Kooler Talk (Web Version)

Sunday, April 11, 2004

KTWV05 - Issue 3: Is Finland's Education System The Best?

I have just been reading an article in the Seattle Post Intelligence of Friday, April 9, 2004 by LIZETTE ALVAREZ of THE NEW YORK TIMES which is entitled:

"It's unorthodox, but Finland's education system ranked No. 1"

Would Annikki and I, who have put our four children through parts of it, and now our grandson is going through it, agree with the conclusions of the report and this author?

Having been educated in the two best schools in the universe, Bishop Cotton's Girls' and Boys' Schools, Bangalore, and Cathedral and John Connon School, Bombay, and following it up with having been to the very best college on the face of this planet, St. Stephen's College, Delhi, and then having watched our children through this Finnish system in parts and having lectured to products of this system in the University of Oulu, I must disagree with the writer.

Finland's school system is nowhere near the best as far as "education" is concerned.

Am I being overtly patriotic to my alma mater's. I think not, as my better half is also a product of the Finnish system, and our personal experiences belie the claim.

The Finnish system was one where the Finnish "teacher" stood in front of the class and told the students what was what. In my lecturing days at the University of Oulu, I was astounded by the lack of ability by Finnish students to question what the teacher says. Everything was gospel truth as if it was delivered from the pulpit.

I used to put in some absolute rubbish in my lectures, and the students would just mop it up like a sponge. Then I would let fly and give them merry leather. By the end of my lecture series I did usually have a bunch of students who were a little more argumentative and able to analyze situations based on their own thought.

I do remember our debating classes in Cathedral which helped me acquire some of these skills. I could question Willie about physics problems, or Greg about Chemistry. It only nurtured my interest in my subjects. I learnt that most of the answers had to be obtained by myself. The experimentation in these subjects helped me to be alive. That stood me in good stead in my university life and later in my working life. This is, even today, sadly lacking in Finnish education.

The writer comments about the reading skills of Finnish students. The reason for this is not the school education system, but the nature of the Finnish language. If any of you have been through a speed reading course, the first thing you are taught is not to stop at reading a word but to go on to reading a line and then a couple of lines, till you can read a paragraph at a glance. Sadly, in the English, and most other languages, word lengths are usually quite small, 5 to 10 letters, and hence the skill of reading long words is not gained by the student. The Finnish language uses the concept of compound words. Words can be exceptionally long, 20 and 30 letters are commonplace. Hence the eye grasp skills becomes exceptional. That is one reason. A second reason is that a small mistake in word construction can have a dramatic effect on the meaning. Hence spelling mistakes and reading mistakes become quite uncommon.

Having been a professional editor for many years, I was astounded by the reading skills of very ordinary Finns, many who have not even completed high school. Only a detailed study of several such people revealed the true reasons to me.

The article is absolutely wrong to characterise that Finns to not boast or gloat. The Finns are masters of spin. They are so superb at it that most even believe the spin themselves. Not only are they masters of spin, they are also masters of ensuring the spin reaches the correct audience in believable packets. For instance, the claim that Finland is the least corrupt nation today is just a spin story which has been done so masterfully that Finns believe it right until they are personally affected by the bureaucratic, judicial, political and legal corruption that face them.

Our former special correspondent for our web site "Findians Briefings", Sinikka Ikni, who used to write the column "Finland - Oligarchy?? = Democracy??", touched on many issues for several years till the system came down on her so heavily that she had to stop writing her column!!

I have been personally hounded by the Finnish system, but being used to corruption in India, I knew how to stand my ground. Even to this day Annikki and I are facing an enormous battle with Finnish bureaucrats who hide everything behind a veil of legal secrecy that they write into their laws, not for the benefit of the people but purely of the power brokers.

The claim that all Finnish teachers need to have a Master's degree is not only wrong, but it is also a false notion that a Master's degree can help anyone to be "educated".

When we arrived in Finland, our youngest son came back from school one day and opened his geography book, written by these so-called "Masters" degree holders. He asked me how it was possible that everything that was written about India in this book was wrong - politically, geographically, economically, socially, culturally? For instance, it claimed that the north east monsoon was a dry wind!!

I took this up with our then Indian Ambassador in Finland, K. P. Fabian. Diplomatically, he asked the Finnish Ministry of Education to at least let Indian educationists help to create books containing data about India with some help from Indian experts. But it was no go and misrepresentation of almost every developing country has been commonplace in Finnish school text books. It is done to create a feel-good factor amongst the population. And what better place to start but from the very very young.

When I was working in a Committee to help Finnish university students learn about developing countries, my request that the books in the curriculum, should at least include some titles from experts from the developing countries, rather than the purely text book knowledge of Finns, fell on very deaf ears.

The glamourization of the 45 minute class and 15 minute let-off steam time presents a wrong picture. Students indulge in many activities which one should never allow on a school premises such as severe teasing fellow students. Of late, the drug problem in Finnish schools has become endemic.

We have to disagree that the Finnish education system is far from being No. 1. The methodology of making this choice was flawed, flawed, flawed....

Friday, April 09, 2004

KTWV05 - Issue 2: Good Friday, the old and the new

Welcome to the Kooler Talk Blog for Stephanians with its first real entry this Good Friday, 9th April 2004.

Would somebody send me a better image of the College logo. The blog will be updated many times a week with my reminiscences, so please bookmark this page. You can add your comments in the Comment section or, for more private comments, please do email me.

This entry in the blog is about Good Friday and its relationship to my association with college and our Principal Sircar.

"From the earliest times the Christians kept every Friday as a feast day ; and the obvious reasons for those usages explain why Easter is the Sunday par excellence , and why the Friday which marks the anniversary of Christ's death came to be called the Great or the Holy or the Good Friday. The origin of the term Good is not clear. Some say it is from "God's Friday" ( Gottes Freitag ); others maintain that it is from the German Gute Freitag , and not specially English. Sometimes, too, the day was called Long Friday by the Anglo-Saxons; so today in Denmark."

When I was a small boy living in Mysore and then Bangalore, which were relatively small towns, compared to the huge metropolis of Bombay, that they have now become, Good Friday was a holiday in a different sense. Normally, on Sundays, a religuious holiday for our family, we would go to church early morning and then come home to have our breakfast and then relax for the rest of the day.

Good Friday was different. We ate nothing whatsoever when after we woke up. We would go to church around 11 in the morning and the service would be long, about 3 hours, as the stages to the cross of Christ were gone through.

