carried on gaily caparisoned elephants through festooned streets, songs of praise specially composed for the occasion, distribution of sweets to children, medals for proficiency in the schools, grand fire-works at night – these were the items in the programme of celebrations.

            It is now over forty years since I have left the portals of the hoary institution, whose Diamond Jubilee is to be celebrated now. The recollection of those boyhood days still evokes in my mind tender and grateful memories – memories that the passage of Time shall never completely efface.

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