7 The book has two Founder’s Day addresses – by the renowned poet Vikram Seth and myself. They show that even though the two of us experienced school in very different ways, our final assessment was remarkably similar. Rudrangshu Mukherjee published both speeches in his second edition of The Great Speeches of Modern India (Random House India, 2011).

The fact of the matter is that I had been pretty unhappy during my school days. People are always surprised, sometimes even shocked when I say this, and most of all ex-Doscos, but it is true. Part of it was my own fault—or, perhaps, I shouldn’t say fault, but my own character. I just wanted to forget all about school once I’d left. I had a terrible feeling of loneliness and isolation during my six years here. For years after I left, I thought of school as a kind of jungle, and looked back on it with a shudder.

Now, part of all this was of course simply the general stress and strain of adolescence, but part of it was also the ethos, the atmosphere of the place. It was a place where sports were almost the only thing that mattered as far as the boys were concerned. I was teased and bullied by my classmates and my seniors because of my interest in studies and reading, because of my lack of interest at that time in games, because of my unwillingness to join gangs and groups, because of my height—as you can see from the adjustment of the mikes—and most importantly of all because I would get so furious when I was bullied. No doubt, if in my teens I had been more relaxed about things, or if I had more of a sense of humour, things wouldn’t have been so bad. But I wasn’t, and I didn’t, and they were.

Given all this, I had serious doubts about whether I should in all conscience stand on this stage and so ungratefully talk about my miserable time here. After a bit of thought and some struggle I decided I should. For one thing, I learned a lot at Doon, a very great deal indeed as I will mention later, and I am very grateful for that. For another, I thought it would be interesting for you (and by ‘you’ I mean particularly the boys) to hear someone who has a somewhat different view of things from the usual ‘school days were the best days of my life’ litany; it might give you heart when you’re feeling low or perplexed.

One of the hardest and most harmful things about school—not just Doon but any boarding school—is that boys are deprived of the love and day-to-day company of their fathers and mothers for two-thirds of the year—The result of this lack of family life, of affection, is very difficult to assess, but I think it has a serious effect on the minds and hearts of the boys. It forces them to be more independent of their parents, certainly; but it also makes them more emotionally insecure, and as a result more eager, even desperate, to conform to their peer group. to seek popularity among their companions, and to appear as tough and cool as possible and as brutal as possible to those who are outside the group or younger than themselves. This culminates after a few years in the ridiculous concern for privileges and seniority, and sometimes abuse of authority that one often finds among the captains and prefects and monitors.

The concern and care of teachers and housemasters is no real substitute for the security that comes from the affection of one’s parents. But the fact of the matter is that there is another side to things—and one which is just as important. l owe a great deal to my years here, and it is necessary to acknowledge this. Two things that Doon gave me—and I will mention just the two most valuable things—were a sense of equality with boys from very different backgrounds and a wide range of interests outside the purely academic.

The sense of equality was something that Doon never laid any oppressive stress on, and it was all the more effective for that. It just happened. Boys dressed in the same uniform regardless of their parents’ wealth. They got the same amount of pocket money. Caste did not matter, religion did not matter, the part of the country you came from didn’t matter, the social status of your family was unimportant. It did not matter to us that the boy next to us might be the son of a millionaire. Nor did it matter to him. Our friendships and enmities had almost nothing to do with the world outside Chandbagh. This was a wonderful lesson, and a rare one: one that could not have been taught in a day school. I hope that this sense of equality still holds at Doon.

As for my second great debt to Doon – an all-round education, not confined to one’s studies—one has only to look around the Rose Bowl to see what I mean. This wonderful theatre was built many years ago by the boys themselves under the guidance of a master. For me, it is a symbol of all that is best about the school. The surroundings too are beautiful. Living for years in these surroundings, bred in me an unconscious love of nature which was reinforced by mid-term expeditions to the hills and rivers around, and which has never deserted me even amid the polluted drabness of large cities.

Nor was this breadth of interest merely a question of the facilities available here. What was crucial was that certain teachers—I won’t say very many, but certainly a few—themselves embodied this wider vision of a full life.

