Aitchison Myths: Scenes from inside
Asim Hayat
I am not extremely proud of my Aitchison Training. I was glad to get out of
that hypocritical institution. This is in particular true with reference to
the standards of education being conferred on its students specially at the
A level category.Mind you i can only discuss the era when i was actually
enrolled there, which was in the mid Eighties.
Its not an education one gets there, its more about a clique to see how many
contacts you can generate amongst your colleagues for future procurement of
favours, and get a name stamped in your CV that will get you places just
because one was fortunate (or unfortunate) enough to attend school there.
My dad had always the utmost desire to see me going to Aitchison ever since
i was born. He wanted to do everything he could to ensure that i got the
best education possible, for u see Aitchison is widely held to be in error
as the institution providing top most education in Pakistan.Unfortunately we
did not have the huge contacts in the high places to procure me an admission
let alone an interview in the junior classes.
Anyways after my O levels, my father insisted on going to Aitchison for
taking my A levels, as he thought the F.SC system was indeed a farce to get
into higher education anywhere. Aitchison has a policy to accept Candidates
from other schools for its Higher School Certificate classes based on
entrance exams and with no prerequisite sufarish. so here was my opportunity
to get in.
i was excited and intrigued by the old architecture, the grand cricket pitch
in the main grounds, the smell of the rose bushes, the water heater
radiators which never functioned well, the poor state of shoddy hostel
accommodation, the broken floors on the Kelly House, where there was sandy
ground exposed between the tiles, stiff starched pugharrs, the hard and fast
rules of being Seniors and Juniors, whereby the juniors would act as the
Seniors slaves, the amount of disgusting innuendo which was the decorum of
the boarding houses, with rival groups of feudal landlords wards getting a
quality education.
i was particularly enamoured by the continuous request by the principal for
massive donations starting at about 10,000 RS for the refurbishment of the
institution, except that it was compulsory donations and did not actually
make any difference on the crumbling red walls. or the state of the
furniture in the boarding houses, which included charpayees and old
ridiculous tables. There were rumours of widespread fraud emanating on the
grapevines but were cruelly quelled down by the Head Master, a veritable
paragon of virtue synonymous with integrity, tradition, and some other
adjectives i can not think of right now. Why? Because it is snowing outside,
the houses in front of my window, where i am writing from have started to
turn all white. Its always sad and beautiful to see it snow. The flakes
settle effortlessly on the top thatched roofs of the brightly coloured
houses. for the Norwegians try to brighten up their outlook on life in the
grim long winters by painting their houses bright pink, red, yellow, or
green on the outside, its almost a picasso of pastel colours all
intermingled in a snow blizzard. but then surely i digress.
The atmosphere of the school was stifling to say the least, huge pomp and
show outlets at School day, with the threat of running into supposedly the
gay community of the students in lavatories, who would salivate at the sight
of seeing one wrapped in towels after the shower, or lascivating on porno
video films which often made it to the boarding houses late at night after
parties for the private viewing pleasure of the seniors.
Some of the more memorable scenes i recall are from our chemistry class,
where the respectable teacher only had the utmost audacity to show up in
class once in a blue moon,(read it as about 10 times in a term lasting 3
months) or to see him and the other fellow disgustingly trying to chat up
and seen flirting with the only rotund, female teacher in the chemistry
department. Rumour had it that bottles of methanol bought for the purposes
of making organic chemistry experiments, had mysteriously vanished, later
showing up in the inebriated conversations of the said lecturer. Rumour also
was that the said teacher has a side school business to which he almost
invariably devoted much time and effort as it was his own..... but that is
not confirmed.
One thing more which drove me nuts was that these sons of the land, the
feudal lands, would all be so hyped up in trying to speak English with an
accent that it was funny almost hilarious to see them try and fail. We used
to have a house master known affectionately as Major sahib, a kind soul,
looking after us in the boarding houses, always willing to listen to ones
problems and finding solutions to help us out. He used to say "what good is
an Aitchson education if one can not speak English at least reasonably
well", so yes, almost 90 % of the people could speak English ranging from
broken to the queens English. But unfortunately i never attempted to
emulate them at this art, as i was confident and appreciative of the English
i had been taught by my English Mentor at Sadiq Public School, who
incidentally despised the need for accents, as a false sense of security to
mix in with a clique.
Threats and provocation were commonplace in the boarding house, one often
hearing words like "i am going to get the whole family tree of yours wiped
out, my father is that big a feudal landlord... your race shall never
survive if u mess with me again." Empty promises or real serious stuff... i
would go for the latter as i had seen them carrying real pistols and guns
for their protection (from what, i dont fathom), and showing off. Of course,
in the third dressing room at the back of each room used to be a vice den
after lights out. Drugs, smoking, drinking and what nots used to prevail
into the early hours of the morning.Often the remains of communal jerking
off would remain on the old cupboards.
