I passed out of St Kabir in the year 2007. I had the responsibility of Head Boy for the batch, as well as the routine sports and education. The year 2006-07 was a long year with the strenuous ICSE books and lots of responsibility as the seniormost batch of the school. At the end of it, we all performed quite well in the Board examinations and came out with flying colours. I was able to top the Tricity with 97.1% in all 7 subjects, with a big support from the school teachers and management.
I would like to highlight the hard-work that the teachers put in, throughout the year – more than that put in by the students. It was because they set my base stable, that i was able to perform so well.
Eleven years have gone by since I passed out of St Kabir and in those number of years, I have been a student of a secondary school of Chandigarh in class 11-12, a student of a tier 1 engineering college from Kanpur and a working professional in 3 different startups/corporates. In all those 11 years – I have perennially been thankful and always felt blessed that I did my primary education from St Kabir. The teachers were impeccable in imparting the education of their respective subjects – laying such a strong foundation for me which i have realized time and again in the years post high school. When I was in school, i never realized that the standard of education and co-curriculars in the school was so high, which immensely benefitted me once i was out in the open world. To quote a few instances, whenever the politician, Shashi Tharoor, used to speak in his typical way – it was rarely Greek for me for my English Education was top class. Whenever i had to file my income tax returns, i never faced any issue because the Maths Education was superb in 9th and 10th.
Even the 7th subject that I studied in school – Environmental Science, has been a blessing in disguise when I realised that most of the people out there have no clue about the environment around them and it’s history. The science subjects were taught in so much detail and with such precision that I was able to continue my 11th and 12th in science from where I left in class 10. The depth of History-Civics and Geography taught has always helped me feel at par with the students who have done a bachelors or a master in fields related to those subjects.
St Kabir is instrumental in shaping me as a sportsperson as well as a quizzed and debater (I rarely debated while in school but the culture was such that I learnt immensely). Only because of the number of sports that we were allowed to play while in St Kabir, was I able to wisely choose a sport in college – most others had no clue about the same.
I’ll summarise with the doha of Sant Kabir and the words of my principal, Mr JP Singh when he appointed me as the Head Boy.
“Kal karei so aaj kal, aaj karei so ab. Pal mein pralaya hoyegi, bahuri karoge kab.”
Mr Singh told me – “You are being made the Head Boy on merit, a position of responsibility. Remember this always – when you work hard and get in a position of responsibility on merit, ensure that you exercise the powers in that position wisely, but make sure, you exercise them.”
SKPS My Second Home
St Kabir is an institute that I can proudly call my second home. In all the years I have stayed in Chandigarh, for all practical purposes I was either at home or St Kabir. I would either study at home or in school. I would even play at home and also in school. The recess that we used to have for beginning 13 years of my lifetime – always makes me feel nostalgic whenever I eat some snacks around 11 am, even today. Even today when I got a Saturday off, I never spend it sitting at home. I am always outside, exploring or playing some sport, because while in St Kabir, we used to have the double Games period on Saturday most of the time. On some days, I used to get a scolding from my parents, but I used to look out for the next day – to be in school with friends and among the wise teachers, who would scold but for the right reasons – and I mostly made sure that I never made a mistake – because that is what was taught in my second home.
Even today, when I go back to my hometown, I make sure that I visit my second home too and try to contribute in any way possible, the way I do in my own home. I can proudly call St Kabir my second home because of the 13 years of bond and memories in my development phase as a person, that will always be there in my heart and mind.