When we retuned home, tired and famished, it was not a traditional family meal that awaited us. It would be "kanji" which is rice served in the water it is cooked in, "pieara" a sort of boiled beans served with pickle to give the food some taste. The intention was to remind us of the suffering of Christ and to share in it with our simplicity in the food we consumed.

The atmosphere was always one of saddness. This would last right through the Saturday till we went to church on Sunday where there would be much happiness and Easter greetings being shared between all.

The resurrection of Christ was to be surely seen in the joy which was seen in all those at church.

Going home after the Easter Service would be such that we had a fabulous Easter meal waiting for us. (I do not remember much emphasis on the custom of Easter Eggs.)

When we moved to Bombay, although the same procedure would be followed, it did not have the same ring of involvement that we had in the smaller communities of the small towns. My mother would sometimes go to attend the church service at her Orthodox Church where they actually stood right through the three hours. In the Protestant Anglican St. Thomas Cathedral, the service was usually in the morning, followed by the three hour service from noon till three. the music would be great.

Easter in Delhi, when I was a student at St. Stephen's College, was a wonderful event as we shared a hearty breakfast provided in the home of Principal Sircar when we got back from church.

Although the atmosphere of Good Friday did not have the same degree of sadness, the college chapel was filled with Christians and some others, including Muslims and Hindus who were curious to know the significance of the words and deeds that Christians followed on Good Friday. Many of my friends would accompany me to the Good Friday service.

These days, living far from my homeland, and not being part of the mainstream Christian community in Finland, the atmosphere is not the same. I go about my daily chores but at the back of my mind those days in Mysore and Bangalore are foremost in my mind, as also the time shared with Principal Sircar and his family. His son Raj was not there during my time in St. Stephen's as he was away in the UK. Prinicpal Sircar's gracious wife and charming daughter were always there as our hostesses. And we would discuss so so many topics as Principal Sircar was genuinely interested in the lives of all of us, our separation from our families during this sad and joyous times, that he understood that he was our stand-in parent and not our Principal.

Unfortunately, my children, now grown up, do not have the same sense of feeling as I do as they were never able to partake of Good Friday and Easter in the same way as I did.

I wonder whether it is my gain or their loss?

Saturday, March 20, 2004

KTWV05 - Issue 1: Welcome Stephanians to my Kooler Talk Blog

7 year Itch

Welcome Stephanians to the Kooler Talk Blog, which is the nearest one can get to the original concept of the nightly meetings of gup-shup around the Blacksmith, from which Kooler Talk was born in 1961-62.

It is over 7 years since I first put up Kooler Talk Web Version on the internet. Many thousands of you have kept the steady flow of emails to me which has helped me create some degree of nostalgia.

Now it is time to do something new as others are putting "other" versions of Kooler Talk on the web.

So I have moved over to Blogging.

I will keep my flow of nosatalgic reminisences flowing from my never-ending tap of informants in all six continents so as to keep you all "cringing" for the next episode, just like in "Bold and Beautiful" :-).

The inputs from you can either continue as emails, direct to me from the blog, or as appropriate Comments in the blog, so that others can see what you have to share with them.

Happy Blogging Stephanians.

Wednesday, March 28, 2001

KTWV04 - Issue 3: News from many

Dear Stephanians,

In the last issue I published the picture of the college. Word got around to Principal Dr. Anil Wilson and I had this message from him:

From: "Dr Anil Wilson"
To: "Jacob Matthan"
Subject: Re: Ezines for Cathedralites & Stephanians - Feb. Issues
Date: Sat, 3 Mar 2001 07:02:25 -0800

Dear Jacob,

Good to hear from you after quite some time. Please do visit the 'official' College Web Site at

http://www.ststephens.edu

and let me have your response.

Dr. Anil Wilson

I think all of you will be pleasantly surprised when you visit the new college site maintained by Kevin Dzousa.

And do not forget to read the Dismissal Address given by Principal Wilson on 13th March.

It was nostalgic to hear of the retirement, after 41 years of service, of Mr. G. S. Bhatia who taught me Physics in 1960-1963. I was one of the first batch his first pupils. He was a great and understanding teacher!! I can still remember him smiling through his jet black well oiled and tied down beard and mustache and saying "Matthanji, ...". I think he sort of liked me, although I was not a particularly brilliant student, but I follwed his lectures regularly, unless I had overslept. :-)

Efforts are paying off after the restart of the web version of Kooler Talk. I had a very nice email from Subir Kubedan:

Date: Wed, 28 Mar 2001 12:40:25 -0800 (PST)
From: Subir Kumedan, San Francisco
Subject: Website
To: Jacob

Hi Jacob,

I recently found that this website existed. I am Subir Kumedan, a 1993 gradute (with a non-functioning link on your web page :-) at that)

I have been in the US for a few years now, ditching grad school to follow my photography and creative instincts to become a web designer in San Francisco and now a User Interface Architect at a company in Fremont, California. The web is my life, well along with photography and travel.

So, I thought, I could use my skills to help you redesign the site and publicise it, if you are okay with it. It would be my way of giving back to Stephen's all I got out from it. From the numerous hiking trips to hanging out in the main lawns, to flunking the supplementaries, and samosas and the countless bunking classes to hang out in DU, I still have too many fond memories in Stephens. And I still compare Stephens in India to Harvard/Yale in US.

Anyway, it would be interesting to get in touch with and get a sense of what you've been doing through the website and if I could meaningfully contribute to it. In the meantime you can check out my new website which is in alpha stage

http://www.alwaysoutbound.com/photo.htm

ones that I created during my work at PLural as a web designer -

www.amb.com

www.apptimum.qwest.com

among others. My old photo site is at my rutgers address at

http://www.cabm.rutgers/edu/~subir

bad design, good photos.

Well, cheers for now, my contact information is included. Feel free to get in touch with me anytime.

Subir

Subir Kumedan
929 Pacific Ave
San Francisco, CA 94133
t: 415.981.7161

That was real nice of Subir. We have been in touch with each other. Maybe sommething will come out of it.

But how many of you want a redesigned super duper Kooler Talk (Web Version). From my emails I see that most of you seem happy with its present presentation. I did explain to Subir that as far as publicity is concerned, enter "Stephanian" or "Kooler Talk" in any major search engine as Google, Altavista, Excite, or the best of the lot presently, AlltheWeb.com, and without fail, the searcher will land up at my pages. Since 80% of surfers reach the pages by this route, the others through the traditional routes of the college web site, sites of other Stephanians, and the alumni pages, there was no real hope for any Stephanian to escape being pushed to this site, even though they may be kicking and screaming

Of course, it could do with extensive redesign. But what matters is content. The problem is that I sit down at the computer on a Friday evening and in one sitting complete my matter as well as upload the pages. I do not stop till I finish. So being dependent in any third party for setting up and maintaining these pages may be complicated - as I am a computer idiot.

