The Craddock Chronicles

In the mid-1960s, my educational fate was sealed with the quiet finality typical of Indian households. At eight years old, my father decided that the municipal Hindi-medium school had served its purpose and that I was destined for Craddock High School.

Modern children might agonize over such a transition—the shift from Hindi to Marathi, the change of scenery, the daunting reputation of a new institution. But in those days, we possessed a remarkable, bovine acceptance of our elders’ whims. I did not worry about fitting in; I simply went where I was sent, a small passenger on the steady ship of my father’s decisions.

***

A Town of Two Knights

Wardha was a town that wore its history in its street signs. It had been carved out of Nagpur in 1862, its very skeleton laid out by two Englishmen: Sir Bachelor and Sir Reginald Craddock.

My childhood home stood on Bachelor Road, and my school bore the name of Craddock. We lived and learned within a geography of colonial ghosts. In 1969, during the Gandhi Centenary, the authorities performed the fashionable ritual of renaming the school Mahatma Gandhi Vidyalaya. It was a noble gesture, yet for those of us who navigated its hallways, the ghost of Sir Reginald was stubborn. To us, it remained “Craddock”—a name that tasted of discipline and old stone.

Even now, stepping through those gates is less a walk and more a leap back in time. The sensory markers are immediate: the distant, rhythmic rumble of the trains and the heavy, sweet scent of raw cotton drifting from the nearby ginning presses—the same smell that clung to my father’s coat.

I often think of my elder sister, Pushpa, walking these same corridors years before me. In my mind’s eye, she is surrounded by the bright sparks of her generation—Abhay Bang, Ulhas Jajoo, and Prasad Trivedi. Their names, etched onto the 1967 merit list, were the constellations we were taught to steer by. Today, the corridors are quiet, but if one stands still enough, the air seems to vibrate with their vanished laughter and the hurried scuff of Bata shoes.

---

The White Fortresses of Bachhraj

In the 1960s, my universe was bounded by the high walls of the Bachhraj Factories. To the adults of Wardha, it was merely a place of commerce where my father managed the cotton ginning press; to us, it was a sprawling, snowy kingdom of infinite possibilities.

The day began with the rhythmic arrival of heavy trucks, their engines groaning under the weight of “white gold” brought in from the surrounding fields. Then came the roar of the machines—a monstrous, comforting thrum that shook the very air. We watched, mesmerized, as the ginning teeth teased the seeds from the lint, and the great presses groaned, heaving the cotton into neat, wire-bound bales.

But the true magic lay in the yard.

There, the unpressed cotton was gathered into stacks so high they seemed to challenge the clouds. We called them our “white fortresses.” With the reckless abandon that only schoolboys possess, we would scale these snowy peaks. From the summit, one could survey the entire yard like a monarch inspecting his realm.

Then came the leap.

We would hurl ourselves from the heights, vanishing into the pillowy depths of the cotton. For a few heart-stopping seconds, the world was nothing but softness and white silence. We would emerge, one by one—Shekhar Deshkar, Suhas Jajoo, Chandu Fattepuria, Avinash Bhagwat, Ravindra Charade, and Narendra Gharpure—looking less like schoolboys and more like eccentric ghosts, draped from head to toe in wisps of fluff.

As the sun dipped low, we would begin our reluctant march home. We made a half-hearted attempt to brush ourselves off, but the cotton was stubborn; it clung to our school shirts and shorts with a peculiar loyalty. We didn’t mind. We walked back through the settling dust of the evening, our clothes serving as a silent, fleecy testament to a day well-spent in the empire of Bachhraj.

***

The Ritual of the Inkwell

Stepping through those gates even now is a leap back in time. The sensory markers are immediate: the rhythmic rumble of trains and the heavy, sweet scent of raw cotton drifting from the presses—the same smell that clung to my father’s coat. I often think of my sister, Pushpa, walking these corridors years before me, surrounded by the bright sparks of her generation—Abhay Bang, Ulhas Jajoo, and Prasad Trivedi—whose names on the 1967 merit list were the constellations we were taught to steer by.

