Dosco Summit Day 2 - Recap
Govind Dhar (192-TB '97) completes his Dosco Summit recap for Doon Online. The second day is even more interesting as it includes highlights from speeches by Captain Amarinder Singh, Sunil Munjal, Kanti Bajpai, Masud Hassan, RP Devgun, Mr Farrokh K Captain and Anoop Bishnoi. Expect to see photographs added in the next day or two. This post has been republished with new photographs.
Dhruv Sawhney, Capt Amarinder Singh and Anoop Bishnoi.
Day 2, 19th December, 2005 – Dosco Summit Dubai, Al Marooj Rotana
RD Singh opened the day’s proceedings with a speech on his experience of Doon and other schools as teacher and administrator. Capt Amarinder Singh, who was mean to have the opening speech, had inadvertently gone to the wrong hotel and was slightly delayed.
Mr Singh had been asked to speak about his views on teaching at the School. He started by saying that he‘d spent a great deal of time listening to the Board of The Doon School deliberate on how best to take the school forward. He felt that the school needed to evolve in its teaching methods as the boys who had begun attended it, had evolved too. He proclaimed that the Doon School fraternity comprised some of the best people he knew and he had been on the Board of Mayo College and YPS, Pathiala as well. Mr Singh pointed out that the School needed to change focus to teaching boys about life skills and how to get on with it and also focus on boys who didn’t achieve a lot at school so that they too may get attention. He highlighted the need for the senior/junior hierarchy to be reviewed as not all seniors used their positions to mentor juniors. At every stage at schoolboys ought to be taught different skill sets and Mr Singh said he wondered whether teachers were advised to do this. Mr Singh then reminisced about his time as a teacher and said that he considered the ‘I’ in the IAE (Industry, Achievement, Effort) sections of the report card to be the most important because such a system of evaluating boys took into account the attitude of the boy along with his actual marks. He said that it was important to evaluate the emotional quotient of students in the grand scheme of things at Doon.
Haripal 'Bull' Gill, Anil 'Hitler' Dhar and Gurdial Singh
Captain Amarinder Singh’s address, Chief Minister, Punjab
Being introduced by Anoop Bishnoi and vilified only for being in Tata House, Amarinder Singh was asked to speak to the forum on politics, the Indian polity and The Doon School’s contribution to both. Briefly giving us an insight into his academic and then military career path, the Captain related to us a story of when he had been posted in the mountains around the Kashmir border. He said that as some men were digging a ditch for a bunker he had spotted behind him a figure in the trees, looking across the range with some binoculars. On inquiring as to who the man was, the Captain was told that it was Bhaskar Roy. His curiosity piqued, the Captain went to talk to Bhaskar and find out whether it was really he of Doon fame. Sure enough, it was the Bhaskar Roy and the Captain said that for the next 15 minutes, the two gentlemen stood in that moment of palpable tension and had a relaxed and memory-filled chat about Doon, awards, memories…He remembered that moment with particular fondness and then paid tribute to Bhaskar saying that a lot was owed to him by Indians because had it not been for him holding off the enemy at the border, we might have lost Kashmir to Pakistan in those times. Then the Captain told us a story from his school days when a nervous Rajiv Gandhi had asked him to prompt him over a four-line speech at Assembly in case he forgot any lines, and was remarkably then able to deliver a perfect address to the UN only a few years later. The point he was trying to make, he said, was that there was a reason that Doscos could see difficulties and problems through. He reiterated that Doscos reached such high positions in their chosen fields because of qualities that they picked up at Doon. The Captain felt that Doscos stood apart from every other kind of politician because of the honesty and integrity that School had a way of imparting to each boy. He told us that in the history of the NDA no Dosco who had ever qualified for it, had ever dropped out, even though a significant percentage of applicants did so each year. The Captain told us that the two most difficult and outspoken candidates he faced in the Legislative Assembly were Manpreet S Dhillon and Harish ** who were both Doscos and sitting opposite him at the forum. The Captain concluded by stating that he was certain that his own position in life had been down to values and qualities that had been imparted to him at The Doon School and that as a fraternity, we could be proud of ourselves for our closeness as well as our achievements.