I have not rejected Subir's offer. Maybe we can come up with something simple you all will like. In the meantime, take a look at Subir's web pages - the photographs are truly great.

As I am just launching my own Findians Panorama web site, which is in its beta stage at the moment, it looks as if we have a lot of things to do together.

Any other Stephanian wanting to join us in this cooperative operation, and you have photographs or works of art you want to offer on the internet, you are more than welcome. You are requested to get in touch with me.

Another email I had a couple of weeks ago was thus:

From: "Davendra Pratap" UK
To: Jacob
Subject: from Davendra Pratap
Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 21:21:56 -0000

Dear Jacob

Hello. I hope this gets to you. If it does, please reply. I would love to hear from you.

Regards

Davendra Pratap

I naturally replied in my usual fashion and this was Davendra's reply:

Dear Jacob

It is good to establish contact. I did try after your email via the alumni link, but for some reason it came back undelivered. (Ed: This puzzles me! Anyone else had this problem?)

Doesn't time fly by so quickly. It seems only like yesterday-spending evenings playing bridge or table tennis in the JCR.

I have gathered from your enclosures, amongst other things, that you live in Finland and that you are married to Annikki. I would love to hear more about you.

Now perhaps a few words about me and our family.

I live in Richmond (a S.W. suburb of London) with my wife Joan, and we have been happily married for over 30 years. We have a 28 year old son, who is a doctor and a twenty five year old daughter, who works in the publishing world. Neither is married, but they have both have their own flats in different parts of London.

I have recently retired after a long and busy career. I qualified as a Chartered Accontant and, after some years in a large professional firm in the City of London, entered industry and worked in various capacities, eg., Finance Director, Acquisitions, etc., and ended up in the Shell Group in the early eighties. After a very interesting time with Shell, I had the opportunity with some colleagues to carry out a management buy out of a division of Shell, float it as a public company and then sell it to a much larger group. All very good fun, but all good things come to an end! I have not yet got used to retirement and I am sure I will get involved in something in a few months.

Unfortunately, I have not been in contact with any Stephanians other than Ashok Bhargava (who is a Professor of Economics, University of Wisconsin) and Vijay Gupta who runs an accountaancy practice in Delhi. Of the other 1963 ers, Sujit Bhattacharya was in London in the sixties, but I have lost contact. I last heard he was a Partner in PriceWaterhouse Coopers in Calcutta.

I should be grateful to receive any contact details that you may have of anyone from our period, now residing in the UK or Western Europe.

Look forward to hearing from you. Best regards to you and your wife.

Davendra

Davendra was with me in college between 1960 and 1963. He did Economics, being the classmate of Montek Singh Alhuwallia, Sujit Bhattacharya and Ashok Bhargava - to name just three of that illustrious class.

I replied to Davendra that I was just the opposite of him and have updated him on a lot of you lot who have been in touch with me.

Using his info I did track down Ashok, who is head of the department of economics at Wisconsin University. I have dropped him a line. Maybe he will be in touch. No luck as yet about Sujit. I am sure someone in Delhi will give me Vijay Gupta's co-ordinates.

Amongst the many emails, this was a typical one:

From: "Banerjee, Indrajit"
To: Jacob
Subject: Hi
Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2001 15:20:48 -0800

hi Jacob:

Long time no correspondence from you. I also lost the connection to the Kooler Talk until recently when Alumni.net gave a new URL.

Just curious.

hope all is fine with you and your family.

regards,

Indrajit

Thanks Indrajit, and others, for writing an dkeeping in touch. The old URL is still functioning but losing its place as I do not have enough web space there to keep the archives up in place. By the end of this year the archives would have disappeared in toto from the old web site.

And finally, I am repeating Yogi's letter - please get in touch with him post haste as the last date for registrations is fast approaching.

Date: Tue, 30 Jan 2001 15:50:04 +0530
From: Yogi Durlabhji
To: Jacob
Subject: Fw: your mail

Nostalgia Stephen's

Dear fellow Stephanian,

An event organised by SIR (Stephanians in Rajasthan) in collaboration with Hotel Clarks Amer, Jaipur.

Dates: 5th through 7th Oct., 2001
Venue: Hotel Clarks Amer, one of the leading hotels of Jaipur
Organisers: SIR (Stephanians in Rajasthan) and Hotel Clarks Amer, Jaipur

Nostalgia Stephen's is once again in the air. Some of you were here last year when we had our first Nostalgia bash; others were not.

I am writing to you as advance intimation. Nostalgia 2001 will be held this year in the first week of Oct. i.e. 5th, 6th and 7th Oct. This is a three-day package (two nights and three days) that Hotel Clarks Amer is offering us at a fabulous discount even though it is an extremely busy time for hotels in Jaipur.

October is a superb month in Jaipur when there is a nip in the air! It is perfect for hot tea, light woollens and sunshine and sparing on the lawns!

It is the right time of the year for inter-block cricket, crackling bonfires and all-night dancing on an open stage (such as the one at Clarks Amer). Of course, the entire event will have the flavour of nostalgia and memories of samosas and scrambled.

We have blocked 100 rooms which will be reserved for people on a first-come-first-served-basis. The last day for confirmation (as also for payment) is 31st March, 2001. We need early confirmation as Jaipur receives large numbers of tourists in October, and Clarks Amer is an extremely popular destination since it offers spacious lawns, a beautiful swimming pool and proximity to the airport. If you wish to participate, please revert so that we can send you forms that must be filled up by all participants.

Tariff

Tariff for the bash is as follows
(2 nights, 3 days - all meals)

Double room
(husband & wife -------- Rs 11,000/- only
Or
Shared between two friends)
Each child (additional) - Rs 2,000/- (for the stay)

If you have any queries, please feel free to write to me or phone me or e-mail/fax me.

Love and regards,

Yours sincerely,

Yogi Jain (Durlabhji)
(M.A.History -1967-72)

PS: I am writing this letter to you very early so that you can block dates, and also so that we can block rooms for you. If you want to know what the event is all about, please ask someone who attended Nostalgia 2000.

Mr Yogi Jain (Durlabhji)
M/s K.S. Durlabhji
Emerald House
D-31 Subhash Marg
C-Scheme
Jaipur 302 001 (Raj)
E-mail :yogi@ksdurlabhji.net or ksd@satyam.net.in
Tel # : 91-141-372318/364171
Fax : 91-141-363167

Please get in touch with Yogi. Annikki and I may be there!!