Our classroom was a world of rigid wood and iron. Santosh Kekre, Ravindra Chawade, and I sat cheek-by-jowl on long wooden benches with sloping tops—masterpieces of shared discomfort. Fountain pens were viewed by the masters as a dangerous luxury and were strictly prohibited. We were laborers of the nib, using wooden holders with detachable metal points that required a dip into the porcelain inkwell every six seconds. It was a rhythmic existence: dip, scratch-scratch-scratch, dip. At the day’s end, our hands were maps of blue-black stains that no amount of soap could banish.

***

The Petiwala 

Among the sea of boys at Craddock who carried their books in limp, sweat-stained cotton bags, Santosh Kekre was an aristocrat of hardware. He was a lean, wiry boy, possessed of an infectious smile that seemed far too large for his modest frame. However, it was his school bag—or rather, the lack of one—that defined him.

Every morning, Santosh arrived clutching a distinctive aluminum box. It was a sturdy, rectangular affair that clattered rhythmically against his thigh. To the rest of us, this was an invitation to mischief, and we promptly christened him “Petiwala.” Most boys would have withered under such a title, but Santosh wore the nickname like a medal of office. He took our teasing with a cheerful, “bovine” serenity that made the jokes lose their sting.

***

A Survival Recorded in Newsprint

There was a quiet gravity to Santosh that we didn’t quite understand until we heard of the Great Encephalitis Outbreak of 1958. In a time when medicine was more a matter of prayer than penicillin, Santosh had been one of only two children in all of Vidarbha to survive the brain fever.

He had spent three months in the cavernous wards of Mayo Hospital, Nagpur, enduring the terrifying ritual of the lumbar puncture—a needle to the spine that would have broken the spirit of a grown man. The Nagpur newspapers had hailed him as a medical miracle. We looked at him with a new kind of awe; the virus had spared his sharp mind, leaving only his lean frame and that indestructible smile as a testament to his victory.

***

The Battle of the Double ‘E’

Our schoolroom was a place where the teacher’s word was Law, even when the Law was wrong. I remember a particularly stifling afternoon when our teacher—a woman of formidable certainties—scrawled the word “Seing” on the blackboard.

“Memorize it,” she commanded. “S-E-I-N-G.”

The room was silent, save for the scratching of nibs. Then, from the middle row, the Petiwala’s hand went up. With the reckless honesty of a survivor, Santosh pointed out the missing ‘e’.

The teacher froze. She turned from the board, bestowing upon Santosh a look so withering it should have reduced him to ash. “So,” she hissed, “the student has become the master? You add ‘ing’ to ‘go’ to make ‘going,’ do you not? Therefore, ‘see’ becomes ‘seing.’ Do not try to teach me my own tongue!”

Trembling but undeterred, Santosh did not retreat. He took the matter to the Headmaster, Mr. M.J. Deshmukh, a man whose authority was announced by the rhythmic thump-drag of his noticeable limp. Mr. Deshmukh, a man of letters despite his physical frailty, was taken aback. The teacher was reprimanded, the ‘e’ was restored, and Santosh returned to his desk, utterly unaware that he had just committed the ultimate sin of embarrassing a person in power.

***

The Song of the Dug-Dugi

If the aluminum box was Santosh’s trademark, his father’s car was the town’s entertainment. Mr. Kekre senior was a man of unimpeachable honesty who served the Zilla Parishad, a role that brought much respect but very little “second-half-of-the-month” cash.

His pride and joy was a second-hand Morris Eight. It was a temperamental beast that seemed to view the streets of Wardha with deep suspicion. It groaned, it wheezed, and it frequently gave up the ghost in the middle of the busiest intersections. We called it “Dug-Dugi” because of the peculiar, rhythmic thumping sound its engine made—a sound that resembled a folk drum more than a combustion engine.

Whenever we heard that familiar dug-dug-dug echoing down the road, we knew the Kekre family was approaching—or at least attempting to. Eventually, the AG’s office called, and the family, the aluminum box, and the Dug-Dugi moved away to the coastal breezes of Panaji. Santosh left us for Bombay University, but in the corridors of Craddock, the ghost of the Petiwala and the missing ‘e’ remained.

---

The Ritual of the Mathematical Slap

In the gallery of masters who ruled Craddock High School, Mr. Dhage, our Mathematics teacher, occupied a pedestal all his own. He was a striking, singular figure, dressed in a manner that suggested a man too busy with the absolute truths of numbers to care for the whims of fashion.

