Lucknow Christian Inter College: My Last Two Years in School

Lucknow Christian Inter College, where I studied for two years

In an earlier post, I wrote about my school days in Lucknow – the first 12 years, two of which were spent at Mount Carmel, and the remaining 10 at St. Francis College. After completing class 10 from St. Francis, it was time for to move on, since I had opted to study commerce in class 11 and 12, and SFC did not have that option. The story continues here.

Along with a small group of my friends from SFC, all of whom had also chosen commerce, I got an admission into Lucknow Christian Inter College for my final two years in school. Established in 1862, Christian College is one of the oldest education institutions in Lucknow and is situated in Qaisar Bagh, a mere 3km from the historic Bada Imambara. Inside the sprawling old campus, there are multiple buildings that have apparently been constructed at different times over the last 100-125 years. It’s a grand old place that had a slight air of decay, a whiff of neglect, about it in the late-1980s. It may have been spruced up these days, though I wouldn’t know about it since I haven’t been inside the campus after 1990.

After St Francis College, Christian College was like a breath of fresh air for me and my bunch of friends. At SFC, everything was tightly regulated and students were expected to adhere to the school’s high expectations of discipline and proper behaviour. Students were always under their teachers’ strict supervision and were held accountable for any lapses in behaviour or academic performance. At Christian College, things were much more free-spirited; there simply wasn’t the same level of adult supervision and students were, to a large extent, free to do what they wanted. This meant you came to school if you wanted to, attended or skipped whatever classes you wanted, spent hours on the expansive playgrounds or inside the canteen if that’s what you fancied, and you could bunk classes to go watch a movie without fear of retribution. There was no one to reach out to your parents, no one to complain if you played truant and nobody was bothered if you made it clear that you weren’t interested in studying. The teachers at Christian College had a very clear stand – please come inside the class only if you are serious and if you actually want to study. If not, please don’t come. You don’t bother us, we won’t bother you.

Now, this wasn’t perhaps the ideal atmosphere for me and my friends – a bunch of teenagers who had just come out of a very strictly-administered school atmosphere and now, suddenly, had complete freedom to do what we wanted. Except for a very few notable exceptions, none of us were really all that keen on focusing on our studies. Few of us even knew why we had chosen commerce and hadn’t the faintest idea of what we intended to do in the future. Most of us (which included me) came to school on our bicycles, while a few had their own scooter or a motorcycle. None of us were 18 years old yet, but traffic laws and RTO regulations weren’t taken as seriously as they are now, hence some of us had use of motorized transport, and some even had fake licenses procured via local touts that used to be omnipresent outside the RTO office. On most days, we used to be in school by around 9 p.m., attend one or two classes, loiter around the campus for some time, step out of the campus for cups of chai at one of the many small, roadside chai-samosa stalls in the vicinity, again come back inside the campus and maybe attend another class, and then go home. Some days, usually on Friday or Saturday afternoons, we’d ride our bikes down to one of the movie theatres in Hazratganj to watch a film, often buying the cheapest tickets we could get our hands on. Bunking classes – something most of us had never, ever done at SFC – became commonplace for us at Christian College. Only two or three of us were serious about doing well in studies, while the rest of us only seemed to be there to have a good time, everything else be damned.

At home, my parents always exhorted me to take studies seriously – doing well in school and college is the only thing that would help me do well in life, they would tell me. And while I would always nod and agree to that, and promise to do my best, I never really did pay attention to my studies – something I deeply regret today. The first thing I did wrong was to choose to study commerce in classes 11 and 12, when I had no real interest in accounting, banking, finance and business studies etc. But then if I had chosen commerce anyway, I should have given it my best shot and worked hard at getting good grades, which is something I never did. And I have to admit that I have, over the years, paid a heavy price for that negligence and for having whiled away that precious time in idle pursuits.

Be that as it may, what really consumed me in those days was cars and motorcycles. Speed. Horsepower. Big, fast motorcycles – or superbikes, as they are called – which I saw on the pages of foreign magazines, second-hand copies of which I bought from various bookshops and magazine stalls in Hazratganj. I believe my monthly allowance (or ‘pocket money’ as it were) was Rs 50 and spending had to be carefully budgeted. The first thing in my list of priorities was car and motorcycle magazines – every month, I used to buy the two or three Indian automotive magazines that were available at that time, and then hunt for second-hand copies of foreign magazines that I sometimes found in Hazratganj. This left little or no money for anything else, but my parents knew about my obsessive reading habit and always gave me an extra Rs 20-30 every month, which really helped. Whenever my friends and I had some money to spare, we would ride down to this little joint called Rovers, near Hazratganj, which served some excelled chicken and mutton rolls, or ‘frankies.’ These were reasonably cheap and absolutely delicious, so we never missed an opportunity to go there when we could.

