August 2018

Old Boys Sports & Games – Sat, Sept 1, 2018 – 10 am
Blue & White Bash – Sat, Sept 1, 2018 – 7.30 pm

OBA Day – Sun, Sept 2, 2018 – 8.30 am
OBA Centenary Dinner – Sun, Sept 2, 2018 – 7 pm

Dubai
SJBHS OBA Connect – Middle East 2018 – Nov 2-4, 2018

The long-awaited OBA Centenary Celebrations are finally at hand and we look forward to welcoming your participation in a packed, fun filled weekend. Our organizing team comprising of MC members and volunteers is leaving no stone unturned in making it a memorable one with a variety of events, memorabilia, entertainment and hospitality, where you can meet and mingle with old friends. The schedule of activities is displayed in this issue.

Please visit our website sjbhsoba.net and donate online for ticketed events and a wide range of Centenary memorabilia. Upcoming OBA events include: SJBHS OBA Connect – Middle East 2018 reunion in Dubai in November, Josexcel Celebration of Sports Excellence at school where we honour Josephite Sportsmen and parents, and the OBA Christmas Dinner.

Fide et Labore

George Ollapally
President, OBA

Hearty congratulations to the OBA for completing a century! A century of living the ideals of Jesuit education and being ‘men for others’.

The Centenary Celebrations are beginning soon and we look forward to your participation in this landmark event. I’m sure you will all enjoy returning to your old school and seeing familiar faces and landmarks, reliving happy moments and old times.

On behalf of the Management, Staff and students of SJBHS, I extend a warm welcome and best wishes for the series of events planned on this occasion.

May God continue to guide and bless us here at St Joseph’s.

Best Regards

Fr Clifford Sequeira SJ
Principal

Students perform the detailed planning and execute the event. As a result, the competition also results in the development of leadership, communication and operational skills among students. A Best Manager prize is awarded, in addition to the prizes awarded to individuals and to the winning house. The creative events resulted in exceptional output across Paintings, Poems, Essays and Collages. The captains of St Patrick’s house were voted the best due to their consistent effort and support. St Patrick’s House was declared the overall winner of OBA Buzz – 2018.

The dedication and passion of students and teachers are important success factors. Close collaboration between the OBA MC and volunteers, teachers and students resulted in a highly energetic and successful Inter House competition. The OBA Buzz is indeed a unique platform to discover and nurture creative and managerial talent among Josephite students.

Sixty-four Old Boys participated in the three sports. They were divided into 4 teams: Chat’s Favourites, Shikari’s Athletes, Ranga’s Boys, and UK’s Pets. After the weekend of closely contested games and good cheer, Ranga’s Boys emerged winners with 19 points. Shikari’s Athletes and UK’s Pets were tied at 16 points. A frame of snooker was played as the decider, which Shikari’s Athletes won to secure second place. Chat’s Favourites finished with 15 points.

Prizes were awarded to teams and individuals by George Ollapally, Mr UK and Mr Shivaprakash. The OBA thanks the Century Group for sponsoring the inaugural edition, Old Boys for their enthusiastic participation over two days and the organizing committee for meticulous planning and execution.

Prakash left Micello in 2012 to consult with multiple start-ups as a “freelance CTO” – primarily helping them move their applications and services to the cloud. This includes IntelliVision, a company that provides fine grained video analytics. The Dutch outdoor map provider, Here Technologies, acquired Micello in Feb. 2018. The wireless security and home automation company, Nortek Security acquired IntelliVision in May 2018. Prakash is currently a Vice President at Helios and Matheson Analytics and lives in Fremont, California.

Prakash volunteers his time in several organizations, including TiE Silicon Valley, ATEA (American Tamil Entrepreneurs Association) and BITSAA (where is the CTO of the Silicon Valley chapter) to mentor budding entrepreneurs and run meetups on emerging technologies (including Machine Learning and Blockchain). The OBA thanks Prakash for ‘giving back’ – he is mentoring two young Old Boy entrepreneurs who are developing products in the area of Augmented Reality.

Mr Chatterjee is the person who made Chemistry come alive. His grasp of the subject, the simplicity with which he taught, and his unflinching stare are legendary. What he taught me helped get me through many tough phases of my career.

It culminated in me penning a textbook on the basics of Chemical Engineering (Buttersworth Heinemann). I wrote the entire chapter on the structure of the atom, valency, balancing chemical equations from all that he taught me.

Mr Luke D’Souza had a temper and given his height, he could be found intimidating. He helped me become a well-known orator when he created the first line of my Inter-House debate speech. “Do you know what an egg-head is?” is the question I was asked all the way up to the time I graduated from 10th Standard. The simple rules of English he taught me are the foundation of the language editing rules we follow in SAGE today. His command of the language, to me, remains unparalleled. I owe him my entire professional career. Mr. Yates made me respect Maths and understand equations of all types.