He always appeared in the same uniform of battle: a half-folded collar, sleeves rolled up as if he were about to move a mountain, and an oil-stained Gandhi topi that sat upon his head with a defiant permanence. His blue or grey trousers were held up by a well-worn leather belt, and his sandals, though far past their prime, carried him across the classroom floor with a pride that no new pair of shoes could hope to replicate. He wore no glasses, yet his eyes possessed a piercing, hawk-like intensity, constantly searching the room for a wandering mind or a misplaced decimal point.

Mr. Dhage did not merely teach mathematics; he performed it. He poured his heart and soul into the intricate rituals of simple and compound interest, and the mysteries of time, work, and speed. He was a firm believer in the ancient adage that to spare the rod was to ruin the soul. Vilas Thakur often described his approach as “tough love”—a discipline that felt like a physical weight in the classroom.

Whenever he spotted a blunder in our notebooks, his face would undergo a dramatic transformation. His features would contort with a sorrow so deep one might think he had been personally betrayed. If the mistake was particularly egregious, he would snatch the notebook with a sudden, sharp movement, tear out the offending pages, and toss the crumpled remains aside with a sigh of absolute frustration. “What nonsense is this?” he would roar, his face flushing a deep crimson. “You call this mathematics?”

He had a particular genius for analogies, often borrowed from the great Indian railway system. When a student like Abrar Alvi took his time to answer a question, Mr. Dhage would lean against his desk and address the class. “Our train has arrived at Itarsi Station,” he would announce with a weary smile. “And we all know the reputation of Itarsi—the train will halt there for at least half an hour. We must wait for Alvi to decide when he wishes to depart.”

Perhaps the most dreaded of his rituals involved the rare presence of the opposite gender in our segregated world. If a boy failed to solve an equation, Mr. Dhage would turn to one of the girls. If she provided the correct step, he would command her to walk over and lightly strike the boy on the head while he held his own ear in penance. It was an exquisite humiliation. The boy would invariably whisper, “Sir, hit me lightly!” while the rest of the class struggled to suppress a collective explosion of laughter.

But the ultimate punishment was the bench. He would order an erring student to stand atop his desk. I remember a particularly tall friend of mine who, when ordered to ascend, seemed to vanish into the rafters. His towering height made him look down at the floor with a dizzying perspective. “Gone in the clouds!” the class would whisper.

It was a delightful irony, for while Mr. Dhage’s own name meant “Cloud,” he remained firmly planted on the earth, while his students were the ones sent drifting into the atmosphere to contemplate their mathematical sins.

***

The Territorial Dispute and the PT General

In the rigid timetable of Craddock, the transition from Mathematics to Hindi was less a change of subject and more a territorial dispute. Mr. Dhage’s passion for numbers often blinded him to the clock; he frequently marched well into the forty minutes allotted to Mr. Mankar. As Mr. Dhage finally exited, the two masters would exchange bitter, whispered salvos in the doorway. We sat in hushed amusement, watching these two pillars of authority—men who demanded absolute obedience from us—bicker like schoolboys over a few stolen minutes of the afternoon.

However, all amusement vanished the moment Mr. N.D. Kshirsagar, known to all as NDS, stepped onto the grounds. If Mr. Dhage was a philosopher of the blackboard, NDS was a general of the dust. A man of muscular, imperious presence, he was a disciplinarian to his very core. Under his gaze, we were no longer Fatya or Kalya; we were faceless soldiers in a khaki-clad army.

Every student was assigned a number, which we were required to stitch onto our shirts at home. NDS never bothered with names; he barked out digits. We were arranged with mathematical precision—shortest to tallest—forming a line that stretched across the field like a human ruler. In an NDS session, not a single bird dared flutter without his authorization.

His most sacred requirement was the National Anthem. He demanded it be sung from the “umbilicus”—the very core of our beings—and it had to be completed in exactly fifty-two seconds. To NDS, the anthem was not just a song; it was a physical exercise in pride. “Let your voice reflect your soul!” he would bellow, his own voice reverberating through the heavy afternoon air.

The school day always began with the assembly—a grand, public ritual conducted under the scorching sun. We stood in our rows, heat radiating from the ground, while the teachers positioned themselves on the shaded verandah like gods looking down from Olympus.