Manpreet S Dhillon and Dr Kanti Bajpai
Dr Kanti Bajpai
Next to address the summit was Dr Kanti Bajpai, current HM of Doon. Dr Bajpai did a quick round up of the year in terms of the progress and achievements of the IPSS and the Board of Governors. He highlighted areas where the school could improve too and commented that the counseling of boys was an area that had been lacking. He told us that a 24-hour counseling facility for boys in need of guidance or open discussion had been set up and that two areas he was planning to address were education on sexual health, and the use and dangers of drugs. A workshop for prefects had been run during the year which although had received mixed reactions was going to become a regular event because Dr Bajpai felt that the school needed to host a foundation of counseling for the boys. Tutorial gatherings were being encouraged as a way of counseling too as Kanti stated that teachers were sometimes better able to receive boys and their problems or inquiries. Dr Bajpai explained to us the reunification of Houses, stating that it was done because the school would benefit from the capacities of the senior teachers and that each now also had an assistant housemaster to see if that would help improve administration. Overall he said such practice was proving a success. Dr Bajpai told us that he had started a successful practice of getting the School Captain elected (by secret ballot) and I wonder whether that might have stood many a batch in good stead, in previous years. On the educational front, Dr Bajpai told us that the School seemed to be far more productive and a lot further ahead in the overall development of boys in a myriad of disciplines as well as arts. He demonstrated with some impressive facts and figures, the number of publications, plays, debates and other such activities that we have going on at the School stating that no other school could approach the depth that we manage to impart to the present day Dosco. Dr Bajpai made note of the need to improve the infrastructure of the school making particular comment about some of the buildings that were over a 100 years old. He said that being in a seismic zone, we desperately needed to revamp and reinforce Doon’s physical infrastructure.
Kanti then told us about why he had wanted to teach and why he had become attracted to the idea of coming back to school. Saying that he was by nature a painfully shy boy, Kanti had come to school in B form and had been thrust into doing a number of things that he would never have thought otherwise to do; public speaking, committee action, agenda writing, debating, acting…and all of it had led him to become a good public speaker, able to address any audience with good effect. Kanti called this the alchemy of Doon – the way boys seemed to come to School in one particular form and then come out of it in a wholly new and multifaceted avatar. The other reason Kanti wanted to come back was the ability and dedication demonstrated to him by his teachers. He said the same of Old Boys coming back to teach, who became role models for boys who saw alumnus coming back to teach as a wonderful thing. He then said that the spirit of reason and logic at the school was a strong characteristic of its teaching and that he found this very attractive. He said that the governance practices of the school were structured so as to encourage debate and that seeking reason in everyday life was a means to guiding action. He concluded by saying that the key to being an academic was reason and that Doon taught you to speak your mind, but take your lumps too.
Capt Amarinder signs the Dosco Summit banner
Sunil Munjal
Sunil too began by mentioning to us the principles of Doon. A number of the speakers had touched upon the subjects of integrity, innocence, principle, achievement and leadership, but none brought home the facet of advantage like Sunil did. He told us that Doscos had an advantage in life because we had been born with silver spoons in our mouths. We had done nothing to be born into the families we were born into and were lucky to have the advantages that came as a result of that; one of them was Doon. Thankfully the statistics do not show all Doscos as kids of big industrialists as was the current myth. Sunil reeled of stats given to him by Dr Bajpai saying that 15% of the boys were the children of professionals (doctors, lawyers, etc.), 1% were politicians’ children or children of owners of big businesses, 35% of Doscos were children of business executives or salaried individuals and the rest were children from small to medium sized family business backgrounds. Sunil said we should take pride in knowing this fact and knowing that we do not just cater to an elite section of India’s society. He went on to describe how he felt the practice of self-governance by boys at school was the key reason to their development of self-sufficiency and leadership skills. He highlighted the fact that the Dosco gets more freedom to decide at school than he probably does at home, or in the workplace. The key point to Sunil’s speech was that with such development there came a responsibility for boys to spread their skills and knowledge across other sections and classes of society. He highlighted the needs of the country and the statistics of the population, which demonstrated that India was going to be in a position to make up a critical shortfall in the world’s working population within the decades to come. And it was to this end that we had to start working now, he said. Sunil mentioned that there was a Rural Business Hubs Council that had identified 80 geographical areas in India where self-sustaining economic development programmes were set to be implemented. He made an appeal for members of the forum to get involved in helping with these rejuvenation schemes and stated that the majority of companies and individuals coming forward to help in such schemes were Dosco. Sunil concluded by saying that Doon had a way of instilling the principles of integrity, honesty and social responsibility within boys and it was those facets of a Dosco that would help take the country and our society forward. For more information on Sunil’s efforts you can get in touch with him at skmunjal@herogroup.com.