Not many of you have still joined the internationally maintained College Alumni. I have made it easy by giving you a link at the top of the the next column. PLEASE DO IT NOW.

Please keep those emails and photographs coming. See you in a month. Remember, this is your page, more than mine.

It is our KOOLER TALK (Web Version)

Regards

Jacob Matthan
Honorary Editor
Kooler Talk (Web Version)
Stephanian 1960 - 1963
JCR President - 1961-1962

Wednesday, February 28, 2001

KTWV04 - Issue 2:

Dear Stephanians,

Today is Wednesday, 28th February, 2001.

Hope you enjoy an old wedding photograph of ours. Behind me is another Stephanian, T. J. Joseph, also known as Josey, who did his B.Sc. during the years 1957-1960. Josey is presently Vice President of Behram Wadia and associates in Bangalore. We shared a flat in London 1963-1966.

I had an email from another Stephanian who also shared the London flat with us, Anil Kumar, who now resides in New York. I had written to him about the recent demise of my father-in-law. Hope Annie, as he was known in college, recovers quickly from his angioplasty.

From: "Anil Kumar"
To: "Jacob Matthan"
Subject: Re: Annikki's father passes away aged 84
Date: Mon, 12 Feb 2001 11:43:01 -0500

Dear Sushil,

I am really sorry to hear that your father-in-law passed away. I have just returned from hospital where I had my 4th bout of angioplasty in the last 6 six years. Being hospitalised makes one painfully aware of mortality, but also teaches one to appreciate whatever life offers.

My love and thoughts to both you and Annikki.

Anil

John Dayal, with his status on the Christian Council, etc., has been quite active during the recent Gujarat Earthquake. He was responsible for a donation of Rs. 1 crore for the quake relief activities.

It is his posts that I have focused on in my most recent issue of my main ezine, Findians Briefings. I have also take to task another Stephanian, or one I would rather not call a Stephanian because of his attacks on institutions like our alma mater - none other than Arun Shourie, the Minister for Public Grieviances, etc.

I am hardly likely to take a grieviance to him knowing how one track mind he has become his his heady days in the mid seventies.

At least one Stephanian was at the recent Kumbh Mela. I am awaiting his article on the subject:

From: "trendy"
Subject: MAHA KUMBH
Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2001 20:36:01 +0530
X-Priority: 3

Dearest ones,

i am just back from one of the life time experiences. yes i was at the maha kumbh on the auspicious accasion of MAUNI AMAWAS during the greatest and the largest festival on this globe. 30 million people (australian population) had dip at the holy SANGAM on the 24th of JANUARY, and i was one of those luckiest persons. I am writing an article on this and would soon try and send you more details and some picture if possible. for now
har har gange.
TRIBHUWAN ANAND
Mg.Director
KARSHNI INATOS INFOTECH LIMITED
KARSHNI HOUSE,
A-23, Sect. 33
NOIDA-201301 U.P.
INDIA
Ph/FAX: 0091-118-4505051,4507171,4505471
MOBILE: 9811037176
Email: trendy56@vsnl.com or info@karshni.inatos.com
Mktg Office: B-68 & 91, Flatted Factories Complex Okhla-III
Telfax: 011-6931730 ,6315862
Website: www.softkar.com and www.karshni.inatos.com

Amit Wilson from Bombay (Mumbai) sent me a great ariel shot of the college and although he has not given me copyright permission as yet, I am putting up his photograph on the site in anticipation of getting it from him finally for our beloved alma matertites. Thanks Amit.

And now for the most important letter from a Jaipurian Stephanian of a reunion!!

Date: Tue, 30 Jan 2001 15:50:04 +0530
From: Yogi Durlabhji
To: findians@global.netppl.fi
Subject: Fw: your mail

Nostalgia Stephen's

Dear fellow Stephanian,

An event organised by SIR (Stephanians in Rajasthan) in collaboration with Hotel Clarks Amer, Jaipur.
Dates: 5th through 7th Oct., 2001
Venue: Hotel Clarks Amer, one of the leading hotels of Jaipur
Organisers: SIR (Stephanians in Rajasthan) and Hotel Clarks Amer, Jaipur

Nostalgia Stephen's is once again in the air. Some of you were here last year when we had our first Nostalgia bash; others were not.

I am writing to you as advance intimation. Nostalgia 2001 will be held this year in the first week of Oct. i.e. 5th, 6th and 7th Oct. This is a three-day package (two nights and three days) that Hotel Clarks Amer is offering us at a fabulous discount even though it is an extremely busy time for hotels in Jaipur.

October is a superb month in Jaipur when there is a nip in the air! It is perfect for hot tea, light woollens and sunshine and sparing on the lawns!

It is the right time of the year for inter-block cricket, crackling bonfires and all-night dancing on an open stage (such as the one at Clarks Amer). Of course, the entire event will have the flavour of nostalgia and memories of samosas and scrambled.

We have blocked 100 rooms which will be reserved for people on a first-come-first-served-basis. The last day for confirmation (as also for payment) is 31st March, 2001. We need early confirmation as Jaipur receives large numbers of tourists in October, and Clarks Amer is an extremely popular destination since it offers spacious lawns, a beautiful swimming pool and proximity to the airport. If you wish to participate, please revert so that we can send you forms that must be filled up by all participants.

Tariff

Tariff for the bash is as follows
(2 nights, 3 days - all meals)

Double room
(husband & wife -------- Rs 11,000/- only
Or
Shared between two friends)
Each child (additional) - Rs 2,000/- (for the stay)

If you have any queries, please feel free to write to me or phone me or e-mail/fax me.

Love and regards,

Yours sincerely,

Yogi Jain (Durlabhji)
(M.A.History -1967-72)

PS: I am writing this letter to you very early so that you can block dates, and also so that we can block rooms for you. If you want to know what the event is all about, please ask someone who attended Nostalgia 2000.

Mr Yogi Jain (Durlabhji)
M/s K.S. Durlabhji
Emerald House
D-31 Subhash Marg
C-Scheme
Jaipur 302 001 (Raj)
E-mail :yogi@ksdurlabhji.net or ksd@satyam.net.in
Tel # : 91-141-372318/364171
Fax : 91-141-363167

Considering it is still -25 C here in Oulu, and we take out our light woollens when the mercury heads down below -5 C, and our October temperatures here are just arond 0 C, I wonder whether we should take a trip to frozen Jaipur in October!! :-)

Please get in touch with Yogi Bear as soon as possible - who knows, if we win the LOTTO, Annikki and I may be there!!