After the prayers, NDS would step forward to deliver a public reckoning. Any instance of indiscipline from the previous day was announced to the entire gathering. It was here that the most legendary act of defiance in Craddock’s history occurred.

Deepak Kalode, a boy in the seventh or eighth standard, had been summoned for punishment. NDS, holding a thin, flexible stick, began to strike Deepak’s legs. For the first few strokes, Deepak remained a statue of silent endurance. Then, in a movement that left the entire assembly breathless, he reached out and snatched the stick right out of the master’s hand.

A deathly silence fell over the yard. Deepak did not run; he simply raised his thigh and, with a calm, methodical strength, proceeded to snap the stick. He broke it into two, then four, and finally into eight small fragments. He dropped the wooden splinters into the dust, turned his back on the stunned teachers on the verandah, and walked back to his classroom.

It was a moment of unexpected resilience that stayed with us for years. In a world governed by the “Dhage slaps” and the “NDS numbers,” Deepak Kalode had briefly reminded us all that even the most rigid stick has a breaking point.

***

The Palace of Law and Order

To be a friend of Vilas Thakur was to hold a temporary passport into another world. His father was the District Superintendent of Police, a title that carried an almost mythical weight in the 1960s. Their home was a sprawling British-built bungalow, a white-pillared monument standing amidst lawns so lush they seemed to belong to a different climate altogether.

Passing through those gates was a ceremony in itself. We were greeted by the stern, khaki-clad gaze of two police guards—men who seemed to be carved out of the very discipline of the district. Beyond them, the bungalow hummed like a well-oiled machine. Through the kitchen windows, the cook moved with the focused urgency of a general; servants scurried with dusters; and gardeners moved like shadows, coaxing the hedges into perfect geometric shapes.

In the driveway sat the crown jewel: a white Ambassador car, its chrome glistening under the expert hands of a uniformed driver. We would stand there, dusty schoolboys in half-pants, awestruck by this bastion of colonial order. For a few hours, Vilas’s backyard was our kingdom, though we always moved with the quiet reverence of those who knew that the “Grandeur of the State” was watching us from the veranda.

***

The Scribe and the Saboteur

My own progress through Craddock High School was marked by a peculiar piece of stationery. It is a “Letter of Appreciation” dated January 10, 1970, signed by our headmaster, Mr. L.K. Shende. It is not an ordinary certificate; it is a hand-woven orange square card, documenting my ascent to second place in the 8th grade. In those days, such a card was more than a record; it was a sacred relic of academic survival.

But while I was collecting orange cards, my friend Suhas was engaged in more “creative” pursuits. One afternoon, in a moment of inspired mischief, Suhas used his ink bottle to perform a silent execution on the back of our teacher, Mr. Dudhane. A great, blue-black splatter bloomed across the master’s pristine shirt like a sinister flower.

Mr. Dudhane, oblivious to the artistic commentary on his back, continued his lecture with his usual gravity. It was only when he reached home that the “evidence” was discovered. The next day, Suhas confessed. The punishment that followed has faded from my memory, lost to the mists of time, but the image of that ink-stained shirt remains—a silent testament to the eternal war between the teacher’s authority and the student’s inkwell.

***

The Great Divide and the 10-Paise Freedom

At Craddock, the social world was split by an invisible, impenetrable wall. Despite being close family friends at home, within the school gates, the boys and girls lived in parallel universes.

Shubha Thatte, Lina Wele, and Suhas Jajoo might have shared tea and laughter at their parents’ houses, but at school, a grim silence prevailed. It was an unwritten code of the 1960s: to speak to a girl was to invite the relentless, merciless teasing of the “Contamination” brigade. If a boy’s shirt so much as brushed against a girl’s sleeve, he was declared “impure.” We navigated the corridors like sailors avoiding a reef, terrified of the social leprosy that followed a stray conversation.

Yet, we found our own joys in the dust of the playground. During the break, the ultimate luxury was not a toy or a sweet, but a rented bicycle. For the princely sum of 10 paise per hour, we could hire a heavy, black Hercules cycle. We took turns wobbling across the school grounds, the wind in our faces and the rattling of the chain providing the soundtrack to our freedom. For those sixty minutes, we weren’t just students avoiding “contamination”—we were masters of the road.

