* With permission from Manoa University of Hawaii

Message from our respected teacher J oginder Paul who taught at Duke from 1949
to 1963


Joginder Paul Born in 1925 in Sialkot (now in Pakistan), Joginder Paul was brought up by his
simple parents. His first story was published in the well-known Urdu journal Saqi in 1945. The
Partition of the country led to his migration to Ambala where as a refugee he struggled to provide for
his family. His marriage led to another migration, to Kenya where he served as a teacher of English
for several years, expressing his angst of being in exile in his stories. Back in India in 1965, he was
Principal of a post-graduate college in Aurangabad, Maharashtra for another fourteen years before
coming to settle in Delhi for full-time writing.

Joginder Paul has published over 13 collections of short stories, including Khula, Khodu Baba ka
Maqbara and Bastian. Amongst his novels are Ek Boond Lahoo Ki, Nadeed and Khwabro. He has
three collections of short short stories, a genre with which he is known to have enriched Urdu fiction
significantly.

Paul is a recipient of many important national as well as international literary awards and his fiction
has received a lot of critical acclaim. Many Urdu journals in India and Pakistan have published
special numbers on him and his writings and his fiction has been translated into many languages.

Sent: Sunday, August 10, 2008
Subject: Re: Respected Masterji J oginder Paul

My Dear Suniti,

Thank you for your affectionate letter which I received a couple of days ago, from Sukrita. I gather from
the letter that it's indeed the love and sympathetic understanding of some of the old students like you
whom the teachers should count as their best asset both professionally and personally.

You want me to share with you my old days at the Duke of Gloucester's: My foremost recollection is the
preceding excitement of being a teacher while I had been, for a whole year on the eve of the Partition of
India, selling milk for our living, after my MA studentship in Sialkot in Pakistan. I thought of becoming a
teacher - shall I say - I had at long last come back to start learning afresh.

When I reported for duty the first day, our Principal, Mr. Lobo, looked through my application and asked
me " Paul? That must be part of your name, not the surname as such?" I honestly did not know what to
tell him and looked at him with a rude insistence.
" You know " , he explained, " they call themselves Kohli, Lobo, Sethi...."
I interrupted him, " I'm a Sethi, Sir. But my surname is Paul" .
Mr. Lobo had had to give up in sadness and handed me the time-table to start working.

" But why don't you call yourself " Sethi" when you are one," a colleague who also happened to be a Sethi
asked me later in the staffroom.
Frankly I didn't know why, except for repeating, " But I'm Paul" .
I have thought of this episode for perhaps my present state of mind, which has now led me to believing
that the teacher has no name: he is, like a parent, known to us just in his relationship as a teacher. I have
liked to read through your letter, for it conveys a similar sentiment and relationship. But I also regard it -
call it a contradiction - if you please, pompous on the part of a teacher to carry himself as a teacher all
awhile. A teacher also, like his students, is but a student and can continue to teach only if he can manage
to keep learning.

I joined the school in 1949 when I came to Nairobi immediately after my marriage which as it were,
dictated that we would have to settle in Kenya just after the marriage. So I was, as they knew such young
men, one of the imported husbands.

Our school was then the only Asian Secondary School for boys in Nairobi. A few years later when it was
split into two schools, it was named Duke of Gloucester School and primarily for its longer years, was
termed as the best institution for secondary education for boys. Interestingly, the school for the girls was
simultaneously named as the Duchess of Gloucester School.

A few years later, the teaching at our school was extended from Cambridge School Certificate to Higher
Cambridge School Certificate, a two-year course after school certificate. You may call it my vanity that I
was so happy to have been selected to teach one of the classes at the Higher Cambridge, which
experience was equated with B.A. level on my appointment later as Professor in one of the colleges at an
Indian university on my return from Kenya in 1963. I had worked in my old Kenya School; for as long as
fourteen years. I had no problem professionally; yet I had always been looking forward to come back to
India for ultimate settlement.

While in Kenya, I made friends with quite a few fellow teachers and those like Satti, Visho, Chaman and
Hussain outside the profession, Bassan and Govia from amongst my colleagues and of course , many of
my old students like Teja Singh. My relationship with students and work in Kenya reassured me, in fact,
of my future work as a teacher in India. By 1978, I decided to give up teaching in India also to switch over
to my age-old craze for loafing and creative writing in Urdu although professionally all the while, my
subject has been English. I think I have spent all my life reconciling so many contradictions. You have
perhaps also asked me for a message...Well, here it is: Keep reconciling contradictions - as many as you
can - for an exciting living. It keeps you going easily even in difficulties - or perhaps more easily in hard
times...