People cooped up there had immense psychological problems as believing their
parents did not give a hoot about their welfare as they are too busy making
money or having a good time. One night i woke with a start, as there was a
commotion in my room. As i rubbed my eyes to see better, i saw this guy,
another son of a feudal landlord, walking naked in my room, waving his prick
around. That sort of thing was common.
Funniest incident i remember is about a friend, a Mr X, who had a pimple
covered face and was considered to be our shield against the devils on
account of his "looks". He was one year senior to me. In the mornings it was
compulsory for us to get up at the crack of dawn, and get dressed in
tracksuits to go and do what.? guess? give up, yes to stand at 05:30 in the
cold breeze, with nuts flapping, singing Pak Sar Zameen Ka Nizam, in front
of the flag hoisting ceremony. Hilarious is it not.? I mean which perverts
heart would be in the anthem at such an ungodly hour,. is beyond me. Of
course there was compulsory sports after that for one hour, in order to
achieve "mens sana incorpore sana" crap (a healthy body has a healthy mind,
or men in sauna should not look at other men in sauna, depending on which
school,of thought u belong to )... And of course a few of us had the amazing
idea of coming back, and sneaking discreetly into our beds. But then the
remaining 10% who were diligent enough to go jogging or playing hockey at
05:45 had the same idea, such that the Major sahib, started getting up
personally to check at 05:58 the various rooms quietly to see if somebody
had sneaked back. So one morning, he sneaked in to Mr X's room,and he saw
that X was in his bed, tucked under the covers, and the Major Sahib, went
like, faster than a speeding bullet, and raised the blanket off a very nude
Mr X. What made matters worse, was the shock to see Mr X and his hard on,
and the major had nightmare several nights running, and uncontrollable
bursts of laughter every morning at the breakfasts, much to the humiliation
of X.So we concluded that even the likes of Mr X can have sexual desires
too.wow!!!!!
Maths was my favourite subject, and thats one thing which was taught the
best of all by a wonderful teacher, the dear old Mr Bhatti, one of the
foremost authorities on A levels Maths teaching anywhere, i suppose in
Pakistan. Though nobody could score more than 70% on his hard, inscrutable,
and often indecipherable questions, majority of us still graduated with A's
in Maths.Mr Bhatti had a way with words, often distorting the surnames for
comical effect. The first test i took there, he flunked me. i remember that
day very well. he walked in looking like the shadow of death. i was not the
only one who had flunked his test, there was about 60 % of the class as my
companions in my hour of need. At times, Mr Bhatti looked really like a
pit-bull terrier (no offence Mr Bhatti, just an expression to show your
determined expression), and he was then and more some. He growled "Asim
Hayat, yeh kiya wahiyat exam diya hai tum ne". And often he would call be
wha hiyat through the next two years, and i would just grin sheepishly,
because he liked to pull various name stunts on all of us. There was another
friend of mine who contributes regularly here too, called Asim Mughal, and
you can imagine what names he must have Ben called, but all in clean good
fun.
Then there was Mr Nawaz, the Physics teacher. the man who would not let a
fly sit on his nose even while sleeping. He was a strict academician, a very
knowledgeable man, but a bit paranoid as well, that we all were out to
derogate and humiliate him in public, specially in his classes. He used to
ride a vespa, and he looked a sight on it in his black flowing robe, Count
Dracula in drag....haaha. He had a funny way of not even mentioning one word
in Urdu during the interminably long 45 minutes of captive audience he had.
This resulted in people looking for diversions and ways to kill the boredom.
often a time, people would start asking him silly questions to waste time so
that he would get side-tracked. for e.g, " Sir I dont understand how the
units of the Planck's constant are joules/sec and not Newton Metre/sec",
when in effect it means the same thing. of course that wasted at least 3
minutes in the ensuing discussion.... Often people would bring girlie
magazine, and say later that they were fantasising with Mr Nawaz. It was
abominably funny. He never let down his guard with us during the entire two
years he taught us. OH yes, one more peculiar habit he had was that he was
paranoid of having his picture taken with us.Perhaps he was afraid that we
would have the picture doctored so that we could blackmail him by showing
him to be leaning or making out with this blonde bombshell. He was not far
wrong in his paranoia, for we would have done something indeed similar.
Instead of showing it to his wife, we would have displayed it innocuously on
the main Notice Board for the others to conjecture images of him. Once when
we got the o levels results, and i had done well he asked me "Asim, why is
it that Bankers sons do much better at studies here than any other groups,
specially in Physics", and I said"well its because we dont have a million
jageers all waiting for our arrival at the end of these two years, and we
have to make ourselves somebody, to survive, as bankers are not paid that
well". Well at that time they were not paid that well!!!!
I did not mean to offend anyone from Aitchison, the above is merely a light
hearted look at the life inside the big gates, one sees on the Mall Road,
and more for the information of would be parents aspiring to send their
wards there to have a bright future. I might not be sending my son there
based on my experiences and the over rating the College has achieved due to
silence about what goes on inside the closed doors.
Regards
Asim