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	The Quadrangle... as it looked in 1994
	Mrs. Irani's photo taken in 1994
	Picture of Sportsday 1966 A rare colour picture taken on Sportsday 1966. In the picture are Mrs Irani,Mr Ward (Bulldog -as he was called) and some pupils Hardy remembers: Kenneth D'cruz,Osie Domingo and Ved Kapoor (son of Loyola teacher Mrs Kapoor) who died tragically a few years later because of a brain tumor.
	This is really cool. Here are photos from a Loyola School Brochure published on 1959.
	A photo of the late Reynold D'Souza who was one of the favourite teachers at Loyola in the mid-sixties.
	A +2 class, probably from 1996-97... Photo taken by Hardy's brother Axel. Here is what Loyola Alumnus Aninda Kanti Sen (ISC, 1997) has to say about this picture: The girl closest to the camera, looking at the camera is Anjali Varma (12th Arts). The girl sitting next to her is Manleen Duggal (12th Commerce). The two guys behind them are Sarabjeet Singh (12th Commerce) and Kartikram Annamalai (12th Bio). On the far side, the girl in the second row is Kavita Neelakantan (12th Arts). The classroom is plus two room number 3 (or what used to be plus two room number 3, now it is a computer lab), the largest classroom in that row. My best guess is that the photo was taken during the recess. Abheek (ISC, 1997) adds that this is an Interact Club Meeting.
	The +2 Loyola Computer Lab, as it looked in 1994. Hith Hardy (in the center) are Bro. Amal Raj and Miss Sujata. Loyola has a new computing facility with much better computers. If any of you have a photo, let me know please.
	A photo of a tussle during Sports-Day 1966 (or was it 67???).
	Hardy the flagbearer: Sports day '66 (or '67) a must for those who thought that Hardy always sported the beard :) ... just kidding...
	Loyola Gate: 1994
	Hardy's article for the Golden Jubilee Souvenir

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Loyola Revisited and Remembered

In March 1994 my brother Axel and I returned to India for the first time after 27 years. From 1957 to 1967 we had spent our childhood and teenage years in Jamshedpur, so for Axel and me this " Passage to India " was a journey back in time in search of our roots. It turned out to be a kind of homecoming too, due to the heartwarming welcome we received from our old Indian friends in Jamshedpur, who had not forgotten us in all those years.

Significantly, the first place we revisited during our stay in Jamshedpur was neither our one-time family home , the Kaiser Bungalow at 18, Inner Circle Road, nor our old stamping grounds at Beldhi Club. The place that we were most eager to see again was Loyola, our old school, where we had spent the best part of our most impressionable and formative years.

On entering the school compound, the first thing we noticed rather regretfully was that the huge old tree next to the assembly yard was no longer there. We German "pale-faces" ( or "lal-bandas"- as some of our Indian classmates teasingly used to call us ) would have surely suffered from sun- or heatstrokes if that tree had not been there in our days. In almost reverent silence my brother and I walked on and passed through the carport into the heart of Loyola School : the somewhat awe-inspiring quadrangle with its only outwardly new centrepiece , the statue of Saint Ignatius. Quite apparently, the principles of St Ignatius and the Jesuit spirit have always been the core of the so special atmosphere at Loyola School. As I gazed around the quadrangle, trying to recall in which of the many classrooms I and my classmates had sweltered three decades ago, more and more memories of my seven school years at Loyola came back to my mind .

When I was first admitted to Standard III b on January 18th, 1960 I hardly knew any English. Mrs Irani, who was my first class teacher at Loyola, helped me to cope with this problem by explaining things to me in mime, by drawing pictures or by gesticulating wildly. That could result in funny misunderstandings sometimes, but on the whole, her method was very efficient, for it did not take long before I could follow all lessons in English without any problems. To my own and everybody else's surprise I even ranked first in class at the end of that year and was awarded my first honours card. Unfortunately, from then on I became a bit too ob- sessed with being "No 1" in class and obtaining honours cards. As I proceeded from "navy-blue" to "khaki-short" and "khaki-long", the competition among pupils became fiercer and fiercer and the hours in which I endlessly mugged facts and formulas for tests and exams grew longer and longer. For this I was regularly rewarded with Loyola's traditional tokens of scholastic success and as a result, my highly cherished collection of "white" and "blue" honour cards kept growing. So did my aspirations and my (American) dream of being "NO 1", of climbing the ladder of success and of becoming a real "big shot" one day.

My high-flying aspirations were fuelled even further, when I left Loyola in February 1967 and returned to Germany to study three more years for my Abitur-exam ( the German equivalent of English A-Levels). My teachers were so impressed by the extensive scope of factual knowledge I had acquired at Loyola that they immediately gave me a double-promotion. Unlike my German fellow-pupils, I had also been taught to study efficiently at Loyola with the help of the "SQ3R"-method propagated by Father Power. This method not only helped me to pass my Abitur-exam easily in 1969, ranking first in a class of circa fifty students, I also benefited from it later on, when I studied mathematics and English at Heidelberg University in the 1970s. The late 1960s and early 1970s were the years of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and a time of great social changes in Europe and America. "The times they are a'changing " sang Bob Dylan. But not at Loyola School, Jamshedpur, India. I remember that in 1966, some boys in my class (Standard X B) had ventured to let their hair grow just a little bit longer, furtively imitating the popular Beatle-mop hair-style. Then one day - it was the first day of our final exams - Father Hunt, who was Principal at that time, suddenly walked into class and told all conspicious Beatle-fans to "get out and have a haircut" before going on with their exams. I don't know how, but somehow they managed to get hold of a pair of scissors, to cut each other's hair and to return to the classroom with miraculously mutilated mops in less than fifteen minutes.

