Moi and Mine

Sunday, February 17, 2008

Breeks Reunion - 50th Wrap up

Pictured: Geoff, Anne, Carol, Sharon, Kasai, Gul (son below) Shari, Joel, Teddy,
Manohar, Wendy, Darlene, Joy, Fay, Margo and Terry

Breeks Reunion 1957-2007 A few thoughts by Joy Chase

See 300 PHOTOS http://www.flickr.com/photos/joychase/sets/72157602391209968/

We met. We reunited. We climbed Dodabetta together again, and we were part of the milieu that is now Charing Cross. We re-visited Selbourne, Lushington Hall now Hebron School and the old Breeks buildings. We dispersed there, looking for forgotten spots and remembered places. We ate together, prayed, clustered with spouses or siblings and friends. We tried to catch up with each other and we confidently let the class of 1959 take the limelight. Margo wrote a poem about the reunion. See her poem at the Hebron Alumni website. But we held our place at the flagpole. That we did!

Fay Rahman Vohra and her husband Kai made us feel stupendously welcome. They invited us to their home in Coonoor for a catered lunch up on Tiger Hill overlooking the Nilgiris. To quote Anne Beth Buffam: “To me a highlight was the magnificent food at Fay's home. I can still taste the marvelous curries, and naan, and gulab jamans.” Fay also ordered the cars for various and sundry, including hiring a coach for our excursions. She helped book the restaurants and created a programme with Commodore Manohar Devadatta and myself. We pretty much kept to that outline and did everything on it, and some took it further with hikes and drop-ins that expanded the experience even further.

Fay’s daughter, Nighat (Nikki), used her professional expertise to take “formal” group photos and make copies for all of us to sign while her daughter, Leah (Fay’s granddaughter) charmed us all.

The Buffam sisters, Anne and Shari Donaldson got a car from the airport in Bangalore and drove all night through the Mudumalai forest reserve and up the 36 hair pin bends to be the first to arrive, with their suitcases! Manohar, who is on the Board of Trustees for both Hebron and CMS got us a tour of Breeks. He ordered the lunch which was served at Lushington and invited Alistair Reid, the current principal of Hebron, to lead a devotion at the beginning of the reunion in Selbourne. Flashbacks at Selbourne were to a Tea that only the senior boys and girls (us) were invited to in 1956 by Trouty (the Fisher’s) who lived there at that time. Mrs. Reid and Olive Lilywhite, the assistant alumni secretary, were very gracious. Olive kept track of us, ordered tickets on the hill train to (from as it turned out) Coonoor to Ooty. She also produced a great PowerPoint for us to share. Some of us took the hill train all the way down to Mettupalayam and I don’t care what anyone says that old train has soul!

Alistair asked us to reflect over the past fifty years and gave us some encouraging words for the next fifty, deo volente! He mentioned “mizpah” in its translation as the “watchtower” and in my short welcome I remembered another translation that is meaningful: “may the Lord watch between thee and me while we are absent one from the other.” Genesis 31:49. I think we felt profoundly that He had indeed watched between us all these years.

Thanks to the programme, many joined us at the Nahar’s Chandon restaurant for giant dosais the first night. The Graham sisters, Peddye (Heather) and Carol, who were visiting India with their 82-year-old mother showed up from Australia and moved to Montauban where several stayed and where there was great ambiance but no hot water or heat in winter! That indomitable Breeks’ spirit!

Howard Bath also came with Gwen Bailey Parker from Down Under and promises to return next year. Vijay Raghavan was not able to come but he produced the plaques from the Chatterbox which many of us were able to take back as mementos. Adrienne Brown Evans was very much present via text messaging. Geoff Vines popped in and out of the reunion between other appointments in Ooty. It was great to see Joel Benjamin, who pastors his own church and previously was pastor of the Union Churches in Ooty and Coonoor. Edwin David, who I met at St. George’s Church in Wellington on Christmas Day (this was the church where my mother and uncle were baptized in the 1920s), came for the opening and took pictures for his weekly, The Local. His article will be online soon. The Tiessens and us have a new tradition now: white cake for Christmas Eve with “Happy Christmas” written on it ala the Wallwood Gardens in Coonoor where we stayed before the reunion. We did walk down Sims Park, Coonoor and also the Botanical Gardens in Ooty after visiting the Todas at the top. Gwen had a wonderful reunion with an elderly Toda woman who she had befriended fifty years ago. We also had a fabulous buffet in the Toda Room at the Holiday Inn on our last night together. Terry's walk was immortalized in The Hindu .

Some touching moments stand out. Gwen Bailey Parker, on meeting Eshton Anderson looked incredulous when she said: “You’re Kenny’s daughter?” Time had flown. Gwen came all the way from Turner’s Beach on Tasman Is, Australia with her daughter, Jill. A young family who went to Breeks long after welcomed us back—Kasai Patel with his wife, Gul and their son. (They are in the middle of the group picture.) Teddy White, who was also one of “Gwen’s boys”, was disappointed not to meet her when he got the stomach bug along with many of us. He takes care of his coffee estate of 400 acres and, with his wife Malini, they sent their sons to Hebron. Darlene Tiessen Robertson, who we thought was in our class, was actually the youngest to ever get a Senior Cambridge certificate in 1956. She came from Canada with her siblings Sharon Adams and Carol Friessen and Terry and his wife, Gail. Wendy Munro Addo brought her sometimes cousin Jyoti MacDonald along who fit right in, from Orissa and Canada. My sister, Margo Chase Heyburn and myself (Joy Chase) and husband, Bill Bruner came from Australia and California respectively.

We were a pretty exclusive group of stalwarts who made it to the mountain top. We missed the wild violets and the quiet but couldn’t do without Terry’s cell phone giving us the height on Dodabetta at 8,300 feet up! Dodabetta is officially 8, 605.64 feet (2, 623 meters). Now, the challenge is to keep the past intact while enjoying the inventions of the past fifty years today. We came from so far: Vineland Station, Ontario and Winnepeg, Manitoba, where it is forecast to be -26C tomorrow night (-15F that is) and Northern Queensland where tropical cyclones have been playing havoc.

To Wendy, Fay, Manohar, Joy (1957) and Darlene (1956), Anne (1958) and everyone else who came and so gallantly represented a class of seventeen, the class of 1957! May it live forever, never dying but only gently fading away while the never ending tide of students keep graduating from Breeks Memorial and Hebron Schools in whatever forms they morph into in the future. Thank you to all who showed up, keep that flag flying, okay?

“Fear thou not for I am with thee” Isaiah 41:10