Seeing that I was totally obsessed with motorcycles, my father sometimes let me ride his scooter – he had a Bajaj Chetak in those days. When I was in class 12, I was even allowed to ride the scooter to Christian College, which was quite a treat. It was a different time, a different place, and safety awareness levels simply weren’t what they are now. And so, I’d ride my father’s scooter across the city, pretty much flat out, trying to squeeze every last drop of speed from its 150cc engine. I learned to pull wheelies on that scooter and learned to use the rear brake to drift it into corners, trying to ape the motorcycle grand prix racers whom I saw on television. Only one of my friends had a cable TV connection in his house and on Sundays, when they were showing 500cc motorcycle GP races on the telly, I used to ride my bicycle from my house to his – a round trip of 30km – just to watch those races. One of my friends had a Yamaha RX100, which he sometimes allowed me to ride. After my father’s Bajaj Chetak, which had about eight horsepower, the light, revvy, 11-horsepower RX100 was an absolute revelation – under hard acceleration, the sound that used to emanate from its Japanese two-stroke engine cast a spell upon me. I just couldn’t get enough motorcycle riding time; the more I rode, the more I wanted to ride. Always faster, and faster and faster.

Most of my other friends didn’t care too much about motorcycles, but the one other activity that was rather more popular was getting together to watch movies. By that time, most of us had VCRs and colour TVs at home, and video cassette rental shops were everywhere. Original cassettes of Hindi and English movies could sometimes be hard to find, but pirated movies were everywhere and from what I remember, video cassettes could be rented for something like Rs 10-15 per day. But it wasn’t regular movies that we were keen on watching. No, what we were really after was a chance to watch the X-rated stuff, which was also widely available. Every once in a while, somebody’s parents would go out of town for a day or two and this used to be the perfect opportunity for us. As soon as we got news that so-and-so’s parents were going out of town, plans were immediately made and the team swung into action. We’d get some food packed, rent at least two video cassettes that were specially selected by the connoisseurs of porn in our group, and our gang of 5-7 boys would land up at that one person’s house, whose parents were away. The VCR would be fired up, the cassettes would be played and the female anatomy – inaccessible to us in real life – would be lustily admired. The first couple of times, we watched in silence, utterly enthralled by what we saw on the screen. The silence would only be broken when one of us made a smartass comment that was particularly funny, and then all the others would break into nervous laughter. We’d wind up by evening, clear all remnants of our XXX-appreciation class, return the video cassettes to the lending library, and each person would go back home suitable enlightened. And entertained. But eventually we got tired of this and the video watching sessions ultimately petered out.

Another thing I remember from my days in Christian College – another of our guilty pleasures – was going to the small, Muslim-owned eateries in Golaganj, some of which served excellent (and very cheap!) kebab-paratha. I shudder to think of it now – who knows what mystery-meat they used, because of which the food was so cheap – but back then, we neither knew nor cared. On cold winter afternoons, my friends and I could easily polish off two large parathas each, with a heaping plateful of kebabs, followed by cups of chai. After these heavy meals, we would sometimes deign to amble into economics or business studies class, occupy the last benches in the classroom and daydream for the next 40 minutes. It was an idyllic existence and, while it surprises me now, I don’t remember ever actually discussing our studies or what career options we’d pursue after college. There was no Internet back then and we knew very little about anything – general awareness levels were quite poor; we were shockingly naïve and simply did not know how to look forward and plan for the future. We had our own small world – call it a bubble if you will – that we had built around us, where we lived happily. It was, I think, our Neverland.

Two years at Christian College went by in a blur. We had no computers, Internet or smartphones. For better or for worse, our friends' companionship – the camaraderie – was all we had, and our lives were richer for it. For most of us, I think those two years must have been some of the best years of our lives; we were young, carefree, high on life and living it up like there’d be no tomorrow. And just like that, one day, school was over. We sat for our Intermediate (class 12) exams and passed. Next was college. And most of us were headed to Canning College, Lucknow University. It seems nothing less than astonishing to me now, after all these years. But back then, most of us did not even pause to think for a minute, explore and evaluate our options. We simply did not question conventional wisdom, which at that time was if you’ve done your class 12^th with commerce, the next logical step would have to be graduation in commerce. So, a B.Com it would be, for me and most of my friends from Christian College.

The story continues here