Moreover, all our desperate attempts to wear stylish, i.e., either tight or bell-bottomed khaki trousers were rigorously suppressed. Minor changes in the school uniform went unnoticed, however. Mr Reynold D'Souza, who was one of the most popular teachers in those days, created and promoted some crazy fads and fashions - whether intentionally or accidentally, I cannot say. For example, he became the unparalleled master of the eccentric belt-buckle. By imitating him and shifting our belt buckles a few inches left or right "off centre", we ostensibly tried to give our school uniforms an individual touch. Along with the Beatles, Mr Reynold D'Souza also served as our main role-model regarding Cuban-heeled shoes. I still keep wondering, whether he received any royalties from the shoemakers in Bistupur, who must have made a fortune in those days by attaching Cuban heels to the black shoes of Loyola students.

Frankly, I must admit that I had never really appreciated Loyola's rigid regulations regarding school uniforms and personal appearance until I was discriminated against at my new school in Germany because of my unfashionable hairstyle. My grandfather, with whom I was staying in Hamburg, was of Prussian descent and extremely conservative. He did not tolerate long hair and made me have a haircut every fortnight or so. I felt pretty wretched when my hippie classmates at school kept sneering at my "Prussian" hair style. I then realized that it had been easier to cope with Loyola's strict school rules than with the discriminatory peer-group pressure of some of my classmates in Hamburg. In fact, in German schools today, more and more students complain of being ridiculed and scoffed at by their fellow-students, if they cannot afford to buy certain costly and fashionable brand name clothes in order to flaunt them at school. This has only recently triggered a controversial public debate on the resurgent question whether school uniforms should be introduced at German state schools.

Seriously though, it must also be said that Mr D'Souza was not only a dedicated follower of fashion and a role-model regarding Cuban heels - he was also an extremely dedicated and talented teacher. His lessons were both, thought-provoking and gripping, and so were the lessons of many other teachers, like those of Mr Allencherry and Mr Arun Narasimham, for example. During my last year at Loyola, Father Roberts taught me to appreciate Shakespeare in a very amusing way and Father Joseph Lacey kindled my interest in modern American authors like Faulkner, Hemingway and J.D.Salinger. Moreover, the Jesuit Fathers were within easy reach all day and had time for you, whenever you had a burning question to be answered or a personal problem you wanted to discuss. They were always responsive and sympathetic , showing that they cared for you not only as a student but as as an individual. These were the things that had a much more enduring influence on me than Loyola's competitive rank and honours cards system, which had boosted my ego and my ambitions in my teenage years. Fortunately, however, I realized this early enough in my mid-twenties, when I gave up my "pipe-dreams" of becoming an industrial "big-shot" one day. I chose to become a teacher instead , if possible , a committed and dedicated teacher like the ones I had had at Loyola. In 1978, I obtained my master's degrees in mathematics and English at Heidelberg University and since then I have been teaching these subjects at a secondary grammar school in Mannheim.

So, when I revisited Loyola in 1994, I saw my old school not only from the nostalgic perspective of an "old boy" , but through the eyes of an experienced teacher and I must say that I was very impressed by what I saw. As far as academic standards are concerned , Loyola can surely compete with any secondary school in Germany and it is certainly superior to most comprehensive schools in Great Britain or public high schools in America. Moreover, Loyola is well-equipped with science laboratories, two libraries and a spacious computerroom and can thus prepare its students for the high-tech challenges of our modern world. As the long list of circa thirty school clubs shows, Loyola can offer its students a wider range of extra-curricular activities than many German schools can. But what seems to be even more important to me, is that Loyola has clearer educational objectives and places much greater emphasis on moral education, character formation and social values than most schools in Germany do. In Germany's secular and pluralistic society, the teachers themselves find it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to agree on a set of shared values and moral principles. On account of this, schools are increasingly focussing their attention on simply imparting knowledge to students and fostering their intellectual abilities. The sad fact is that at most German schools, students are no longer systematically imbued with a sense of social responsibility, moral standards and codes of ethical behaviour as they are at Loyola.

At the end of my visit to Loyola in 1994, I was personally able to witness some of the freshest fruits of Loyola's educational efforts, when Father Pius Fernandez gave me the opportunity to talk to a class of senior students. The boys and girls in this class were avid for information about the way India was depicted in the German media, which showed me how concerned they were about their country and its image abroad. I was astonished to see how well-informed they were about political and economic problems in Germany after reunification. They confronted me with quite a number of critical questions regarding neo-nationalist and xenophobic tendencies in Germany. However, their criticism was never unfair or vociferous. It was quite evident that they took great pains not to upset or offend me by any of their critical questions and comments. This remarkable exhibition of knowledge and intellectual alertness in a pleasant atmosphere of mutual respect convinced me that Loyola still was a "good tree that brings forth good fruit". Let's do all we can to keep this good tree alive and flourishing in the future. Jai Loyola.

Hartmut (Hardy) Feige