Not many of you have joined the internationally maintained College Alumni. I have made it easy by giving you a link to click in the next column. PLEASE DO IT NOW.

Please keep those emails and photographs coming. See you in a month.

Regards

Jacob Matthan
Honorary Editor
Kooler Talk (Web Version)
Stephanian 1960 - 1963
JCR President - 1961-1962

Sunday, January 28, 2001

KTWV04 - Issue 1: Relaunch

Dear Stephanians,

Today is Sunday, 28th January, 2001.

As promised, Kooler Talk (Web Version) is finally back online.

I was busy for the last two years as the Project Secretary of social service project for the Northern Finland Sports Federation and the City of Oulu. I was trying to create a sense of harmony between the ethnic minorities and the local Finns, a large number of whom are highly Xenophobic.

The free time I had to be on the internet had to be dramatically reduced.

When I checked to see whether Kevin's site (the unofficial official College site?) was still active - I found that it has defunct since 1998 - the effort was short-lived. It appears that only this old man's musings are still monopolising the web.

The layout of Kooler Talk (Web Version) is new. I have standardised it for the three ezines I am running. (Do take a few minutes to read the other drivel I write.)

The contents are also, hopefully, new. At times, at this tender senile age, it is sometimes difficult to remember what one has said just a few minutes earlier. Trying to remember what one has written a couple of years ago is certainly an uphill task.

The jarring obnoxious style, however, will remain the same.

There will be no email intimation or version of this Web Version. The same problems as earlier persist. Many of you who have sent me your email addresses have shifted. You have forgotten to tell everyone (including me) about the shift. Most of the offenders are students or researchers in the US. But that is not the only category of offenders. Sucked into the turmoil of day-to-day survival, things like telling a half frozen out-of-work Father Christmas in the Arctic about the change of an email address will hardly figure red hot on your priority list.

Hence, when I send email to these closed addresses, I get back a load of returned mails (bounced emails). It takes a frightful long time to go through each one and to delete them from my mailing list.

The only mailing list I do maintain is for those Stephanians from my era (late 50's and early sixties) who have been in touch with me and with whom I have been corresponding over the last several years. (We are about 30 or so Stephanians from the fifties and early sixties who are on this mailing list compared with around 600 to 700 on my general mailing list.)

During the intervening period of two years I have had emails from many many Stephanians. These are mainly from young men and women who have chanced on this web site and written to say nice things. It is indeed fortunate that not one person has written to say not so nice things. That is, except for one who complained that I was an old Stephanian who was nostalgic about the past and not in tune with the real spirit of Kooler Talk!!

That young man was not around when Kooler Talk was launched - but I was. And I was the first one who got into trouble with the authorities for my writing about the distribution of aid in the villages around Delhi by our college. So, I feel I know the original Kooler Talk better than anyone else other than the creators (Montek Singh Alhuwallia, Sarwar Lateef, Swaminathan Aiyar, Peter (Tubby) Philip, Prakash Joseph, Mohammedullah, Zaffar Hai and Vice Principal Mr. D. I. Shanklind). Those that followed have only moulded it to their concepts - but without my having set the agenda - their ability to make Kooler Talk what they wanted it to be may have never been what it has been.

I decided at the outset that in this version I would have a sense of nostalgia - and so it has. If you want to change, you can try by submitting articles and letters, but it will not be at the cost of the present cross-generation readership that I now have.

But it is not just from young men and women that I have heard. I had an email recently from Chinmoy Banerjee (you will recall my earlier reference to him with regard to the tea leaves smoking issue) who said thus:

"Col. Shafat Hussain, retired from the Pakistan army, is an ex-Stephanian who has maintained deep attachment to the college. He is living in the Vancouver area."

I have emailed Col. Hussain. Hopefully, I will have a reply in time for one of the future issues of Kooler Talk (Web Version). I am sure that there are lots of you out there who would like to hear from him and his experiences in Stephania and after.

I hope that you will keep these emails coming. It is from these that I am able to jog my memory and create the input that helps keep this (hopefully) an active and interesting site.

Of all the emails that I received, the one which chuffed me the most was the one from the Stephanian and well known writer Shashi Tharoor. You may recall that in KTWV03 - Issue 1:980310 I had mentioned about Shashi who was always a few steps behind Kofi Annan when they were busy bringing some sense to the Iraq crisis. Shashi is also the debating colleague of my other Finnish Stephanian alumni - Prof. Ajeet Mathur. They are about 12 years my junior.

I was organising a conference to be held in Oulu in March 2000. In an effort to try to get the UN Secretary General to attend, I had written a personal note to Shashi. I did not manage to get Kofi as the Finnish Ambassador to the UN, Marjatta Rasi, who had previously been the Finnish Ambassador to India, was unable to get things organised as there was to be a change of President of Finland about the time of my Conference.

However in my correspondence - in true social English style Shashi wrote:

"I have logged in to your KT-on-the web once or twice and found it marvelously well done."

Thanks Shashi - I am sure my grandchildren (two presently) will treasure that sentence.

Mentioning Ajeet means that I have to inform you that the third reunion of the Finnish Stephanian alumni was held over Christmas at my residence in Oulu. As usual, we had 100% attendance, with all two of us present.

Ajeet came to Oulu, not just to be with his fellow Stephanian/Cathedralite, but his ulterior motive was to try to get to see the Northern Lights which often are visible in all its swirling blue, red and golden glory at this high latitude.

When, on the third evening, because of heavily overcast snowy skies, we were unable to see the stars, we were both a bit surprised when my better half said, very confidently, that Ajeet would see the Northern Lights the next evening. I have never heard such a forthright and dramatic statement from her in all my life. I was quite taken aback.

Next day, as we watched the skies eagerly, looking to see if there was any break of clouds to see the stars above, we were not very hopeful. But Annikki was merrily keeping her composure and said again that without fail Ajeet would see the Northern Lights.

Come evening, we sat down to dinner. After a nice meal, Ajeet was planning a walk around the frozen town to see whether Annikki's prediction would come true, when, out of the kitchen walked this cake designer with a recreation of the Northern Lights transfixed in a glass cake bowl. The ground made of chocolate butter covered cake, with a beautiful blue gel topping about six inches (150 cm) deep. Annikki had managed to create the entire Northern Lights effect in the jelly above the cake - quivering dark blue with stars and moon included.

Ajeet and I were dumb struck.

Annikki is famous for her unique cake designs. Much of her work is soon to be published in a photographic book form (and maybe also on the internet) but none of us expected her to fulfill a promise using her cake designs.