Today, I am the Managing Director and CEO of SAGE Publications India Pvt Ltd and have been for the past 13 years. Being on the board of two universities, I help develop and teach many courses in publishing. I am a Member of FICCI and CII’s committees on Publishing, Copyright and Higher Education, and am Co-chair of the Publishing Committee at the Xavier Resource Centre for the Visually Challenged. Besides, I am the Director of the Daisy Foundation in India and Member, Editorial Board of the journal Learned Publishing.

On the personal front, I received the Vijayshree Award from the Government of Maharashtra, 1992 and Sharda University Top Rankers Excellence Award for Visionary Leadership, 2016. SAGE India was awarded Great Place to Work in 2018, and in 2018 I was voted as Male Colleague Who Practices Gender Equality and Most Appreciated Male Colleague in an anonymous poll of Women working at SAGE. Besides my Masters in Business Management from Columbia University almost 30 years ago, I have a Post Graduate Certificate in Intellectual Property Law and a Post Graduate Diploma in Intellectual Property Law from the University of London (Queen Mary College), which I completed in 2018. For me, learning has never stopped!

An Infantryman, he has had wide operational experience of serving in varied challenging terrain including multiple tenures, in J&K and a tenure in Somalia under UNOSOM-II. He commanded a company in counter insurgency in Manipur & later his own Battalion, in an Amphibious Operations environment and subsequently in active counter insurgency sector of J&K. He also commanded an Infantry brigade along the Line of Control in Kashmir Valley and subsequently commanded the North Kivu Brigade of the United Nations Peace Keeping Force in Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUSCO) during a very critical phase in 2012-13. He is presently commanding a Division of the Army deployed along the Line of Control in Kashmir.

During his service, he has held various key and prestigious staff and instructional appointments including Brigade Major of an Independent Armoured Brigade, Assistant Military Secretary at Service Headquarters and Colonel General Staff Operations of an Infantry Division along Line of Control/counter terrorism role. He served as Deputy Technical Manager (Land System) in the Acquisition Wing of Ministry of Defence and has had an instructional tenure at the prestigious Defence Services Staff College, Wellington. He was selected and underwent the National Defence College course for senior officers at Delhi.

In recognition of his distinguished service of exceptionally high order, Major General C Bansi Ponnappa, VSM, has won several awards including a Vishisht Seva Medal in the year 2017, Chief of Army Staff Commendation Card in 1997, Army Commanders Commendation Card in 2006.

He has been an active sportsman since school days and continued so during military service playing hockey, basketball, football, riding and golf at various levels. He is a voracious reader and keen environmentalist. He has been writing and studying international affairs, Chinese affairs, Pakistan and counter terrorism.

He recalls fondly his teachers, Luke D’Souza, Pappa Yates, and others. He also lauds the discipline imbued by Fr Hedwig and Fr Shenoy. The espirit de corps imbibed in the boarding and on the playfields has left its imprint on him and has helped him through tough times in tough places. Major General Bansi Ponnappa, VSM, is happily married to Nithya and they have two children, a son and a daughter.

Rural service at Christian Fellowship Hospital, Oddanchatram, Tamil Nadu was a wonderful experience. MD from St John’s, DM from CMC Vellore, and further training at Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, UK in Hepatology and Liver Transplant pointed me towards a career in Hepatology. I am now Professor of Hepatology at CMC, having served as Deputy Director for a few years.

My special interests are in the areas of liver transplant and liver cell regeneration (reaching out to those most in need yet with least access to it), Bio-ethics and Medical Education. My current position (on Sabbatical from CMC) is Consultant Hepatologist, Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, UK.

Some school memories:

4th Std: Playing hockey on the down-field before 9 AM assembly when we were supposed to be in class preparing for the day and getting caught by Mr. Bishen, the PT Master and sent to Principal Fr. Shenoy’s office where we were given a few of his best on the back of our thighs. It still hurts! Come the hockey season and as we were being escorted by seniors to Sullivan police grounds for the Inter-school tournament, Fr. Shenoy spotted me and carried me on his shoulders down Residency road to watch the match together. This was Jesuit education at its best. Watching the Saturday afternoon movie in the library and Br Calligaro pressing the Pause button instead of Fast- forward when the wrong or right scene popped up on screen.

5th Std: Loosing the reed of my clarinet on sports day and fearing the wrath of Fr. Arthur Rasquinha. John Noronha and I trawled the trodden ground and actually managed to find it intact.

6th Std: Mrs. Mamata Shetty insisting on a once weekly 15-minute joke session; all the “moron” jokes I know come from then, thanks to my good friend Dev Patel.