Manpreet S Dhillon and Dr Kanti Bajpai
Mr John Mason
Mr John Mason was asked to speak next and what followed was a wonderfully executed address on Mr Mason’s views of the Dosco from the perspective of someone who had come to the school as an outsider. Mr Mason talked broadly about the development of the Dosco and how he thought highly of the facet of boys learning responsibility for all their actions at School. He said that The Doon School Weekly was a great example of this, where he quoted yours truly as having said of him “The eagle has landed and in case you were unsure as to the type we’re talking about, it’s of the American variety.” Apropos, Mr Mason used this as an example to talk about the way boys used The Weekly as an open forum to discuss issues they had with the School or with practices at large and put their names to their thoughts as a way of taking responsibility for what they wanted to say. He related a story to us of how he was with a group of boys who had gone to clean up the Sahastradhara river and in the midst of picking up the refuse and rubbish that had collected everywhere, a villager approached them and asked the group to note the line of trees growing along the water’s edge. On spotting the trees, the boys and the Headmaster were informed that it was Doscos who had planted those trees many years ago. And Mr Mason said that it was stories such as this that symbolized Doscos and The Doon School; that everywhere Doscos went they left an indelible mark on not only people but their surroundings too. Mr Mason then noted the power of negotiation that Doscos picked up at School (no mention of gulaab jamuns for chikkis but I guess we’re all agreed on those skill sets: GD). He noted a time when at a meeting of the School Council all the representatives had plotted against him to challenge him on the topic of walkmans being allowed on campus, and he marveled that this was but one facet of the extent to which boys learnt negotiation and diplomacy. Another aspect of the School that Mr Mason felt had made a mark on him was the sense of historicity that the boys had about the school; the lore and myths that had come about, the teachers, the passing on of books, numbers and positions to successive batches, the Old Boys’ network, the societies and the campus and the bonds that came from all of them together. Mr Mason said that all these things made us part of an ever flowing stream and that he never thought that one day he’d say this, but if ever the school should need him, for anything, all we had to do was call and he’d be there.
Masud Hassan – Headmaster of Chandbagh School, Pakistan
Mr Masud Hassan began by telling us of how it came about that The Chandbagh School was a project dearly desired by the Pakistani alumni of the school. He said that after going through Doon, they felt compelled to start an institution in Pakistan that would impart some of the magic and principle taught at Doon. A wonderfully interesting aspect of Mr Hassan’s speech was in telling us the origin of the word ‘Dosco’. I suspect the majority of us would probably have out this down to the obvious merging of the words Doon and school, but we were enlightened after this one story. Mr Hassan said that when he was at school, he was part of the Chemistry Society and as a project assigned to them by his then Chemistry teacher they made boot polish and fenile in the Chemistry labs. It was then decided that the products were fit for use and subsequent distribution in the school. As a result, Mr Hassan said that they had found need for a name for themselves if they were going to be providing the school with these homespun products. As such, they came up with the name Doon School Company Limited and this name was reported in The Weekly with the acronym ‘Dosco’ - and that’s how the School’s boys were to be known, forever.
Mr Hassan agreed with Dhruv Sawhney about the school and its prgress, stating that if we didn’t have planning and finance as well as transparency in the system, we would never move forward. Furthermore, he added that transparency gives any programme or institution sustainability.
Mr Hassan then related a story of social service at Tunwallah from his time at Doon. Mr AE Foot had instructed a boy to help pick up garbage from around the area as part of the service and the boy objected, saying he was a first class Brahmin and that he could not possibly help with the clean-up effort. Mr Foot told the boy that he would have to think about what he had just said and that he would have a week in which to come back to him with an answer. Within the week, the boy returned saying that he would come to a compromise on the request made by Mr Foot; that he would only help with the clean-up at Tunwallah provided the Headmaster did not inform his father that he was doing so.