Ajeet left back for his southerly abode quite satisfied at having seen something infinitely more unique and beautiful than the Northern Lights!!

And we all had a great laugh!!

Here are the snippets from his alumni reunion report:

* Rauha Annikki, wife of Sushil (Jacob Matthan to some), contributed a special Northern Lights Cake which she designed and made herself and which was a great hit..not a crumb was left as it was polished off by Stephanians/Cathedralites with much appreciation.

* The cake idea arose to make up for the non-appearance of the Aurora Borealis! The year 2000-2001 was forecast to be a spectacular auroral year with spectacular lights around New Moon Day (24-25 Dec) but you know weather forecasters....

* Ajeet Mathur and Jacob Matthan went a-walking through the snow and ice around Oulu past midnight in - 26 C remembering....

Lots of older Stephanians are finding their way onto the internet. But they still seem to be shy of establishing communications using this medium. I know Niranjan Desai, Montek Singh Alhuwalia, Rathikant Basu, Dipankar Basu and Davendra Pratap, are very much active in their own spheres. Niranjan was Ambassador to Egypt when I last heard of him. Montek is somewhere in the Planning Commission after his stint as Finance Secretary. Rathikant has had a rough ride after his time at Doordashan. According to Nirmal Jhala, who met him recently at Delhi Airport, he now heads the new TV group called "tara" which is affiliated to an international network called "worldwide". Dipankar's name has been recently in the news as chairing some Government Committee. Davendra is somewhere in England - he registered at the alumni page recently. He must be a bit riled at me having sent him email where I addressed him by his nickname, coined by me when he was in college - Daisy. I think we gave him the name as he was top of the list during the Miss Fresher's contest.

Just wondering if the Miss Fresher's is still on the JCR agenda?

I had a nice email over Christmas from Dr. Anthony Stone (Tony):

Sender: stone_catend@compuserve.com
Date: Wed, 20 Dec 2000 19:00:20 +0000
From: Dr Anthony P Stone
Subject: Our news

20 Harding Close, Redbourn, St Albans, Herts, AL7 3NT Tel: 01582-626647
Web: http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/stone_catend
December 2000

Dear friends

Happy Christmas & New Year!

It's time we gave you our news, and best wishes for Christmas and the New Year. This year Bertha's heath has not been very good, and Tony has been busy. At the beginning of this year Bertha was having ultraviolet treatment for her skin. This helped it a lot, although it is still itchy. The new development is that she has been diagnosed as most likely having Parkinson's disease. Unfortunately, the doctor has not found any pills without side effects, and Bertha is going back to see the neurologist early in January.

In May, Bertha very much enjoyed a week in respite care in a care home near us, which sadly doesn't offer that any more. During that time Tony went to Berlin or four nights, for meetings about the voluntary work on transliteration standards. Things move slowly, but the work could possibly be completed in 2001. Berlin is a very interesting city, and travelling on the underground is extremely easy, with no ticket barriers (a day ticket can be bought from a machine).

In October, Tony gave a paper entitled 'A model of time for physics and
theology', at a day conference in London. The physics part was done in earlier years, but you can see what he will be studying now! After a long break, Tony is again proof-reading books of the Bible in Oriya, as voluntary work with Compass Braille, which is based in Moretonhampstead, Devon, and led by our friend Lionel Holmes.

At the beginning of December Bertha had two weeks in respite care and Tony visited the West Country. He saw Roger & Susan and family, Roger Rowe (who used to be our pastor, now in West Hill near Ottery St Mary), and Lionel Holmes. Both of us benefited from this rest.

Through the kindness of two friends, Tony's computer was upgraded early in the year, at no cost to him. Now he can play audio CDs on it and see video news reports from The Times of India, as well as from the BBC.

We look forward to 2001 when we shall all agree on what is meant by 'the last century'.

Tony & Bertha

A subsequent message from Tony said:

"At the end of February I am planning to visit Prabhu & Philippa Guptara in Switzerland. His mother is there, too, so we should be talking about Kerala."

Let us hope and offer a prayer for Bertha's speedy recovery.

I have a public apology to make to the Shakespeare Society in that they wanted to raise funds for this years performance. The target was about Rs. 1.5 lakhs. In an effort to help I promised them whatever was possible from my Indian bank account. I wrote to a cousin in India to find out what lay there. Sadly, either they did not get my mail or they ignored it. As a result I just had no idea how much was lying in my local bank account and I could not fulfill my promise.

I promise to make it up to them, or if they are still prepared to take a donation when I do find out what lies in my local bank account, I promise to give them all that is possible from that account.

In my case, as many of you will vouch, I answer all my emails within 48 hours, usually 24. This is because I get close to 300 emails every day. If I leave my correspondence, even for four days, it would take a month to clear the backlog. Only when I am dependent on feedback from outside sources and it does not come, I usually get into a mess.

I do hope the Shakespeare Society will forgive me on this occasion. I hope that any of you who can help them will dig deep into your purses and send your contributions to them, even if it is a bit late.

Contributions to "Bindu Sara Sunny"

To ensure that you are informed when the next issue of Kooler Talk (Web Version) comes on line, I have instituted a new service on this page. The central panel at the very top of this page is that of a Monitoring Service. You will be sent an email every time I change or update this site. It will take you just 10 seconds to complete the formality. It will save you and me a lot of hassle!!

I also have introduced a special feature. I am listing all the Stephanians mentioned in a particular issue, and also as complete a list of web pages of Stephanians. (Most of e presently given LINKS ARE DEAD, DEAD, DEAD...)I would also like to provide the email addresses (if available). For that I would need a individual OK's that this is acceptable. Till then only names of those mentioned will be listed in the column alongside.

And finally, anyone interested to help Sponsor/Advertise in this Web Version or my other two ezines should contact me. I have been lucky to top all the major search engines with my web pages. This page is also no exception. Do read the research report mentioned at the top of the next column and the introduction to the new book written by my wife and myself (see the column alongside) about how we managed to get to this position. It is a fascinating story considering that I am a computer idiot and my wife does not even know how to type.

So long for now. See you in a month.

Regards

Jacob Matthan
Honorary Editor
Kooler Talk (Web Version)
Stephanian 1960 - 1963
JCR President - 1961-1962

Saturday, November 07, 1998

KTWV03 - Issue 5: Thanks to all...

Dear Stephanian,

What kicked my butt into putting up this issue of Kooler Talk (Web Version)?

I have masses of material, but some personal aspects of life have kept my usual active self from being virile on the computer keyboard.

