Golden Girls of ’65 - Our MGD Days

Boarding Schools form an extraordinary sorority where our finest memories of growing up years reside. I made friends here even before I understood what the meaning of word ‘friend’ meant.

I probably ended up making my best childhood rapports and bonds that lasted a lifetime at MGD. The brilliance of these is that I can recall the years in a jiffy, and do they not play on a fast forward like a delightful showreel. 

Our  Farewell  Nite

MGD …I remember.

I still vividly remember it all, the highs and the lows of life in a boarding, as if it was yesterday even though it goes back five decades and more. It was only when we went back to school for our Class of '65 Golden Jubilee did we realize how much we cherished each other and the warm recollections of living together in our comfort zone. A veritable cocoon of love and security.

Return to School  At the Gates of MGD

To be quite honest, in our school days we must have been quite incorrigible, unredeemable wholesome brats. Today, it does make me wonder as to how our Class teachers, our house-mistresses, our matrons put up with us? Miss Johnson, our exchange teacher from Cambridge almost gave up on us with 'Macbeth' and our paraphrase.I am sure much to the delight of 'Bard' we finally got it right.

Add caption

We were impish, perhaps occasionally a little rebellious, yet all in all, we were harmless mischief makers and pranksters.

All the same, we did pay for our actions with consequence, both with reprimand and retribution. Early in life, we learnt the aphorism of ‘Crime and Punishment’. So did we or did we not learn the strength of buddy loyalties and rock solid camaraderie in classmates, we never snitched on the other whatever the outcome. 

Somehow we wing-manned each other through everything from punishments to detentions, surprise tests to homework and the agony of fantasy filled teen crushes.

Each of these memories made MGD an exceptional learning curve.

Our Founder and Our Founder Principal

On a few spectrums, we sure lucked out in totality, one was having clearly etched role-models in our 'Founder', Maharani Gayatri Devi, and our 'Founder Principal, Miss LG Lutter, both a woman of substance. Both were women with power and positive influence. Without second thoughts an enormous impact they bought in our young lives, apart from emancipation and education, was exposure to the worldview and celebrated personalities from Royalty to Arts, and Sports and News-makers. 

This collective experience came to us as a natural consequence of being an MGD’ian. Maharani Gayatri Devi was our founder, her beauty and effortless grace made her the most sought-after hostess and celebrities vied to be on her invitation list.

HRH Maharani Gayatri Devi & Jacqueline Kennedy

The Grace & Beauty of   Maharani Gayatri Devi

Our other blessing was Miss Emma, unanimously voted by the MGDians as our Food Super Hero. Her menus were a culinary surprise every day as our 'board is spread, not only did it excite our taste buds and delight our hunger pangs at every meal time, there was a kind of an education on cross-cultural flavours and taste inspired by  Miss Emma’s growing up years.

 This cast a colourful blend of cuisines. The menus, the table layouts placemats and stickers – it was all a part of not only of feeding us and our growing appetites but also the imaginations.

The Board is Spread

Miss Emma was a Burmese orphan who lived her life with  Miss Lutter our Principal. One a British and other a Burmese had to flee from Burma and trek through the jungles of North-east across Irrawaddy escaping the Japanese invasion of Burma in World War 2. Both adopted India and chose MGD as their home.

Miss Emma with Miss Lutter

All the same, we did hate more than a few things.  We hated waking up early in the morning for our Physical with Miss Pearson. Miss Minakshi’s multi-vits, Nursy Peacock and her TAB jabs, Miss Alexander our matron, who we lovingly called ‘Goosey” and her enforced light out at 10 PM sharp and suffer the perpetual horror of the homework that was still half done. 

Boarding School Days

We used to think almost every day, "Oh God! When will we grow up and be done with studies all the freaking time. In fact, we had a ditty….

A few days more and where shall we be,

Out of the gates of MGD.

No more Maths’s and no more French

And no more sitting on the hard old bench …

But then our neurons were perpetually in a high output frizz mode, perhaps they were a fall-out of the ‘hormonal’ teenage year. On the other hand, when we did finally step out of the ‘Gates of MGD’, and the enormity dawns on us that from then on, we had become the Alumni. The ex MGDians. True! No more sitting on the hard old bench. But no safety net of our Alma Mater.

The Alumni

But if truth be told, that is the time we passionately wished that we could call back the time, and for sure now most of us would do just about anything to go back to school days,  even if it means to sit in extras to prep for Sanskrit grammar.

Life was so much better back in the dorms of our Boarding school. Other than that the promises we made and the bonds we formed were so light and tight that as the fifteen-year-old spirited crazies of those highly imaginative colourful years we formed sisterhood for life.

The Class of '65 Presents an Oil Portrait of Miss Lutter  

A couple of years ago our Class of ’65 celebrated our Golden Jubilee. Fifty glorious years and we, the Golden Girls of the Class of ’65 were ecstatic and had a kind of euphoric anticipation of the return to school. 

Where had these years gone?
From sixteen to sixty it seemed to be a blink and miss passage of time. Nevertheless, the years gave each one of us a journey and our own story to tell.

Que  Sera Sera ...  Our own Story to tell

Now it is 2018 and the euphoria begins for the Diamond Jubilee of the School, MGD@75.And once again the school song will be sung with wistful tears of joy. 

O Come let’s sing of MGD,

Shout till the rafters ring….

The Rafters will Ring again

No matter, who we are, what we do, how old we get, our school days will always remain one of our most prized possessions. And did the MGD prepare each one of us in different ways, yet together for our individual life journey, where ever it may have taken us?

Beyond any doubt the answer is... Yes!

It taught us to be situational... 

Let me explain this further. Life in MGD was power packed; we were perpetually kept off schedule.  The little demons in us had to be kept on a hop to retain a semblance of sanity.

And we had to improvise a survival kit that had three options.

Add caption

One, we could become a book-worm, a sort of theoretical teacher’s pet, cutting off from the world entirely, spending every waking minute of your day on the grind.

Two, you learn to adapt, pick the work that’s most important, learn survival mode and sham our way through the rest, and getting by on the skin of our teeth. And that is what we did to perfection as we coursed through life.

Third and last option, you become a basket case, neither here nor there.

Most of us are delighted today, that we went with option two, and I can articulate without a flip of a thought that it is an enormous life skill we acquired.

A glorious example is my first ever corporate induction, coming straight from motherhood in a one-horse town in central India called Mhow, to a rarefied board-room elitism.  

You know those meetings, where you walk in and have no idea what anyone is talking about, so you nod along and say “I agree with him on that point” and expound in vague generics on pie- charts and statistics on generalities until they end the meeting and you can go back to honing and polishing on the boarding school survival skills conceived in MGD.

After all, it is widely said that necessity is the mother of invention.

When my classmates and I talk about our days back at MGD, we tend to do so wistfully, the boarding school life in our days was simpler, and we in our schoolgirl days we were naïve and childlike. Those days we still remember it as some sort of utopia where we lived together in a place where we all challenged each other, learned from each other and had so much fun in the process.

Life back then in the sixties was simple, idyllic and perfect, unlike today in which life is riveted in complexities. But then School days can’t last forever. One day they come to an end. But school memories and friendships last a lifetime and will always remain the most uncomplicated, unconditional and endearing bonds in my journey through life. 

And that was the gist of our Reunion as the Golden Girls.

Golden Girls of ' '65 @ The Commemoration 

The  THEN  &  NOW

REUNION    Picnic  at Golcha Garden

 Golden Girls @ The Jubilee Ball  Ram Bagh Palace