I D Singh - The person who left impact on us !! - Part 1

Whenever I think about a headmaster or the Principal of a school of my kids or we see a principal in movies, talking about teachers... its quite natural that I do remember our very own headmaster Mr. I D Singh of Tantia High School. The baton of the school was transferred from Mr. H S Sharma Ji to Mr. I D Singh during late 70s (correction required). We all heard that , Mr. H S Sharma was very popular in non Bengali schools of Kolkata. He was a personality with a good speaking ability, an idol of discipline and one of the best education guide. When he retired, it was a tough decision to transfer the burden to a person who could run the show and get fit in to the shoes of Mr. Sharma. But, what we heard and experienced, I D Singh was proved to be a person of different league and he created his own shoe and his retirement has filled up a vacuum which could never be filled up and till now the school is suffering. Forget about post I D Singh era, we may discuss some other time, but currently I am motivated to write something about our great principal. I dont know his current status but I am using past tense to glorify him :

• Full name of I D Singh is "Indra Dev Singh" but how could he be an exception ... school boys gave him another name ...Idli Dosa Sambar... but nobody dared to call him by this name.
• We heard that he was an ex serviceman and had a military background. A tall and handsome man. Always used to be the first person to arrive at school and the last person to leave the school. But there were great students like Sanjay Chamaria and Prakash Das of section C who sometimes used to reach school prior to ID Singh. Those students had different objectives to arrive school at first. Will discuss later...
• I D Singh never came to school in chappals. He was the teacher with least absence on account of bad health or any other reasons. His best outfit was cream Safari and it suited him most.His shoes were always polished. 
• During H S Sharma ji's reign, he used to teach History but later on he confided himself to Hindi Sahitya Ka Itihas. Our senior boys used to be his students. From class V to X , I never saw him taking any class or setting any paper for exams. He was a full time headmaster and left teaching for his last 10 to 15 years of service. 
• He was a voracious reader and a regular subscriber of Dharmyug. He used to sit in the second floor and his entire office was visible from staircases. Either he used to read a book , magazine , talking to teachers, guardians or used to prepare for a lecture. 
• I D Singh was a great orator. Monday morning was fixed for him to speak in the assembly hall after the prayer. His speech was always long and I could never understand the inner meaning of his lecutres. Only our teachers could understand the gravity but those were also least interested to listen but they were forced to be present in the hall and listen to Headmaster. Although I could not understand the meaning of his speeches in Hindi but yes... there was a feel that our principal was a great speaker. He used to speak on current issues like "Kaveri Jal Vivad" , " Kashmir Conflict" , " Saddam Hossain" , "Gulf War -1 " , some great noble persons, Disciplines..etc etc. etc. 
• I was one of the team members of the morning prayer team. Only we could see, that our Headmaster also used to sing all the prayers with us with no exception. His lips always used to sing " War De Vinavadini", "Watan ki Raah me" , "Himadri Tung Shring Se" , "Saare Jahan Se Acha" , "Chisti ne jis Jami ko" and on Saturday .... our National Anthem. Prior to these poems we used to chant 7 Sanskrit Slokas .... and those were also sung by I D Singh. May be some ex students do not believe.. but it was an established fact.My fellow team members are witness.

• Our school was Hindi medium but the rules, regulations, discipline were not lesser than a convent school. Every year school used to visit a hill station or somewhere else. It was the period of I D Singh during which the school visited Kashmir. He took school's students and teachers to the residence of the then chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir , Dr. Farooq Abdullah. We saw the picture in annual magazine "UDAY". In that picture, Rajeev Khandelwal was also visible ... hope he remembers. I would be glad if Rajeev can bring such picture. 
• He used to start his speech by saying "Pyare Bachoon" ... he always believed on his students like his family members. He knew the internal abilities of his children. His most loved students, what I saw, were Ram Gopal Verma ( our Head Boy of 1986) , Rama Kant Holani, Rabindra Agarwal, Pawan Bhatia, Vinod Singh Rathore, Vineet and Vikash Khaitan, Manish Didwania, etc etc. 
• His favourite teachers were S K Mishra, D N Jha, Y Singh, P Tripathi, K Singh, B Pandey , N N Mishra, K P Mishra. We could see :) nobody liked him.. I D Singh could play with anybody at any point of time. He could burst out at any student or any teacher. He was a shrewd leader and a perfectionist, never compromising character but most caring person in Tantia. I remember sometimes water supply could be suspended by corporation due to repairing of pipes or any other reasons, But it was the respect of I D Singh .. our senior boys used to bring drums and buckets of water from nearby buildings like 3 No. or street tube wells. All senior boys used to bring water for junior students and we used to drink from Jugs without touching lips. I think most of my friends could have forgotten such stories. 

I D Singh's story cannot be finished in one page... I shall write the blog in parts... Enjoy this one , Refresh your memory , Do remember your Principal ..... till next blog page..

Mr. J K Singh

Full name of J K Singh was "Jhar Khande Singh".. it was a peculiar name. When I heard the name,  I could not believe that its his name as every body had given him a name "Jalebi Kachodi Singhara". Now I can correlate "Jharkhand" with his name

When I came to Secondary section i.e. class V , J K Singh was the class teacher of 6B. A man of very short height , always smiling, used to wear Dhoti Kurta and clean by heart. He used to teach English in that class. His core competence was History but he also used to teach English in junior classes. On one day, our 6C and 6A sat together in 6A (first floor) as most of our teachers went to Victoria ground for Annual School Sports preparation. He was teaching History and topic was "Pharaoh" i.e. King of Egypt ( Chapter was under "Misr Ki Sabhyata" ). For the first time in class 6 , somebody was teaching History in his own words. In our 6C , R S Rai used to teach history and he used to read the book as it is without value addition. Quite possible, R S Rai used to think that a lecture may not be useful for a class 6 boy. But on the contrary, in other section i.e. class 6A , a teacher was giving lecture on Egypt and Pharaohs. I still remember, he told that Pyramids were built up before Christ and Pharaos had different god. They were not Christians. It was his lecture which created a spirit in me to visit Egypt and see Pyramids. Finally , I managed to visit  Pyramids twice in the year of 2008 and spent time in Egypt. Tantia High School was very fortunate to have such a hard work teachers who used to teach students full syllabus. 

J K Singh , no doubt, was pure from heart. Sometimes, he used to beat student without fear but ultimately he loved students of the school. We always used to Pranaam him and senior students used to create mockery of him due to his short height, bald face but no students criticized him. I do not think he had any enemy.

I do remember that J K Singh delivered his speech on the next day of the death of General Zia Ul Haq of Pakistan. We all were not sad and even he was not sad.. but he was bound to express his condolence on the death of General Zia. But just after his expressing condolences, we students reacted with smile and laugh... he accepted that Indians are least concerned on the death but he had to speak on it for one minute as a gesture of gentleman. Then he continued on his speech on other topic.

http://tantiahighschool.blogspot.in/2015/09/whats-app-groups-of-tantia-high-school.html