It was two posts that I received in today's mass of email - I get around 300 to 500 every day - Sunday to Saturday. It included the very first negative post about Kooler Talk (Web Version). The other showed up a very dire dry situation in Bombay.

My duty is to bring to light a message which shook me to the very core. It was from one who signed himself as Shujoy Dutta although the email address is of one Gaurav Srivastava!!

Subject: sorry for being so anti your page
Sent: 7/11/98 23:15
From: Gaurav Srivastava, gausri@geocities.com

dear jacob

let me first say how shocked i am that kooler talk has become a chat page for stephanians. inspite of the fact that it was hardly the forum for chatting in college. but then what better way to attract stephanians.

well anyway, college has changed !

little surprise considering the fact that everything around it is changing too. so has kooler talk. in the 4 years that I spent editing and writing for it, it was just a trip-taking ragmag. substituting for spice, the black widow and pretending to be intellectual and snobby. not to mention literate. about 20 people understood the jokes.

am i cynical ?

not really.

college is too. captured by the mtv generation and administered by a group of british raj types. totally mixed up. you wouldn't recognise the place. but it still is a beautiful place.

i miss the cockiness of stephen's in this kooler talk page. i miss kooler talk. and i get very upset by goody-goody stephanians thinking of college as some sort of idealistic Camelot.

sorry for being so anti your page it's just post-college angst.

shujoy dutta.

This not being Kooler Talk, but Kooler Talk (Web Version), which settles the raging debate as to whether I should name this as Kooler Talk (Online) - which it is not, I did promptly reply:

Hi Shujoy,

That is because you were not around when Kooler Talk was launched in 1961-62. It was not an anti-establishment operation then. It was a rag which was meant to be enjoyed by those in college - and it certainly was.

I did write one of the earliest articles of the nature you describe but it was rather an exception. Sarwar, Swami, Montek and Prakash were certainly not anti-establishment, neither were Peter, Zaffar and others who were behind the launch. At that time, I was JCR President and we all enjoyed the issues when they came out.

There was no confrontation except the threat to rusticate the three HEAPS - Niranjan Desai, Ajay Verma and myself!! However, even Princi Sarkar saw sense when it came to investigative journalism.

Thanks for your input, the first negative one in the history of my Web Version - and, of course, there must always be a first. I am however gratified that the readership which spans a good 40+ years of Stephanians, has found this Web Version as one which transcends the generation gap - which was what I was trying to do.

It is possible to castigate a few people but that will not draw the readership - and that was what I set out to do from this remote Arctic corner of the globe, and your letter proves I have reached many (Ed: although the one from Alok, given below, will certainly raise some doubts!!)

Thanks a lot for your input.

Regards

Jacob
Oulu, Finland

Which brings me to the subject of Little Heap - Niranjan Desai. I received this letter:

Subject: Niranjan Desai
Sent: 4/11/98 23:40
From: John Hobbins, john@lib1.lan.mcgill.ca

Hi Jacob:

I notice in your Kooler Talk you mention Niranjan Desai. I am trying to get in touch with a diplomat of that name who in 1966 was working in the Human Rights Division of UN Secretariat. It seems this could be your friend.

Do you have an address for him?

Thank you,

John Hobbins
Associate Director of Libraries,
McGill University, Montreal, Canada.

When I expressed doubt whether Little Heap and the Niranjan Desai of the 1966 era were one and the same, I received further input from John.

Subject: Re: Niranjan Desai 2
Sent: 5/11/98 08:30
From: John Hobbins, john@LIB1.Lan.McGill.CA

Thanks Jacob.

I have found a website that tells me of an Indian diplomat who was recently ambassador to Venezuela and had been Director General of the ICCR and Administrator of the Festival of India. I suspect he is in fact your friend and hopefully also the person I'm looking for.

It seems to be a common name, alas. I have found 8 in the USA alone.

John

Will someone out there tell Niranjan - the original Little Heap of the original Kooler Talk forum, that there is a search party out here looking for him!!

Now comes the second letter that shook me.

But the ones following this from Arpit (in Bombay?) and Akash (in Singapore) should, hopefully, get things sparkling for Alok.

Subject: Re: Kooler Talk (Web Version) latest issue is on line NOW
Sent: 7/11/98 22:06
From: Mr. Aloke Chandra, aloke@blr.vsnl.net.in

Jakes,

Caufth your recommendation for a bottle of Smirnoff for Gopkiran Rao's little gem a bit late - nevertheless, will honour all committments - if only people would TALK to me ! (OK, will settle for message from cyberspace).

Seriously, not one Stephanian in BBY has yet called - my tel no (off) is 495-2558, and, guys - we're in the process of merging with United Distillers (the Johnny Walker guys) so VALHALLA !

Alok

Gopi - hope you collect your due!!

Can what Alok writes possibly be true - or does Alok have to add a dose of Viagra with his offer to get Bombay Stephanians to raise their dopey heads and call him?

Maybe Alok should contact Arpit:

Subject: Re[2]: Kooler Talk (Web Version) latest issue is on line NOW
Date: Thu, 27 Aug 1998 12:42:09 +0900
From: Arpit_Agarwal@pcmailap.japan.ml.com (Arpit Agarwal)

Jacob,

I will send you a little note on the Stephanian Western India
Society in a day or two.

I will also mention the name of some of the extremely well known
Stephanians like the Director of Bandit Queen Movie,
"Shekhar Kapoor", MD of Bajaj Auto Mr. Rahul Bajaj.

Thanks

Arpit

Arpit, I am awaiting that note eagerly. In the meantime, Shekhar has hit the world headlines this last week with his new film ("Elizabeth", I think is the name) which is grossing many a ton in the box-offices around the world!! Well done Shekhar, and hope you give us an exclusive for Kooler Talk (Web Version). What ho, Arpit can you manage that for us? I am sure Alok will compensate you liberally for that act of kindness.

There is an important message I want to get across, possibly from all Stephanian readers of Kooler Talk (Web Version) - hopefully before the Singapore Stephanians get together for their reunion today. It is congrats and all best wishes for a long and happy wedded life to Akash and his newly wed, Manali. (Annikki and I will be celebrating our 32 wedding anniversary in a couple of months time!!)

Here is the message received from Akash from the equatorial region.

Subject: Hi Jacob
Sent: 4/11/98 18:47
From: Akash & Manali, manaliakash@pacific.net.sg

Hi Jacob

As usual, it was a pleasure to go through the Kooler Talk. And I liked the pictures.