People sometimes ask me whether in addition to these two great gifts, Doon didn’t teach me lessons of leadership and character building and independence of mind. My answer, in a word, is ‘No.’ I don’t think I have leadership qualities anyway, and I certainly don’t think that the system of authority that 1 talked about earlier leads to great qualities of leadership. As for character building, I suppose it could be said that there is a sort of make-or-break aspect to boarding schools. You learn to cope or else you collapse, I finally learned to cope with my solitude; but any real strength or warmth of character came to me later and in surroundings where I could choose my company and was more at ease with myself. As for independence of mind, I don’t think Doon helped me. As I explained, the ethos was one of conformity, of fear of public opinion, of hostility to anyone who was eccentric or odd in any way. I very much hope that this has changed or is changing.

It is difficult even at the age of forty to think for oneself, to take an independent stance, to speak one’s mind. At fifteen, it requires great courage, and I just did not have it. I lay low and muttered resentfully and thought that perhaps there was something wrong with me that I didn’t fit in.

There is nothing sadder than someone who has done nothing solid or independent in life clinging to his old school tie for a sense of his own worth—or, more absurdly still, for his sense of superiority. The only way you can come to balance the good with the bad is through the habit of independent thought. Don’t take important matters on trust. Examine public opinion, especially that part of public opinion that you have almost made your own.

In love, too, it doesn’t matter how many times you are rejected; it’s that one acceptance by someone you love that matters.

MANI SHANKAR AIYAR (2007, Extracts)

 To be a Doon School boy is privilege enough, but to be invited to deliver the Founder’s Day Address—and that too on the Golden Jubilee of one’s Class, is surely indulgence in extremis. My grateful thanks to the Governor and the Board, and to the Headmaster for this rare honour.


A few years ago, a Doon School Old Boy, much more distinguished than I can ever hope to be, stood at this podium and explained why he had had such a miserable time at school. I think all of us would concede that five years here is not:

‘Roses, roses all the way/With myrtle mixed in my path like mad.’

For one thing, adolescence is a terribly difficult time and to have to cope with it without the reassurance of a familiar home and friendly parents is challenge enough. Add the army of tyrannical school captains, house captains. prefects and monitors, in descending order of tyranny, and one begins to sympathize with those burdened by cowering loneliness. With that, mix the agony of those like me who were hopeless at sports, in a stifling atmosphere where brawn was certainly celebrated over brain, and the poison of remembrance starts rising in one’s throat. And overlaying it all, the oppressive absence of girls just when all kinds of unknown hormones have started sloshing around one’s system—and one knows why any true recollection of one’s days at Doon cannot be those of Elysium remembered.

Then ask oneself how it is that if there was so much unhappiness, oppression, injustice and deprivation through those critical formative years, what is it that brings back so many of us to this Golden Jubilee celebration of our Class of ’57? Why do we talk so fondly of the years we spent in these sylvan surroundings—so ‘pleasing to the eye and soothing to the mind’ as I remember Dr Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan, later President of India, saying when he was Chief Guest at our Founder’s Day 1955’ and I a wide-eyed 14 year old ‘C’ former? What makes us feel so special?

To return to my initial question: what is it that makes so many of us—I would say almost all of us—agree that we had a rotten time here, which has left us with so many fond memories and such sweet nostalgia that we have returned a la recherche d’un temps perdu—which, for those of you who did not attend Mrs Sahi’s French classes, means ‘In search of a time gone by’?

I daresay there are as many individual reasons for this as there are Old Boys. But, distilling the essence, I would hazard the suggestion that three or four causes are common to all of us.

First, the teachers. They were, in a word, the most outstanding assemblage of teachers ever gathered together in one place. This is the occasion for us to pay tribute to all those Great Teachers of our Time who are no more with us. As also those other Great Teachers of our Time who are happily still with us—like the ‘paanwala gang’, chaired by Dr S.D. Singh for the largest number of paans consumed in a single lifetime! When I contrast this Galaxy of Greats with schools that I know where the Principal comes drunk to assembly, the Headmaster turns out to be a serial molester, and the Housemaster a crook; one knows that what makes the Doon School the Doon School is, first and almost last, its Masters and Staff. Thank you all for the great start in life you gave all of us.

The other great institution that has a left the mark of a lifetime on each one of us and rough-hewn the destinies which we have been later left to hone for ourselves is morning Assembly. If secularism is the hallmark of a Doon School education, its origins lie in the eclectic collection of non-denominational prayers and songs with which we started every working day, the thanks we were taught to give:

For hills to climb and hard work to do

For all skill of hand and eye


For music that lifts our hearts to heaven


And for the hand-grasp of a friend.