7th Std: Trying out for the school hockey team just to keep the sports star of our batch Sandeep Somesh company and meeting “Shikari” for the first time. We were the first batch he coached and it was not easy to fill Mr. Alan McBride’s shoes. By some miracle, I was also selected and since I didn’t have the same skills as the others, all I could do was train hard. I came earlier for practice, whacked the ball against the wall till my palms were raw and ran till my lungs burst. Come match day and I was in the first eleven, shaking like a jelly aided by the taunts of the Germainites’ from the stands. The first ball that came to me (new ball, fast pitch) whizzed past the sidelines and the crowd groaned; I just wanted to disappear into the ground. From the sidelines came a shout, “Never mind, watch the ball”, it was Shikari. I tried to focus. As the match progressed, a fast ball was speeding to the backline and the defender had given up the chase. Spinal reflex from training kicked in. I chased and got the ball, turned and centred it to the “D” where my captain Rohan John slotted it in with panache. The roar of the approving Josephities was exhilarating. Once again from the sidelines I heard Shikari “Well done, Uday”. I have never looked back since. My ”MBA” was gotten on the fields of St. Joseph’s.

8th Std: I was captaining the hockey team that year and Rahul Dravid was playing centre half as Sandeep Somesh was absent that season. I remember thinking to myself then, this fellow is so disciplined at practice!

10th Std: I was St. Patrick’s house captain and we were, what I believed to be, on the wrong end of a legally right but morally incorrect decision which cost us the first place overall that year. The support we received from juniors across houses was testimony to the moral fibre ingrained in a Josephite.

At our Valedictory function outgoing address, I remember focusing on “Faith and Toil” while tracing our journey through school. 30 years later, this has continued to hold true for me. Fide et Labore.

The fest included events for gamers, detective minds, the hidden writer, circuit designers, robot builders, scientific theories, crypto analysis of codes, biological minds, quiz masters, board gamers, human calculators, speaking skills, the future visitors, countering the climate change and the analytical thinkers.

‘The Dialogue’ – a panel discussion and Q&A session was held on the second day. Three distinguished personalities addressed the students. Dr Dipankar Banerjee ‘68, Padma Shree Award Winner and Professor at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore was a member of the panel.

One morning he walked into class during the Hindi period, when Mr Bhat was away at a Scouts camp. The entire class was amazed that he knew Hindi. We had been informed that he had just come from Italy. He had said that he studied during the past weekend.

He told us as to how he had learnt Italian. When he was in Italy for his Theological studies he did not know any Italian. In his room, he had found a box full of Perry Mason novels – in Italian. He told the bewildered class, that he started reading them, trying to figure things out as he went ahead. He said that within a short time he knew to read and write Italian but not to speak. When asked to speak at a Church, he said that his Professor was surprised when he spoke in Italian from a script that he had written the previous night, while they were expecting him to speak in English.

His disarming smile and openness prevailed upon all who came into contact with him. He constantly encouraged us to concentrate and handle the task on hand. We could see small changes happening around the school and in many of us. He was proud when we won the Cottonian Cricket Shield.

In January 1970, when I went to collect my AISS Certificate, though it had his name as Principal, he had left the school. Many months later I had learnt that he was transferred to Madras as the National Chaplin of the AICUF (All India Catholic University Federation). I wrote to him and stayed in touch, with occasional letters. In 1972, due to a strange set of circumstances I was inducted into the AICUF movement and my mind opened up to his ” Know India Project “- where the real India stood staring into me, of which I knew very little. Met him whenever I went to Madras.

When he returned to Bangalore, and based at Ashirvad, with the Centre for Non-Formal and Continuing Education. Occasionally I used to attend some of their meetings, where I met a large number of people from diverse backgrounds. He had also spent some time at the Indian Social Institute and had returned to the School as the Rector for a few years.

His constant concern and thought were on the marginalized people, and always thinking how to transform them. He was concerned at the violation of Human Rights within the country and in our Region – the Sri Lankan ethnic conflict. I have spent many hours listening and discussing on many issues. He was a guiding factor to many self-help groups all over the South. He often expressed deep concern at the marketing of the products of these groups – where the middle men and the transportation costs just made them difficult to sell, with hardly any savings. He liked to meet and interact with people, a patient listener, always encouraging us. We were fortunate to have him visit our home five or six times, whenever we had old school friends or my wife’s students.

Fr Claude believed that knowing English and knowledge of computers, would remove people from poverty, for they would be better prepared to face the challenges of the emerging world. He had initiated discussions with a group of scholars, to find ways to teach English and transform youngsters, within the existing and prevailing system of our education. My wife was part of this group.

On his last birthday a group of us went to wish him. He was in bed, but spoke to us, which he had not done on two earlier visits. He had enquired after my wife and daughter, before we left. I still cannot believe that shortly thereafter he was hospitalised. The previous night I had spoken with the Minister of Mount St Joseph’s, who had said that he was keeping well and my planned visit the following day, did not happen… as he had left… A true and dear mentor who seemed to be there for us, under any circumstances and never judged but always encouraged us to resolve our internal conflicts to be better people and think of the voiceless.

Century OBA Tri-Series Tournament (Badminton, Squash, Snooker) – 2018 (June)

OBA Memorabilia: https://sjbhsoba.net/donate/