An update on the Stephanians in Singapore - we are meeting up this Saturday, Nov 7th. at 7 PM, in a restaurant called Bukhara (Welcome Group).

There are about 30 families here and I shall send you the updated address list and a few photographs after the get-together.

Incidentally, there is a Stephanian who has recently joined Welcome Group as the head of strategy - Nishi Mukherji. He was a faculty at the Asian Institute of Management in Manila and moved back to India last year.

Please note my new Email address:

manaliakash@pacific.net.sg

I got married to the 'best girl in town' - Manali - and decided to change my email address along with my life - I am enjoying my new life - so the bachelors out there, I highly recommend marriage.

Here is for the information for Alok who wanted names of Stephanians in Bombay.

Alok, here are a few names.

Pravin Chatterjee (7572699 - a very enthusiastic Stephanian who has an excellent PR),
Sanjay Sane (TIFR),
Tara George (6121223),
Ricki Husseni,
Vivek Chachi,
Murli Dhar Madhur (Railway Accounts),
Rashmi Shukla Dave (Railways - last heard was ACM goods at 3085555 Ext 212),
Shantanu Nagpal (Tata Administrative Service),
a big gang in Arthur Andersen, and
another big group in TIFR.

My information may be a little dated as I used to be in Bombay a few years ago. We used to have get togethers quite regularly.

Look forward to read the next issue of KT.

Regards

Akash

And now for some real sentimentality and pure nostalgia. I received this message from one Deepak Mukarji:

Subject: Hello
Sent: 28/9/98 16:07
From: Mukarji Deepak, deepakm@lucent.com

Hi Jacob,

It was delightful to have read Kooler Talk on the Web. It brought back a lot of very fond memories of a time past.

The family has had a very close association with the college since the early 1900s. And I am constantly amazed that no matter where I may be, there is someone who knew my father, my cousins, my brother. From the streets of Tokyo to the bars of Cairo and on to the waterfront of Seattle, I have met Stephanian's of every generation. And some have been brought to me by acquaintances.

Most recently, an 80 year old man rang up through a family friend to ask if I could give him a photograph of my grandfather's since he had dreamt of him every night for three months.

I had but one, but willingly parted with it. I was touched that at an age when most people forget all but the most dear, this venerable gentleman remembered little other than his time at St.Stephen's.

I would love to correspond with other Stephanians since in my industry I don't get the opportunity to meet with too many. It was fun for a while in the early nineties when I worked for an organisation where a college friend sat in the cabin next to mine and we had as a wonderfully supportive colleague another Stephanian ahead of us at college by some 10 years. Do keep in touch.

Deepak Mukarji
General Manager
Communications & Operations

I promptly replied asking whether Deepak was the grandson of Principal Mukarji? To which, I received this reply.

Subject: RE: Hello 2
Sent: 30/9/98 07:15
From: Mukarji Deepak, deepakm@lucent.com

Jacob,

Your assumption is quite correct.

My father was Ramesh -- the youngest son of Rai Bahadur S N Mukarji.

As of now only two of the five sons are living -- Sadanand Mukarji and Nirmal Mukarji.

But ... when my father was alive in the early 90s, one warm November morning, Principal John Hala invited him for lunch out of the blue. We thought it rather strange, particularly as my father was recovering from a heart attack. But having spent his childhood growing up at St.Stephen's, my father was excited to be going back and agreed readily despite words of caution from me. Also, he was very fond of Principal Hala.

I drove Papa to the college and as usual went to Alnutt Gate despite his protests. Sure enough the malis and the guards sent us round to the front gate which was wide open with a guard placed to welcome us. Papa couldn't resist his wicked smile saying, "remember, I too am a Stephanian and know which gate to use when".

Principal Hala ushered us in to his office where, for the nth time, I was told by Papa that the chairs in the room were brought by my grandfather from Cambridge. A pleasant cup of coffee in the staff room with many of my teachers whom I was delighted to meet again, and then Principal Hala and Amin Sa'ab coughed gently and requested that Papa please walk through the new library.

Old portrait shots had turned up in the archives and now graced the galleries but no one could identify them. Happily my father straightened up, and for someone who was barely 10 days out of hospital, brought a bounce into his step as he walked the halls of college. An exercise that should have taken 5 mins. ended up taking one hour since my father had to tell me and the others around all about T E Lawrence (of Arabia's) brother and Charlie Andrews (not my nick-name but my father's, since that is how he was taught to address the Rev. Charles Freer Andrews) amongst the many others. He kept his audience regaled with practical jokes played on various members of the staff and his father.

All in all a very warm memory for me today. Just the thought is making me tight in the throat. Lovely to have heard from you and do keep in touch.

Deepak

To this I did express some of the present difficulties in putting up Kooler Talk on time as I was facing a problem on the family front. Our youngest son of 24 is recovering in hospital from a third major surgery during the last three months to his vertebra and he will be unable to walk for a very long time. To which I received this touching reply.

Subject: RE: Hello
Sent: 30/9/98 08:05
From: Mukarji Deepak, deepakm@lucent.com

Jacob,

My heart goes out you and your family. Even though I am not a Roman Catholic, I will visit the Infant Jesus church in Bangalore this afternoon and light a candle for your son. And I promise when I return next week to get Mass said for his complete and speedy recovery. May God bless you and the family in this trying time.

Its amazing but it suddenly got cold for me when I read your note. I look forward to much happier notes about very much happier circumstances in the near future.

With very warm regards to your family.

I am still a happy bachelor and the family for me is Mama and a younger brother. I had a fight with him last week and therefore do not want to discuss him at this moment.

Maybe next week.

Thus a small and close family.

Oh yes! Lucent. It is a break away from AT&T in 1996 and comprises the research, manufacturing and marketing of telecom products that were part of the AT&T stables. I am part of Bell Labs in general management since I really should have graduated in theater having spent more time in SkakeSoc than Eco lectures or Tuts. However, God has been good to me, that in a limited sense, the world has expressed value for my specialised talents of writing, communications and people interface.

Deepak

Deepak - brother's are meant for fighting with. The best part is making up later. The same goes in marriage - (Akash and Manali, please note)!!

Mika, our son is recovering steadily, thanks to prayers being said, like the one by Deepak, for him all around the globe by the many readers of our, now sadly irregular, webletter, Findians Briefings. But it is still a long haul before Mika will walk again. From this, you will probably guess as to one of the reasons for the delay in putting up this issue of Kooler Talk, and probably a few more of the issues to come.

What was enlightening during the intervening period was the message I received about the "unofficial": web site for our college which has been put up by Kevin D'Souza.

Here was his message.

Subject:St. