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If you haven't subscribed to continue receiving the Rose Bowl do so quickly so that you don't miss an issue. The Rose Bowl cannot continue as a completely free publication and needs your support. Learn more about the subscription and view the list of people who have already subscribed on The Dosco Network. Below is an extract from an article by Aamir Ali (214-K '39) in the latest issue of the Rose Bowl in which he discusses the importance of the network.
Three Days in Delhi
By Aamir Ali, 214–K ’39
Presidents - past, present and future - of the DSOBS were there a-plenty. You couldn’t turn around without bumping into a couple.
Someone said to me: ‘The Society can’t be much use to you since you live abroad.’ Not so; just the opposite. Let me arrogate to myself the role of spokesman for members of the DS community living abroad and say we need the OBS more than anyone. We need a centre, in fact several centres, in India. The family is an obvious one but families nowadays tend to be scattered, new generations come up ‘who know not us’.
The DSOBS is a constant; it is a focal point; it is always there. Little wonder that it has grown into such a large and useful institution. And little wonder that the Rose Bowl has developed into such a powerful link..
The Society now has its own premises; that is already a mighty achievement. Perhaps, in the fullness of time, it will have something even more: accommodation for visitors, a club house, a meeting place, an eatery, a drinkery Sounds remote and pie in the sky? Maybe, but many other educational institutions have clubs like these, and sometimes pies in the sky suddenly come down to earth. No, not a ghetto; primarily for the community but welcoming all.
I am of course looking inward to our own needs and wishes. The Society must also look outward; it has already gone a long way in seeking to define its place in the country and in the world. Take two examples.
Five years ago, it co-sponsored a meeting in the India International Centre to mark the 50th anniversary of the climbing of Trisul. The team was was basically a DS one, led by Gurdial and including Nalni and Surrindr Lal.. This meeting addressed an appeal to the Prime Minister just before his meeting with Pakistan’s President Musharraf, proposing that they establish a Siachen Peace Park. Their summit meeting was a fiasco, alas, but the idea of the Peace Park has floated well beyond the DS community and who knows? It may yet prove a factor in solving the Siachen conflict.
A second example is the Society’s response to the tsunami two years ago. It was not just an exercise in collecting money – everyone seemed to be doing that –but it enabled some of our own members in the region to provide immediate and practical help. How very much better than donating funds to organizations which must of necessity spend some of it on their own existence and on guarding their own turf.
The scope for such actions is unlimited. We of the Doon School Community (I say ‘community’ quite advisedly rather than ‘Old Boys’) cannot help recognising that in a country, and indeed in a world, where a large majority of our fellow human beings live in poverty and suffering, we consititute an island of privilege. None of us can escape the burden of responsibility this places on us, the feeling that we cannot, must not, enjoy our privileges by closing our eyes and minds to the needs of others. Nalni has reminded me that in his first Founder’s Day address, Foot declared that the aim of the School should be to produce elites for service not for privilege.
The DSOBS seems an obvious medium through which we can do this. It is an enormous task. But I am amazed at how far the Society has already come, at how many competent and able people have always been found to consecrate their time and talents to it;
In the vast population of our country, the DS community constitutes a small fraction. But let us not be over modest; it is an influential fraction. It includes ministers and statesmen, politicians and parliamentarians, writers and journalists, captains of industry and commerce, scientists and technicians, civil servants and voluntary workers; environmentalists and conservationists. It is a storehouse of talent, resources and good will. Most of us do have the innate desire ‘to serve and not to count the cost’, to give and not only to take.
What can we not do if we want?
