S.I.W.S. School - Grand Alumni Meet

  An Event to Remember

“Immediately after obtaining my B.Sc & B.Ed degrees, at the age of 22 , I applied for a job of a teacher in S.I.E.S. School. I was rejected because of my young age.  However,  thanks to Krishnamurthy Sir, who hails from my village, I got a job in S.I.W.S School as Physics Teacher without even an interview. After 35 years of continuous  service,  which had its ups & downs, I retired as the Headmaster of S.I.W.S School in 1991”        Shri A.S.Varadarajan,  Varadarajan Sir to thousands of Welfarites, was in his elements recalling his long association with the School. 

He was the Chief Guest at the “ Grand Alumni Meet “ of the recently started S.I.W.S. School Alumni Association held on 17^th December,2017 in Mumbai. Blessed with a phenomenal memory for names & dates  he was regaling the audience  consisting of over 200 ex- welfarites from all over the country and abroad,  with his  speech full of interesting anecdotes and incidents. The spontaneous standing ovation he got at the end of his talk was proof enough that the audience enjoyed every minute of his talk.

The Meet started with a sumptuous breakfast of Rava Kesari,  Upma, Bonda & Coffee on the terrace of the Mysore Association Building in Kings Circle, Mumbai . The auditorium of the  Association  was the venue of the Meet. Registered members started trickling in from 8.45 am. Lot of back slapping, hand shaking and hugging marked the occasion where batch mates were meeting after many years. You could feel  the nostalgia in the air!

The formal meeting, as per tradition started with an invocation song followed by the lighting of the `Kuthuvilakku` by the dignitaries occupying the head table. Welcoming the audience, the dynamic Chairman of the newly formed Alumni Association, Shri V.Sundaresan briefly outlined the background to the formation of the association and its objectives. This was followed by a brilliant talk by Dr.V.Rangaraj, the Chairman of S.I.W.S. Trust which manages the school who in his well prepared speech talked about his dreams for the school & College.

It was then the turn of the Chief  guest to mesmerize his  captive audience. Though he was allotted only 10 minutes, he spoke for more than 30 minutes.  The audience wanted more, but  the organising Team was tense as they had a  tightly planned schedule  to be covered before 1pm when the hall had to be vacated, making room for the next event scheduled at 2pm. 

Next item  on the agenda was the honouring of old school teachers with a special memento and a shawl  viz. Varadrajan sir, Alamelu teacher, Leelamma John, Nancy D’souza, Pavai Parvathy teacher, Ambujam teacher, Prema Hattangadi.  While every teacher received enthusiastic applause from the audience, maximum noise was reserved for Mrs. Nancy D’souza, commended as the most popular teacher of her time by the Chief Guest.

The much awaited ceremony to confer the Distinguished Alumni Award to five nominees chosen from the 1950 to 1969 batches witnessed the Recipients going up the stage to receive the citation and a medallion from the Chief Guest. You could see the happy faces of the recipients when their citations were being read out by the MC,  Dr. Usha Iyer. The first one to be honoured was N.Krishnamurthy (1958 batch), an Air force Veteran who had seen action  in the two  wars with Pakistan  in 1965 and 1971.  In his student  days  Krishnamurthy was also a National Table Tennis Champion. The next recipient was R.V.Rajan,  also from the 1958 batch, who was recognized as a veteran Adman and Rural Marketing specialist apart from being an active social worker through several voluntary organisations he was associated with. T.N. Sundar  from the 1959 batch  received the Award for scaling great heights in life without any academic qualifications.  Dr.V.Rangaraj  ( 1961 batch)  was recognized for his significant contribution to Indo- US trade relations and long association with the American Embassy.  S.Ramanujam ( 1965 batch) popularly known as `Jam` among friends was chosen for his brilliant academic record and for his significant contribution to the social & spiritual activities in Mumbai. The two minutes acceptance speech, spoken from the heart,  by each of the recipients reflected their joy in receiving the Award from the association.

The truncated bollywood entertainment programme that followed the Award ceremony  hosted by Laxmi Sharma(1992) started with a  recorded song on the theme of the association specially scripted and composed by R.Jayaraman Iyer (1964 batch) who also briefly explained the concept behind the song.  Alumni members  Venkatesh, Sunder, Geeta, Leela, Shobana, Brinda, Lata, Lakshmanan and Gopu accompanied by two professionals  Vipul on keyboards and Kalpesh on rhythm along with alumni members R.S Mani on accordian, Suresh Iyer on guitar and Gopu on dholak   belted  out famous film songs of yester years much to the delight of the audience, many of whom  could be seen singing along with the main singers or tapping their feet. Unfortunately because of shortage of time each singer was allowed to sing only one stanza.

The shortage of time and the urgent need to hand over the stage back to the management of the auditorium resulted in the organising team cancelling the   meticulously planned batch wise Group photo session. The batch wise seating arrangement also saw some alumni finding themselves to be the sole attendees from their batch- they had come eagerly looking forward to  meet some long lost class mates only to feel disappointed. Hope the next event will see greater participation from every batch.

The curtain call was given by the hard working Secretary of the Association, the ever popular & talented Gopu Raman (1971 batch) who not only gave a spirited vote of thanks but also sang a song as a part of the entertainment programme.

The Master of ceremonies was Dr. Usha Iyer  the Principal of S.I.W.S College who tried her best to speed up the proceedings in her inimitable style. Thanks to K.N. Lakshmanan ( 1968 batch) every guest received a gift pack consisting of a collection of nail polishes produced by his company `Clarion Cosmetics`.

On the whole it was a well organised event with lessons learnt for future programmes of the Association.