Mr Hassan then made a note about elitism and said that Doscos tend to shy away from the word. He stated that he was unashamedly elite and thought the same of the Dosco community, but only because of his definition of the word ‘elite’. He then described to us that Doscos were no ordinary bunch; that education, leadership, transparency and distinction separated the Dosco from the ordinary crowd. He mentioned that we as a community bore responsibililty for those around us and took a view to leading from the front with all our given talents and fortunes. This, he said, made the Dosco part of an elite society.
RP Devgun
On RP’s arrival in Dubai, I overheard my father refer to him as RP Singh. For this I corrected him and informed him that Mr Devgun’s name was not RP Singh, but in fact, RP Devgun. It was here that RPD corrected me and informed me that when he had joined school at the age of 20-21, the boys had taken to calling him RP Singh because of RD Singh who was already present at the school. Two generations, two nomenclatures, one teacher – you do the Math! RP started his speech by stating simply, ‘This is awesome,’ and then telling us of how he came to become a teacher at Doon almost by accident. Having played cricket on the school grounds and having just finished a year of his English MA, RP was summoned by Mr Vohra to the School and asked if he would like to join as a teacher. It was only 27 years later that RP would find himelf leaving Doon for to take up a Headmastership at a school in Indonesia. Mr Devgun said that Doon had taught him balance. He said that Doon had given him a fantastic method to balancing his lifestyle with work, his family and the boys. He felt this to be an valuable principle. An observation he made about the Doon school boy was that in all his time at school, RP said that he never heard a boy complain. Seeming to make clear comparisons with the schools he had taught at and then run as Headmaster, RP narrated a story of once having gone on mid-term. He said that because of the circumstances of the trek, they had not managed to get three meals a day, but that the boys just got on with it. He found this remarkable, but not as remarkable as when the boys finally came to a ‘dhaaba’ after a particularly long and strenuous hike where the provision of hot, sweet tea and bread held immeasurable value for the boys. RP said that the tea was served hot, but that the buns seemed to be a little on the stale side and that on dropping one by mistake, a boy actually managed to catch it again because the bun bounced right back up to him. And this created a situation of hilarity amongst the boys and the teachers, rather than depress any spirits and it was this facet of Doscos that RP found unique and reassuring. He said the school had a way of teaching such values in an unobtrusive way to the boys. RP concluded by saying, ‘If you didn’t have it, it didn’t matter. If you got it, you enjoyed more than necessary. And why not? By then you had earned it!’
Capt Amarinder signs the Dosco Summit banner
Mr Farrokh K Captain
Mr Captain begain his address by informing us that he had the dubious honour of being the only Pakistani boy to attend The Doon School after partition and that he would like to concur with all the speakers at the summit who had said that Doon boys learn diplomacy and negotitation very quickly. Mr Captain said that you could be sure he had to learn diplomacy very quickly because being the only Pakistani on campus, he had to learn very quickly to think on his feet. Mr Captain told us of how Rajiv Gandhi in fact would always be there to look after him and make sure he wasn’t getting too tough a time from the bully boys! Then Mr Captain told us about Doscos in Pakistan. He said that some of the finest Pakistanis were Doscos and all of them had risen to senior positions in their chosen fields in Pakistan. He mentioned two who had become Generals in the army, Jamsheed Marker as a doyen of diplomacy, and others. He spoke of General Janahi and his efforts in getting the Chandbagh school up and running because it was agreed amongst the Pakistani Dosco community that Doon’s principles and teachings ought to be taught in Pakistan as well. He concluded by saying that we ought to carry on functions such as the summit because it was a great way of everyone meeting up and staying in touch on all things Doon.