***

The Taxonomy of the “-Ya”

In the corridors of Craddock, our identities were stripped of their formal dignity and replaced by a linguistic shorthand that only a schoolboy could truly appreciate. To the world, we were Fattepuria, Amte, and Bhagwat; to each other, we were Fatya, Amtya, and Bhagya.

Even I did not escape this transformation—Kalantri became Kalya, a name that carried a weight of affection that no honorific could ever match. Then there were Vilya, Sunya, Babya, Deshya, and Chawadya. It was a rhythmic roll call of brotherhood. We were a tribe of “-yas,” bound together by dusty football matches, cricket games played with improvised bats, and a shared, carefree understanding that as long as we had each other and a bit of open ground, the world was exactly as it should be.

***

The Nightingale of the Picnic

In the sixth grade, a boy named Vikas Kale joined our ranks. He was unlike the rest of us, who were mostly concerned with the velocity of a cricket ball. Vikas was a musical prodigy, his voice already seasoned by the tutelage of Charade Guruji at the Sangeet Vidyalaya.

The true revelation came during our seventh-grade school trips. Amidst the scattered remains of picnic baskets and the rustle of the trees, Vikas would begin to sing. When he performed “Swaye Shri Ram Prabhu Eikati,” a hush would fall over the gathering. His voice seemed to channel the very soul of G.D. Madgulkar’s Geet Ramayana, echoing the divine resonance of Sudhir Phadke. His voice resonated with the essence of GD Madgulkar’s Geet Ramayana, evoking memories of Sudhir Phadke’s captivating performances. His repertoire expanded to include beloved songs like “Mayur Yere Pisara” and “Prabhat Nabhi Sur He Rangati, Dashdisha Sunder Gane Gaati.” 

He wasn’t alone in his artistry. Laxman Wankhede, Shyam Bandawar, and the girls—Leena Wele, Shubha Thatte, and Bharati Deshpande—would join in a delightful chorus. For those few moments, we weren’t just students on a dusty outing; we were an enchanted audience, spellbound by a talent that would eventually lead Vikas to the heights of classical music.

Driven by his passion, Kale pursued post-graduation in music and carved a path to become an esteemed classical singer. His talent and dedication propelled him to great heights in the realm of music.

Recounting an anecdote from our school days in the late 1960s, Vikas Kale reminisced, “I can still vividly recall the moments when Mr. Dhage, our Maths teacher, would become furious with a student. As his anger reached its peak, he would stride purposefully towards the student’s desk. He would adjust his cap, ensuring that it sat perfectly on his head. His eyes focused intently, he would tighten the strap of his wristwatch, as if preparing for what was about to come. The anticipation in the air was palpable as he slapped cheek, the number of slaps matched the gravity of the mistake made by the student.” “My cheeks still burned from the two slaps I received the day before, so when I managed to escape with just a single slap, I thanked my luck,” he recalled.

***

The Republic of Equals

In our class, Chandu Fattepuria came from a wealthy family, thanks to his father’s lucrative cotton trading endeavors. Suhas Jajoo had an enviable educational pedigree. Santos Kekre’s father held a prominent position in the Zilla Parishad administration. Vilas Thakur’s father served as the deputy superintendent of police. Three students had politically active fathers: Baban Sonwane’s father served as a minister in the Maharashtra state government; Ashok Gode’s father was the president of the Zilla Parishad and Sharad Deshmukh’s father was running several schools and colleges in the district. Narendra Gharpure and Chandu Amte were the sons of teachers at Craddock School.

Despite the hierarchy of the town, the school was a perfect republic of equals. The sons of Ministers, like Baban Sonwane, sat on the same splintered benches as the sons of teachers. Wealth provided no shield; our parents gave teachers a simple mandate: “Do not spare the rod if they stumble”.

***

As the bell echoed through the halls, the students knew what awaited them—a 20-minute break filled with the promise of football and cricket. Excitement rippled through the air as we quickly packed our bags and headed out to the playing field. We chattered and laughed, our faces alight with the anticipation of the games that lay ahead.

On the field, we eagerly took up our positions. The footballers lined up on one side, while the cricketers took their places on the other. The air hummed with the sound of shouting and cheering as the players chased the ball, racing back and forth across the field.

