A tribute to each and every one of you

I do receive many emails from all over the world every day.

Today was a special day as I received an email from the current President of our alumni, Viral Doshi. In a way it is special, no, not to me, but to each of you who have contributed to the enormous success of this web page / blog over the last 14 years.

Yes, it is just under 14 years since I started the Seventh Heaven Web page, thanks to a then very young Cathedralite alumni, Vikram Somaya, son of another adorable 64er Brinda Somaya (née Chinappa). At that time I did not know that Vikram was the son of Brinda, whose family have been friends of our family for many generations, from our Bangalore days together. And Brinda and her husband made a trip to Finland just last year. Annikki and I drove down 600 km from Oulu to spend a couple of hours with them.

Over these last 14 years, this web page / blog has had many ups and downs. At one point we even hit rock bottom because Annikki and I were forthright in our views about happenings in this world.

That down had nothing to do with our school, but it came to a point where I thought I would have to say goodbye to keeping any of our web pages of alive.

However, we survived that because of the perseverance that was imbibed in me by my alma mater. The real fruits of our efforts were seen in the 2009 50th Year Reunion of the Class of 59, which was a tremendous success.

I can see the 64ers, headed by Rajiv Ved, Rustom Dadabhoy and Deepak Deshpande, driving their class team in almost the same direction. They are galloping along to overtake the Mother of All Reunions. Let us see what they come up with!

I do wish them all success as they have started their efforts 6 years ahead of D-Day! As they say "Rome was not built in a day!"

Our School by 59er Hasnain Chinwala

Let us get us back to this email I received:

Dear Jacob:

We are happily, reaching the Gunnery years in the Cathedral Book Project, and there is of course, no better person than you to assist us at this stage.

You have contributed immensely to the sense of community, identity and history of the Cathedral School through 7th heaven and your blog.

It was indeed a pleasure meeting you at your reunion, which I must say was very spirited and informative. Events like this are an impetus to do more and more for the school we are so privileged to be part of.

Jacob, we wonder if you might help us in two ways:

1. We request your kind permission, to use your website and blog as source material for the book. We will of course give a hefty acknowledgement in 'Acknowledgements'.

2. Also, we would like to write about the FACT OF THIS SUSTAINED EFFORT TO MAINTAIN A WEBSITE, which knits together a community of "Cathedral believers" and students. So we would like to chat with you about that. We were possibly the first Indian school to have an unofficial alumni website, ( a tribute to you) long before the official one, or indeed the school website was launched.

3. We would like to speak to you about your reminiscences. How do you suggest we go about this? a)Phone? b)email questionnaire? c) would you like to just write out your recollections in a "stream of consciousness" style that we could draw on? For the last we could send you some nudging questions. And also if you would have any priceless photographs of the 40s or 50s that you would feel will add value to the book...teachers, school building, boxing in action, school social etc. it would be marvellous.

Look forward to hearing from you, Jacob, and for your collaboration on this project

Warm regards

Mridula & Viral

I hope my reply was appropriate.

Dear Mridula & Viral,

Do you really have to ask this?

For me, it is taken for granted!

What I have done is for my dear friends. What I have done is for a school which allowed me to enjoy a second life.

Is there anything more I can do, within my very limited capabilities, for the school. That is what I ask myself, daily!

And what a reunion we 59ers had!!!

Annikki and I have launched a new project which should result in a Coffee Table Book by the time of the 150th Year reunion. I have just announced it today on my blog and things are rolling in faster than I thought. There are prizes to be won!!!

I suffer from mild form of dementia, so a telephonic contact would result in chaos. Email is the best and that way I can link several information sources from around the world who are the many many real people quietly behind the Seventh Heaven Blog. 49ers Yezad Kapadia and Naval and Armaity Patel, William Shiri, 54ers Gracie Hayeem & Sadhana Shah, 56er H. S. Uberoi, 57er Tony Jaitly, 59er Hasnain Chinwala, 64ers Deepak Deshpande, Rajiv Ved and Rustom Dadabhoy, and many more.

I have to also thank many wonderful friends as Vikram Somaya, Rohit Tolani, (most of whom I have never met) and one computer whizz kid whose name I cannot even remember, when Rohit was planning the original alumni web site.

I was prepared to hand over Seventh Heaven then, but sadly or maybe for the best, it did not happen!

I will send you the final version of the 59ers Coffee Table Book when it is off the press shortly. The one I gave you was the prepublication version.

Regards

Jacob

Remember, your submission of your "Most Poignant Moment" associated with Cathedral School will reach every Cathedralite who takes part in celebrating the 150 years history of Our School. Get cracking to send those notes to Annikki or me - and win some fabulous prizes. (Annikki is already on the hunt for some really great stuff.)

And thank you Mridula & Viral for that very lovely email.