Remember? And can you hear over the waves of time the deep and sonorous baritone of Headmaster John Arthur King Martyn subtly imbuing us with all that is of the best and the brightest in our tradition and the heritage of humankind? More, I think, than anything we were taught from text-books, it was the profound and eclectic lessons learned through our pores, as it were, in assembly that have lasted longest with us, permeating our thoughts and action with those instinctive values which make us the good and responsible citizens we have, by and large, turned out to be.

Third, I believe, is the lessons we were taught in the dignity of labour. We all came from extraordinarily privileged families. Few of us were required to look after even ourselves at home. It was an era of servants by the dozen and pampering for the asking. The school could easily have degenerated into a haven for neo-feudals, as so many sister institutions in India and Pakistan have indeed become. I think it was making our own beds, polishing our own shoes, compulsory labour – ‘quota work’ as we then called it—and Tunwala that saved our souls. That—and fending for ourselves in the midst of mindless bullying, petty tyranny and the proud man’s contumely—that gave us the inner strength to face the world outside. It is a tough world outside—and the fact that it was even tougher at school made for a successful launch. I wish there were gentler ways of doing it, but I wouldn’t know any.

Fourth, a sense of community – a sense of community that is both exclusive and inclusive. The exclusion is the sense of superiority over all those who fall outside the walls of Chandbagh. It gives us Doscos our well-deserved notoriety for snobbery and conceit. It also gives us our inestimable self-confidence, the belief, not unjustified, that the world is ours for the taking. The inclusivity comes from there being perfect equality of treatment and opportunity within these sacred walls. For there were among us, and I daresay still are, ridiculously rich scions of princely families and fattened calves of industrial magnates, children of the powerful, the famous and the merely vainglorious. But because we all received the same pocket-money and had to do for ourselves the same menial tasks and competed with each other on a level playing-field with no favourites and no nepotism, it bred in us, I think, a belief in equality and equity, of justice and fair-play, the enduring conviction that:

‘It matters not who won or lost


But how you played the game’


It also inured most of us from the temptations of corruption. If success has come to so many Doon School boys—and I think we can claim over the last 72 years to have produced more men (and a few women) of distinction in a wider variety of fields of human endeavour per capita than any other school in the country – I think that has great deal to do with the rigours of our adolescence and the timeless and universal value system pumped into our blood stream by the best masters the country and our generation had to offer.


Can any one of us forget Holdy’s injunction to cultivate the ‘bold, inquisitive Greek spirit’ or his astonishment at finding our class, one month before our Senior Cambridge exams, failing to react to his remark: ‘Let the punishment fit the crime/The punishment fit the crime.’ On learning that none of us had heard the verse, he put aside all our books and over the next three days sang for us in his cracked voice the whole of Gilbert and Sullivan’s opera, The Mikado!


I have but one recommendation to make as the school veers towards its Platinum Jubilee. When I was here, girls were a rumour. The cruelest irony was that Welham Girls started up only in my last term—and I had to wait till the 4×400 girls relay on this Main Field to discover what made them so deliciously different from us. When I eventually founded my family, I had three girls—all of whom went to a co-educational school, inferior in every respect to The Doon School except in that they learned about the opposite sex when they needed to. Our deprivation distorted all of us. I am glad none of my daughters is slated to marry a Doon School boy. For all the Doscos wives here would agree that we are totally mixed up inside! So, my final plea to you is: make the school co-educational. When my eldest daughter was born, I wrote to Headmaster Marytn and asked him ‘whether I might expect Doon to become co-ed by the time she reaches the age of eleven.’ He replied to say he hoped it would. Now, three long decades later, the school still remains a unisexual, Victorian relic. I hope the Board of Governors will summon up the courage to make the Great Change by the Platinum Jubilee!


I emerged from school a red-hot Marxist. Others had a more intelligent reaction. I have since moderated my views. So, I am sure, have my classmates. But on one point we are all agreed: it was great to have been here, a miracle to have survived, and a trauma we recall with affection and gratitude.


 Thank you, School. And thank you to all who made this possible.


Jai Hind!