SH-Issue 12: 960922

Hi Cathedralites,

Shocking Newsletter Contents

I received the rather shocking newsletter from 93er Vivek Sikri with the unprovoked attack by an individual on 94er Vikram Somaya.

I am glad that it ended with an apology but it would be interesting to know what provoked such an attack in the first place, especially as in all my life I have never ever encountered a Cathedralite who expressed himself as fiercely as this one.

Am I getting too old - or is that what the school system of today breeds. I remember 57er Kashinath Dandekar making a plea to tone down the language as we old-timers probably are not used to such strong verbal presentations.

Missing Persons

I wonder why Vivek has a few well-known missing persons on his list - and in this I particularly refer to the mother of Vikram Somaya, 64er Brinda, and her sister, 62er Ranjini, who I gather are both on the Internet.

Bombay Support

I do hope the Bombay support that 69er Rohet Tolani was proposing is soon in coming, as I have loads of requests for information about various aspects of the school which I am holding on to. It would be nice if Bombay would have its web site up with all the historical data for us to link to and also refer the enquirers to - such as the early history of the school, the relevance of various names, list of principals, words of the school song, etc. etc.

School Buses

In our days in the fifties we used to have BEST supplying the school bus service. A bus used to pick me up from my home on Cooperage Road at 7.45 and proceed down to Colaba Causeway and round behind the Taj and reach school at 8.20. the evening buses used to leave at 16.15 and reach me home by 16.45.

I can still remember many of the persons in my bus round. The monthly charge used to be Rs. 15 - which was a large sum of money those days as the standard bus fare from Regal to school by A4 was about 2 annas or later 12 paisa. I shifted to the public service when I reached the IXth Standard as there were so many things to do before and after school that I hardly could keep to the bus timings. saved a grand sum of Rs. 7.50 as a result which meant I could see a few more movies over the weekend (where the good seats cost 12 annas or 75 paisa). I do remember seeing "Rock Around the Clock" (Bill Hayley and the Comets).

Knowing the explosion of Bombay, I must imagine such a bus service would probably be an impossibility, considering the traffic jams that exist all over Bombay. It would be interesting to hear from some of you what sort of school bus service now exists or do all the students turn up now-a-days on their own flashy Kawasaki 500 cc mobikes!! Just wondering.

End of Reminder Messages

I am afraid that I will need you to subscribe separately to be able to continue to receive these reminders as the whole process seems to have got out of hand with my postings touching about 3000 every fortnight and the number of wrong addresses resulting in returns amounting to about 10% every time. My mailbox is just crammed with returned messages so it takes me a while to get to my normal mail. Most of the returns are people who have registered and then not informed me about change of address, etc.

Our main site has expanded at such a remarkable pace that I am getting fully tied down with getting these three webletters up every fortnight and also getting the mailing list out that it has really not left me much time for the investigative journalism for which my web pages were originally created.

Hence Cathedralites who want to get a reminder from me should send a SUBSCRIBE message to our email address as otherwise from the next issue you will not get any reminder.

Regards

Jacob Matthan
Savage House Captain 1959
Oulu, Finland
The Polar Bear Cathedralite from the Arctic Circle

SH-Issue 11: 960908

Hi Cathedralites,

This week is just a very short memo about how ridiculously small the world is.

A few days ago I received email from the mother of 94er Vikram Somaya, who is known to almost all of you as the maintainer of the Cathedral School email directory. I was a bit shocked when 64er Brinda Somaya (née Chinnappa) asked me whether I was brother of 62er Elizabeth. She went on to explain her connection.

Elizabeth, my younger sister, Cathedral School Girls School Blue House Captain in 1962 (I think) had been the classmate of the elder sister of Brinda Somaya, Ranjini Kalappa (née Chinnappa).

In addition, when my father, the late Kuriyan Matthan quit his post as Chief Engineer of BEST in the mid sixties and joined the Killick Nixon/Bombay Suburban Power Distribution group, the father of Rajini and Brinda, Mr. Chinnappa had asked his childhood friend from Bangalore, my father, to take charge as Engineering Manager of the fledgling Tata Consulting Engineers, a small consulting group which had been formed to engineer and maintain the power projects belonging to the Tata group.

Under the guidance of Mr. Chinnappa, Tata Consulting Engineers grew from a small Consultancy Company into the largest private Engineering Consulting company in India with offices in Bombay and Bangalore, the home town of both my dad and Mr. Chinnappa.

When my father fell ill in the early seventies and had to retire, Mr. Chinnappa asked him to organise and set up the offices of Tata Consulting Engineers in Bangalore and be the Resident Manager. So our family connection with the Chinnappa's went far deeper than just the fact that Ranjini and Elizabeth were in school together!

Although much junior to me, I can recall Ranjini and Brinda, both of whom, I understand, are now thriving architects and even architects to our school.

Elizabeth, by the way, finished from Cathedral, did her Masters in Nutrition (I think) from MS University in Baroda, married an Engineer who worked for UNICEF involved with setting up milk projects in developing countries, lived a colourful life in various parts of the world (has two dughters neither being Cathedralites) - Brazil, New York, Kampala at the time of Idi Amin, Nairobi, Dubai, etc., and now, as her husband has retired from the UN, is settled in Madras!

Those of you semi-dinosaur Cathedralites (me, like 57er Kashinath Dandekar, 57er / 59er Bhupinder Singh Anand and 59er Bala Parasuraman are the dinosaur group) who want to establish contact with Elizabeth, should get in touch with me for her address - sorry, no direct email contact at present.

More interesting anecdotes and personality assassinations in a fortnight,

Your Cathedralite friend,

Jacob Matthan
Savage House Captain 1959
Oulu, Finland