To the victor go the spoils - Vikram Pradhan presents the banner to Mr Anil Dhar
Anoop Bishnoi’s Closing Remarks
Anoop concluded the summit by saying that the event was a landmark in the history of the Old Boys’ Society as well as the school. He said that in recent years the spark in the Old Boy network and its interest in school and the DSOBS’s activities at large had somewhat fizzled out. He told us that he was given a clear mandate from the previous President of the DSOBS to rejuvenate the network and to rgerate interest in the issues that the school and Old Boys’ considered important. He felt that he had only heard Old Boys’ complain about how things used to be better and had seemed to resign themselves to such a fate rather than take positive action about the same. Anoop restated frequently that it was important we kept the society together and also dynamic. He said that it was brought up at the last AGM that it was not in keeping with the Dosco tradition that only 100 boys spoke for 5000, and so this was an issue he took upon himself to redress immediately. He said it was important for us to be able to hear and know what everyone wanted to say about Dosco related issues. He said that sometimes he felt lost because he wasn’t entirely sure what he was supposed to be doing – and that this was the result of a lack of input or direction from enough of the Old Boys. But that had changed he said, because now at this summit he had heard what people felt and had been able to discuss so many issues and hear and tell stories and that all of this had made him feel good. He stated that we needn’t have to fool ourselves about the reason we were at the summit – that we all shared a common, unbreakable bond between eachother and that although a lot of the time he felt his job might be thankless, hearing just one person say, well done, you’ve done a great job, it all becomes worth it. Anoop concluded the summit by thanking everyone for attending and saying that although he wasn’t an emotional person the fraternity made him one, and it was this aspect of it that drove him forward.
Rapturous applause ensued and I think everyone had a great sense of goodwill as well as achievement for having been present at the summit over the last couple of days. I think I am not alone in feeling that in some ways, a lot of us felt it was too short and sadly, the fun and frolic (amongst the discussion and debate) had led to the quickening of the onset of the end of the event. We all had another chance to celebrate though because in the evening there was to be a final gala dinner.
The Marooj Rotana, location of the summit
The gala dinner was an undeniably electric event. A ballroom had been taken up for the dinner and entertainments and no sooner had everyone settled into the ballroom, (feeling relieved at the end of two days of some intensive talks and speeches) than it was time to feel the pressure of falling in line again for the once mundane task of getting batch photographs taken. Vikram Pradhan (ex-227-T, Batch of ‘84) was given the task of belting out and summoning the batches with Manoj Kapoor (ex-339 H, Batch of ‘79) and overall, it turned out to be a process of the evening that proved quite hilarious. Once all the photos were taken and an en masse Summit attendee photo was shot, the festvities got kicked off to an energetic start with four dancing girls coming onto centre stage to befuddle and astound all and sundry.
Few were on there seats at this Gala dinner!
Certain habits of the Dosco certainly don’t change and one of them is certainly our way of receiving attractive girls and that is, with the proper attention and respect due to such ladies. All eyes were fixed firmly on the dancefloor while hot hits were churned out by the DJ. As if that weren’t enough a rather buxom bellydancer took to the stage and accosted almost every Old Boy or teacher within dancing distance. As both acts took turns to keep the spirits and blood pressures high, the Gala Dinner took on the tempo of fever pitch and not a single man, woman or child in the room was not entertained. The dancefloor was practically heaving till past midnight and ‘Lab Pe Aati Hai’ was sung a few times, rather horrendously, by anyone who could still remember the words and by a lot who didn’t as well. Mr Vohra, RD Singh, Gurdial Singh and others were all on the dancefloor at one time or another. Another particularly amusing moment was when Haripal Singh Gill (ex-328 H, Batch of ‘66) was asked to auction the Dosco Summit banner to raise funds for the DSOBS and the bidding was begun at USD200. Not surprisingly, the bids came in hard and fast, but noone expected the bidding to get up as far as a generous USD 6,500 which incidentally was the winning bid. The winner was Anil Dhar (ex-359 T, Batch of ‘69) who walked away with a banner bearing not only the signatures of some of the oldest and well known teachers at Doon but the signatures of Doscos past, present, recent and current. I was informed later that an ex-Dosco made an additional offer of over 7000 dollars for the banner to Mr Dhar, but that he declined politely, saying that it was not for sale.
Mr. Vohra rises to the occasion
The dancing and singing was interespersed with eating and drinking and I think it was safe to say that a truly monumental event had just taken place in Dubai. I think it is safe also to say that all the Doscos who came to the event and those who will read and hear about it, will no doubt want to carry on this newly started practice and keep its wheels of operation, in constant motion. As most practices become traditions with a mere number of repetitions, I can only hope that the Dosco Summit will follow suit, and as such will give us all something truly informative as well as spectacular to look forward to in the years and decades to come. I think the message from this summit was clear – it will take the volition and drive of a critical number of Doscos to keep the Society, the School and indeed the future of the Dosco, in good and capable stead. And that ultimately, is a decision that lies in the hands of each and every one of us. The rest, is easy.
The bellydancer and Govind Dhar!