Despite the frenzied activity, there was a sense of camaraderie that permeated the air. Students from different classes joined forces, forming impromptu teams that worked seamlessly together. There was no need to arrange the fielding positions. Students simply fielded wherever they wanted, with the third slip of class 7 often found playing the role of a deep fine leg for the eighth-graders. Indeed, the games were often played with such intensity that there was little time to pause and organize the fielding positions. Instead, students simply fielded wherever they could find a spot, darting back and forth across the field in an attempt to stop the rubber  ball.

As the games drew to a close, we dispersed, flushed with the excitement of a hard-fought match. We chatted and joked as we made our way back to our classrooms, eagerly anticipating the next break that would allow us to once again indulge in our passion for sports.

***

The Enduring Bond

In the seventh grade, my friend Avinash Bhagwat learned that life’s greatest terrors often arrive in the most mundane packages—in this case, a canvas school bag.

It was a Saturday, the day of our half-yearly History exam. The bell rang, signifying the end of the ordeal, and Avinash, caught in the rush of liberation, absentmindedly stuffed his completed answer sheet into his bag instead of handing it to the proctor. He spent the entirety of Sunday in a state of celestial ignorance, playing in the dust and sun, unaware that a failing grade was sitting quietly between his textbooks.

The realization struck him on Monday morning, halfway to school. The panic was instantaneous and wet; he stood on the road and wept. It was Suhas—our class’s resident strategist—who took charge. He led a trembling Avinash to Dudhane Sir. In a rare act of pedagogical mercy, the teacher verified that the seal of the bag hadn’t been tampered with and accepted the paper without a word of reproach.

But the gods of childhood are rarely entirely kind. Avinash’s older brother, Sham, who patrolled the school corridors like a shadow, caught wind of the incident. By evening, the “sibling telegraph” had delivered the news home. The scolding Avinash received from his father was far more legendary than any punishment Dudhane Sir could have devised. It was a lesson in the dangers of a Sunday spent too well.

***

An Ambush of Sweets

There was a peculiar, unthinking innocence to our fifth-grade year. We moved in a pack, governed by impulse rather than social grace. One afternoon, someone—the name is lost to time—produced a stash of chocolates during the short break. We decided, with the collective logic of ten-year-olds, that a teacher must be the recipient of this bounty.

Our faculty was a formidable assembly of women: Mrs. Agwan, Mrs. Kelkar, Mrs. Kadam, Mrs. Gharpure, Mrs. Bakane, Mrs. Bam, Mrs. Kie, Mrs. Waghpaijan, and Mrs. Upadhye. But it was Mrs. Amte who was the target of our affection. We did not wait for a formal classroom setting; we intercepted her as she was heading toward the restroom along the road leading to the Normal School.

We hurried after her and presented the chocolates right there at the door. In the adult world, such an ambush might be seen as an intrusion, but in the world of 1960s Wardha, it was met with a peal of laughter. Mrs. Amte and the other teachers appreciated the spontaneous, sticky-handed gesture for exactly what it was: a moment of pure, unrefined kindness.

***

The Coffee at Two A.M.

The geography of our childhood was small. Shekhar and I lived so close to school that we could hear the brass bell ringing from our front porches, a sound that dictated the rhythm of our lives. When we moved to Craddock, we sat together as a single unit, two halves of a whole. I remember the day our Mathematics teacher ordered Shekhar to move to the back of the room; the separation felt like an exile, and I felt hot tears welling up in my eyes. To a child, a move of three benches is a distance of miles.

We spent our summers together, our homes merging into one sprawling playground. Decades passed, as they inevitably do, and the schoolboys of Wardha became the men of the eighties. I ran into Shekhar and Ravi at the Thane railway platform long after our paths had diverged.

That night, in the quiet of a kitchen in a city far from Wardha, Shekhar brewed coffee at two in the morning. We sat and talked until the sky turned grey at four, and then until the sun rose at six. When his wife emerged, she found two middle-aged men chatting with the feverish intensity of those two boys who had once been separated by a math teacher’s whim. She wondered who this stranger was who hadn’t even attended their wedding, unaware that in the world of Craddock, time and weddings are secondary to the bond of a shared bench.

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