Hair today and gone tomorrow: Recognizing and remembering...

From: Richard Johnson (rjj@deakin.edu.au)

The whole issue of recognition is quite interesting and it really confronts one at reunions. In many ways, this Blog provides a space for reunions – you hear names that you had forgotten and when you recall names from the past, you wonder how the person now looks and then you think of how you now look. It can be somewhat confronting, I think. The face-to-face meetings that I encountered at the centenary reunion were fascinating, to say the least. The common denominator is of course that we all looked older, but within that generalisation there were still fascinating variations. There were a few people I just could not recognise and there were names I had forgotten – why, I am not sure. And then, there were those whose names I had completely forgotten and on seeing them I immediately recognised them and remembered their names. Looking at these two pictures then, one such person was Arjun Biswas (GMS 1963, second from the right in the ‘07 reunion picture and third from the left in the Seriously Cool Humanities ’63 picture – see if you can identify the others … answers later…).























The most amazing experience for me was meeting Rajah Banerjee (GMS ’63, see pic. From my ’63 Autograph Book and in ‘07 the picture with ‘KANSAS’).


(Tune into this space and I’ll tell you more about some of the great characters in the group photo a bit later – there are two notables there: Arun Ghazi and Ridhi Pokhral… )

When I first thought about the reunion, in 2006 I imagined there to be a significant lack of accommodation suitable for my wife and I. For example, I had no idea of ‘Cochrane Place’.

But then I remembered a classmate who lived in Kurseong – I could remember his surname of Bannerjee (we tended to call people by their surnames, didn’t we?) and the name of his Tea Estate. So, I summoned Google and entered ‘Makaibari Tea Estate’ and up came this magnificent web site (http://www.makaibari.com/index.html). I emailed immediately though tentatively … was it the same person I knew, could we stay etc. Within an hour I had a response and it was on … the reminiscing, the stories, the names and the networking…

Hello Richard, … Yes I'm still pottering around the place. … As you are the first to contact me, I shall be more than happy to have you and your better half be our guests for the first week of November. … Eugene, I recall as the guy who scooted off to the pav- after being hit on the crown jewels at a cricket match! Obviously he was sans guard! Is jeff the guy who was an excellent elocutionist? A reedy, lanky crew cut topper, a year junior to us?

I replied, trying to place Rajah… I consulted my 1962/1963 Autograph Book…

I do remember: a Science student (Physics & Chem.) very good at Maths., First Division in S.C. I remember the Makaibari car driving up - how lucky to be getting special 'grub' - you getting special hardened cream - ricotta type - a great lump of it in a cloth - sometimes when my luck was in a got a piece - beautiful - I remember it being distributed in the study hall - under the desk of course ... All that seems so long ago 1962/1963...

And it continued:

… I recall two incidents - both concerning expletives. I had muttered "bugger "-and Matt Lobo overheard. He slapped me a couple of times- each time asking me if I knew what it meant. I learnt the meaning swiftly immediately afterwards from no lessa worthy than Archie Scott- where is he BTW. On another occasion - you'd muttered some offensive term- I reckon it was "f---"- and he asked you to leave the class and proceed to the principal's office to address him with your vocabulary. You marched towards the office, with a cloud over your head- halfway across the third field- Matt, asked me to call you back which I did with glee- that certainly was a near miss . Do you have any recollection of this incident? Dorjey Dahdul was with us and is a big wheel in the Sikkim hierarchy…

So, there I was greeting someone I hadn’t seen for forty-four years. I recognised him immediately and there was that connection re-established immediately. Although, I think he had to look and think carefully about me. From the way people reacted there was a general difficulty in remembering me. I think it had a lot to do with my lack of hair. I think that is the factor that renders on most unrecognisable. I think a number of people took me on trust. By the way, I’m not complaining and I prefer baldness to growing my hair long on one side and sweeping it over to cover a balding top or the more extreme solution of growing the eyebrows and sweeping them over the top! By the way, the other guys in the picture are, from the left, Lawrence Keelan, Mohan Shivdasani and Glenn Storey.








Rajah and his wife Srerupa were great hosts. We enjoyed every minute of our stay with them. I didn’t really expect to go to Kurseong to see the most inspiring business venture in Makaibari Tea Estate. If you want to see sustainability, conservation, perma-culture and a true model of joint venture of which the workers are a part, you must visit Makaibari. It is a philosophy in action.