The School I graduated TWICE from, II

As the year 1946 started to close, tensions and disappointments opened up amongst the people of India leading to communal riots in the new year(1947). We were all together in our class of nineth, Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims (Staff as well as students) We used to stand together in the 'prayer' before the classes in the school compound "Tabay hay tairay maula sari khudai tairee" was one and sometimes Allama Iqbal's well-known ones. I remember Herbans Lal passing out as he came late one day, sweating in the humid warm day, to stand in the lines of prayer. Everybody was concerned (had an epileptic attack, poor fellow and that was my first experience witnessing an ep. attack).
News reached late in the villages but a sense of fear had started to appear everywhere. There was uncertainty and difficulties for the school and we had not yet had full quota of teachers for the high classes We were being taught Math by an able teacher, our regular teacher (MA in Math first class) eventually arrived (more detail later, see below) and new Head Master (a BA,BT) arrived and a science teacher. We had opted to learn science in English. (One could do that in Urdu but it was not popular at that time)

From here I will get into anecdotal narrations.
About RT. He was a kind mild-mannered man and a brilliant mathematician (he was 'second master' or asstt. head master also) but was known to have "declared that he was the Imam Mahdy, expected". Unfortunately sometimes it resulted in 'practical' jokes about him, that I would not like to relate to you (He was actually a Schizohrenic) but they were hillarious at that time. Consider this now,for example, when I was in my fourth year of Med. College I read a news one day about him that he had applied for a passport to go to England 'to get married to Princess Margret' and the reason given was as follows, " I have written 340 letters to her and she has not replied to a single one. So she is quiet and "al-khamoshi neem-raza" indicates she is half willing", so all I have to do is to get there and......." When I was in Peshawar (as a senior lecturer in Physiology in Khyber medical College) I found out he was in the hospital with the diagnosis of Schizophrenia (a thought disorder). So I dont like to make fun him any more. Inspite of that he was a good and respectable teacher.
The Partition Experience
The riots themselves did not create much disturbance in the school and the non-Muslims gradually disappeared from the classes by the end of 1947 (no incidence of violence in school). but as the Kashmir fighting broke out the school suffered a lot. Initially I remember the sounds of Indian airforce jets pounding bombs, and straffing and such on my way home from the school. Then the Pakistan Army started posting near the border (Kashmir border is only 3 miles from my village) because Indian jets frequently used machine gun fire INSIDE the Pakistan Territory. (I have personal experience of 'dive-bomber' sounds that i learnt later in my neurology teachings) I saw 'anti-aircraft' Guns being fixed around my village and other villages along the border. Then I saw the jets running away as our guns fired, shooting up high and running away, stopping gunfire altogether. Will write other experiences separately.
Coming back to school's misfortunes. After the Kashmir struggle started, groups of 'sarhadi mujahideen' started coming through our villages on their way to Kashmir and one day we found they had occupied our school rooms. We had to hold classes in the fields (winter, I remember). We were using our own 'boris' to sit on anyway. Mujahideen had 'fun' in the rooms, and to keep themselves warm even took liberty at the use of our windows and doors. Unfortunately for my classroom's widows that were locked because they contained the ONLY few items of science Lab such as flasks, test-tubes, other tubings, chemicals, prisms etc. When they vacated after some weeks or months, I saw flasks having been used for Hukka (flask and a keef and tubings, wow) smoking, was funny. But we were left with nothing for science experiments.
Many boys (who carried their 'basta' in the army bags) lost heir bags, for Mujahideen needed them (for ammunition) more than the boys needs. They were fond of 'practicing' use of rifles they carried (saw the cowboy type scenes in person) but some of them were educated pathans also (see more about them in my separate blog, especially their 'heroic' achievements).
No further addition to our high school teachers and the time for our final Matriculation exam neared while we had performed no practicals at all in science. Believe it or not, we went to Gujrat in a school lived there three days performing ALL the science experiments of high school. This was arranged by our science teacher. Wow, that was quite an experience, a concentrated dose of experiments of science. English was taught by our Head master, a well-built older and kind teacher who introduced us to paragraph writing, essay writing and 'stuff like that' though many village boys still needed a lot more instruction in Grammer. Can you imagine the perplexing and confusing alterations that the verb in English undergoes for becoming interrogative or prohibitory tense and so on? Just think about it for a moment a Punjabi villager 'jat' boy learning that who was going to go back to ploughing in the fields anyway.
Extra-curricular activities of school

We did develop a 'mehfil-e-adab' (maybe some other name, I dont remember exactly) and I started my first Urdu presentations there. No. I did not become an Urdu debator. Some 'bait-bazi' did take place but did not become very popular at that time. The only 'sports' we had was Volly-ball (a net and a ball is all the school could afford) and kabaddi/wrestling. The last I remember we had not yet developed a 'team' of our own in anything though we did play vollyball with other schools (?Daulat-nagar probably) While we were holding classes in the fields we had some 'racing athletics' experience. I thought I was a good runner of short distance but he bigger stouter teenage boys beat me completely. O! I was declared the best 'scout' in the school though I was phyically very poor that was because I was the only one who could 'read' hand signalling. Scout master was PT master, sports teacher, vollyball coach everything. We had, (before the Mujahideen came) written Urdu and English sentences and mottos etc. on the walls and the face of the school building. I remember making English letter templates myself and the insignia of school (I dont remember that now what was it and what were the words). Students had to write something on the 'blackboard' outside our senior classroom. We made lot of fun as somebody wrote one day "Dost aan bashad keh geerad dast-e-dost, der pareshani o hali o dermandgi" (instead of Pareshan-hali-o-dermandgi). A liberary was soon formed consisting of a few books (Of no great consequence) The high school was still in the making when I graduated.
We were 16 boys and 12 of us passed the matric exam, pretty good, hunh? That was the first graduating class of Kakrali high school in 1948, my second graduation from the same school. I wish we could have re-union next year. We did'nt in 1998 (Golden Jubilee) I dont know how many are still around and where. I know of one 'Khudadad' who became BA,BT, head master (died of brain tumor some years ago) and another one probably Mohammad Siddique who took MA in some subject.
Many boys had droppd out from high school (teenagers) when they heard about Pakistan Navy (One day a naval Petty officer came in white uniform (attractive youngman) to tell us, "Join the Navy and see the world") and army was already a popular reason for most 'drop-outs'.
My own 'general knowledge' was so poor, I did not know the difference between medical science and non-medical science at that time (Biology and specially Zoology was to become my favorite later.) However I caught up rapidly in the colleges in Lahore, but never won any academic medals or honors worth mentioning.
I must mention I appeared in interview before two remarkable personalities for admission into college, "Pitrus" in Govt. College (he was the principal at that time) and MD Taseer (Principal) in Islamia college (where I was admitted eventually) Railway road Lahore.

"Correctness of opinion goes along with changes of the times; it comes with them and it goes with them." LIVING ANDDYING WITH GRACE (Counsels of Hadzrat Ali)