GOETHALS MEMORIAL SCHOOL - A MEMOIR

By J C Tresham

Goethals was a Catholic boys’ school, in Kurseong, near Darjeeling, set in the foothills of the Himalayas, close to the Eastern border with Nepal. The School was run by the Irish Christian Brothers. As a new student your first reaction was one of trepidation, the 1952 school seemed colourless and austere. But it gradually grew on you, and that’s how it must have been for the young JC Tresham who was not yet 8 years of age when he first attended the school in March 1952, finally leaving it in 1959. My younger brother CH Tresham was to follow two years later. The School year was a nine month unbroken stint from March to December and perhaps because of our remoteness from our homes and the long separation from our families, in most cases for the first time in our lives, we developed an expedient reliance on each other for friendship and support. Later this reliance was forged into a life- long bond.

St Helens, also in Kurseong, was a Catholic girls’ school run by Nuns. I’ve forgotten the name of the order, but who could forget their then Principal, the formidable Sister Xavier. We enjoyed a surprisingly enlightened, active inter-school programme of social and sporting events where we could meet and make friends with the girls. Some of these friendships, made in the 50’s, have endured for over 50 years.

The ebb and flow of our school days became embedded in our personae and throughout our lives exerted an insistent pull on our memories and our affections. In our day to day progress through school life the serious happily co- existed with the comical and the absurd. We can now recall with wonder, gratitude and even amusement the little rituals; the irony of having to wake up at an ungodly hour to attend chapel and pray to God, the cold washes and showers, the siege of relentlessly unpalatable food lifted by visits to ‘Blackie’ and the tuck shop, at least as long as our pocket money lasted, clothes and shoes gradually succumbing to the rigours of the schoolboy year, socials with the girls from St. Helens, sometimes including the girls from Dow Hill and Loreto Convent. How the girls must have dreaded the twin assaults of conversations of stupefying banality, driven by our shyness, with the toe-bruising inflicted by the ragamuffin self-taught dancers of Goethals. ‘Dancers’ is probably exaggerating our capabilities.

We had our academic and sporting heroes. In addition to the class prize, the school offered, an English prize, and a Religious Studies Prize, something for the academically gifted to aim for. Sporting heroes won their trophies on the field and in Inter-school competition and at hockey, the school produced three great Olympians who won Olympic Gold. We honour them and respect their achievements.

After we left school we all went our separate ways, but wherever we found ourselves the chain of communication with each other while tenuous, was never allowed to break down and once e-contact became the norm it became easier to seek out old friends and where possible assemble reunions. Twitter and Facebook have since strengthened the connectivity between friends keen to embark on nostalgic, sentimental journeys into the past, enlivened by laughter and conviviality, aided and abetted by recollections of colourful episodes from the school years and not always accurate retelling of some juicy scandal, and there were a few, all fused together by copious quantities of food and drink. Those of us who are less mobile these days enjoy the miscellaneous postings to Facebook of the many get-togethers that now take place on a regular basis.

One thing always stands out clearly and that is how central our schooldays were to our innermost beings.

The Irish Christian Brothers are a dwindling presence in India nowadays as secular education becomes the norm, but there are many names that trip off our tongues with affectionate recall: Bros Fitzpatrick, O’Malley, Corbett, O’Donohue, Kyle, McCann and others permanently etched in our memories. Many of the legends of the Christian Brother movement were contemporaneous with us, the students of the 50s and 60s. Others went before them, others have followed. The brothers were supported by many gifted and dedicated lay teachers, Matt Lobo and AB Roy are among names that stand out in my memory. They have earned our gratitude. Their prize, greater than a book or a silver cup, was our success and our lifetime achievement.

The School was located on a ridge above the road from Siliguri to Darjeeling, now a world heritage site where it was wrapped in a protective shroud of pine forest, while the hillsides below were carpeted with extensive tea plantations. There was much to take for granted and we did. Internationally famous Darjeeling tea was part of the local vegetation albeit lovingly planted and nurtured by the tea estate community. It is impossible to drink a cup of Darjeeling tea without remembering the old school. The view looking West and North West was as good as could be found anywhere and, on a clear day, on the North West horizon, Kanchenjunga, brooding and imperious, the world’s third highest mountain at over 28,500 feet could be seen in all its glory, Evocative, talismanic, totemic, iconic. How does one do justice to this mountain. The decades pass, but the image of this snow-capped giant still fills us with wonder. How could it not? Its changing moods, sometimes benign, sometimes brooding, always imperious, its sunrises and sunsets, its shadowy profile ghosting in and out through mist and monsoon, its startling pristine whiteness on a clear sunny day, its incredible alpenglow. On a more modest scale the school was surrounded by mountain streams and waterfalls, wild orchids and wild strawberries, but it is the eternal snows of Kanchenjunga that fired our imagination and instilled in those of us who had left to seek our fortunes elsewhere, an unshakeable, insistent desire to return. The School’s Golden Jubilee in 1957 and Centenary in 2007 are testimony to that. Both events were well attended.

As school children we were, in a sense, visitors to a region populated by the Nepalese people. The Nepalese are devout Buddhists and pray to many gods including the gods of the mountains on which their lives and livelihoods depend. Buddhist prayer flags and shrines can be seen everywhere. It is with sadness that one reflects on the political difficulties besetting these lovely, spiritual people. However they are an indistinguishable and inseparable part of the school community. What we received through our association with these wonderful people cannot be bought.

The character of the Goethals boys, as the many reunions and Facebook contributions attest is to be approachable, humorous, amiable, with gentle easy-going laid-back dispositions, offering friendship, love and support to our friends while recognising the rights of others to live their lives and dream their dreams free of any imposition from us. We enjoy life, eating, drinking and chatting. We enjoy a joke even if it’s at our expense. We swop recipes and sporting and cultural links. We take pride in our spirituality. We expound our philosophies and invite discourse. It is not our style to force our attitudes or opinions on anyone. Our ethic is to work hard and play hard. Our compassion for the less fortunate is a matter of record.

In the journey through life some of us have received the call from God, We honour those who have gone and we thank them for what they have given us. The younger boys have their lives stretching out before them. Together, year after year, decade after decade our lineage stretches like a golden tapestry capturing our history and its legacy, every boy placing a stitch. ‘Omnia Bene Facere’ - our motto still resounds. May the alpenglow of Kanchenjunga light the way for all of us, always.

The above has been posted by J C Tresham on FB