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Fiftieth Anniversary Celebrations of the Class of '63 The members of the British and the American contingents were welcomed with warmth, and a touch of curiosity; for most of us were meeting them for the first time since we left school fifty years ago. From England we had Deepak Dhawan and his wife Veronica and Daman Raj Singh. From the USA, Sumeet Pasricha, Harijivan Singh Malik, Vijay Singal and Harsh Vardhan with his wife Suman. While Deepak was able to spend only an evening with us, joining the class for the Delhi dinner, the rest of the foreign contingent traveled with us in the bus to school, including our man from Africa Ashok Chakravarti, enabling us to come to know them better. The highlights of the Delhi dinner were the class film produced by Ramji and the T- shirts designed by Goby with the class of '63 printed across the sleeve. And as each one left the dinner he was handed a class book which contained the profiles of 36 of the 44 classmates, describing what they had been up to during the last half century. The class film was a hit with Sumanjit providing a commentary on our antics when we were at school, and since then. For it even portrayed the class get- togethers during the last 15 years and our participation in some of those given by the classes whose members were our contemporaries. The loudest cheer was reserved for the photograph of Tiger at the Gates, eliciting a wolf whistle or two for the boys who played female roles. I have obtained perhaps the only extant copy of this play written by Jean Giraudoux in the 1930s and translated by Christopher Fry in the 1950s. Our class is planning to re- enact the play. An unexpected difficulty has emerged: the offer by at least three Old Boys to portray the part of the female lead Helen. Do we select one for beauty or talent? During the bus journey to school, many recalled the famous lines " Oh sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss". Since we were reciting poetry, Daman Raj declaimed: I strove with none for none were worth my strife, Nature I loved and next to Nature, Art. I warmed my hands before the fire of life, It sinks and I 'm ready to depart. Vijay Singal informed us that these lines were written by the eighteenth century poet Walter Savage Landour. Everyone was able to guess the poet when I think it was Sumeet who recited: i8l Rose Bowl January 2014

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