Madhusudan Reddy

Where do I begin… some random memories. I joined HPS in 1968 in class 8. My first dorm was 38 bedders. It was not long before I made many friends. Mr. Tiwari had his apartment at one end, and kept an ever-watchful eye on us. The games room downstairs where we played table tennis and carroms while listening to Binaca Geet Mala. “I then graduated to the 12 bedders. That’s when we started to get into music with our guitars, O. Amar, Vasu, Rajendra Prasad and our seasoned musician Loki Pai who could play the accordion, drums, etc . The birth of the Devil Kids; Mr. T considered us ‘The Devils Spawn ‘’. Jim Bray was our other house master, but really more of a friend to us. Remember his old motorbike. I still remember the limerick he told us one day:

“There once was a young lady named Coleshill,

Who one day sat down on a mole’s hill,

An inquisitive mole,

stuck his nose up her hole,

Now Miss Coleshill’s alright, but the mole’s ill”.

I owe a lot to the teachers we had. We had really good teachers who taught us and made us who we are today. Mr.Ahsaan Ali Khan, again a friend, more than a teacher. Remember the send-off party in Manwinder Singh Sahni’s house where we sang “To Sir with Love “. He had tears in his eyes. Remember the Inter House Competitions and our shows at Ravindra Bharati. Remember being in the band playing the kettle drums. The special tea we got for our band practice and our band master old Mr. Rajaiah. The only sport I was really involved in was swimming. Loved it considering I only learnt to swim at the age of 13. I remember one weekend we decided to do laps and we got to 52 laps when Mr. Nair came and asked us to get out of the pool. We could have gone on. I’d be flat out doing 5 laps now. Had a lot of certificates from swimming, sadly eaten up by termites on my farm. Ajit Ninan and I used to cartoon in our spare time. He had a real flair for it. I remember getting caught for bunking out for a late show to see ‘The Graduate‘. Mr. T wanted to expel me from the boarding, but as luck would have it, my aunt was on the Board of Governors. Time flew and next thing I remember was sitting in Grammar School writing our ISC exams. The long wait for the results was agonizing. I was soon to realize that we were all going to go our separate ways. I had 4 ex HPS students in Kakatiya Medical College. Anil Rupani, who was my room-mate, Ramkumar Panhani , Ghouse Moinuddin and Ramchander Pai. Anil visited Australia with his wife and it was lovely to catch up. Sadly, Anil passed away and more recently Ramkumar. On a happier note, I had lost all touch with my HPS friends and

colleagues, but I was very lucky that my cousin Mohan Alexander had caught up with someone in Hyderabad who put me onto Anand (Halbe) who had created the Class of 71 group, and here we are, in touch after all these years. It is also lovely to see more of our classmates joining into this group. As they say, ‘Better late than never ‘. It’s amazing how after all these years, we can start where we left off. I would like to thank HPS and all you wonderful guys of Class of ‘71 for the wonderful times and memories I have of my stay in HPS.