What Time is It?!

Have you ever tried to cross over from the office to the senior wing during the break? I’m talking about the assembly area. At that hour it is quite literally swarming with the Class Ones whose ‘safe area’ it is. They run wild without a care in the world, under the watchful eyes of the staff on duty and the equally scouring vigil of the eagles overhead!

But, if by mistake, one should try to make one’s way across this space instead of taking the less-trafficked corridor route, one quickly comes to experience what a magnet undergoes when it is set in the midst of a bunch of iron filings! As if by magic, one finds oneself surrounded by a sea of little faces, wishing one a cheerful good-morning and following up the greeting with a bow whose distinguished grace would put an Elizabethan courtier to shame, or else bending over in the age old gesture of respect that has characterized a student’s respect for his teacher in our ancient country – the ‘pranam’ from a ‘shishya’ to his ‘guru’.

Many a person who has witnessed this, has expressed a measure of surprise. The reactions all coalesce to one common pre-conception - ‘I thought St John’s was a westernized school’.

In an age when globalization is fast bludgeoning traditions and so called ‘archaic cultures’ into summary extinction, I find it so refreshing to see such a truly gracious expression of love and respect flourishing in our school. The fact that our boys have no qualms about displaying their affection through this old-world gesture, no matter where they come across one of their ‘gurus’, speaks of a timelessness and a continuity that are the hallmarks of a great institution – one that has not lost its roots but has managed to strike a graceful balance between the old ways and the new.

We need to teach our children to respect the culture of their own land. To blindly follow the west is to superimpose an alien construct upon a grand old edifice. To take the best of both worlds, however, is an axiomatic wisdom in itself and one that we would be wise to adhere to. For here, in St John’s, we have seen the efficacy of adopting the new, only after examining its relevance, and of retaining the sanctity of the old, to ensure an unshakeable foundation built on the concrete of attitudinal modern thought and the mortar of ancient humility. Our children are living proof of how well this strategy has worked!