Love,
Joginder Paul


Response to the above. message

Sent: Sunday, August 10, 2008
Subject: Re: Respected Masterji J oginder Paul

Respected Masterji,

Your wonderful words bring tears of joy to my eyes as I read them and what love, as always, you have poured will
be a memento to be cherished by all the Alumni of our beloved school.

May your blessings sustain us always. Your words of wisdom will be enshrined in the core of my heart " Keep
reconciling contradictions - as many as you can - for an exciting living. It keeps you going easily
even in difficulties - or perhaps more easily in hard times..."

With love and pranams from one who inherited your blessing.

Suniti Mohindra

First Request for a message & response from Professor Dr. Sukrita (Master J oginder Paul's daughter)

Sent: Wednesday, J uly 30, 2008
Subject: Re: Respected Masterji J oginder Paul

Dear Suniti Mohindra:

Many thanks for your mail. My father was very touched to get your message. I have given him a print-out of the
same to him. I'm sure he'll write something to be sent to you.
Congratulations on doing good work.

Best,
Sukrita

On Tue, J ul 29, 2008
Dear Ms.Sukrita Kumar

I am indebted to Sri Chaman Lal Chamanji for providing me with your e-mail address and a request that you
kindly forward this message to your Dad, our beloved Masterji of the Government Indian High School then
renamed Duke of Gloucester School and now called J amhuri High School in Nairobi Kenya.

The Class of 1957 of the Duke of Gloucester School of which I am a member has undertaken to create a
website,for the school, which is still under construction. (I am attaching the URL for the site please do open it and
present to Masterji)

The effort started some two years ago when I recalled that nearly 50 years were gone since we graduated from
School and that we all the students of the school should honor our Parents & Beloved Teachers who with infinite
love, patience and guidance instilled in us such strong values as to make us stand tall in the world on our two
feet; fearlessly as our shastras declared long ago in the mist of times that came down from teacher to teacher.

How blessed we are to be what we are today because of the seeds planted in us by our parents and then
reinforced and natured by our teachers. I felt from the depth of my heart that something long lasting should be
developed. Initially, our Class felt at my suggestion, that a scholarship fund in honor of the teachers should be
organized. However, the political turmoil in Kenya and the ensuing mayhem dimmed that effort and hence the
subject of a website took place to gather a membership of ex Alumni of the revered school that has it's
history blended with the history of Kenya since 1899 when the City of Nairobi came into being under the Colonial
regime but with the efforts of the Indians who helped built the then called Uganda Railways. Amongst others, my
Grandfather Ralla Ram Mohindra came to Kenya in 1896 and took the railway as it's Railhead Station Master
from Mazeras (about 11 miles from Mombasa) all the way to Kisumu on Lake Victoria. This gave me great
inspiration and lo and behold the task of putting up the web site has fallen on my shoulders, and not much help
from my schoolmates, other than class mate Ram Chanderana who has assisted in finding and financing the web
designer in Mumbai.

Now dear Masterji, although I came to Duke of Gloucester in 1954, the love and wisdom of our teachers has been
engraved in my very being, I was not blessed to have been guided by you but today I feel honored to have the
chance to write to you thanks to Sri Chaman Lalji. Dr Visho Sharma did a marvelous service in organizing the
Class of 1949 and he has been helpful.

In writing to you I feel I am addressing all of our beloved teachers.

I hope dear Masterji, you will be gracious to coin a few words about our beloved school and your remembrances
of your days at the school and some of the students of your days. My Uncle B.S. Mohindra was also a teacher at
the school for a while after having been transferred from Mombasa where he was with Alladina Visram High
School perhaps you remember him. He is no longer with us.

Please take a look at the website while it is still under constructuction, a community service on my part, and let
me have your comments and critique please and above all, your blessings for the success of this enterprise.

http://www.exdogs57.org/dryruntest/index.html

With my pranams, love and regards

Your humble Student of Duke of Gloucester,

Suniti Mohindra, class of 1957

Dr. Sukrita Paul Kumar
New Delhi 110019
India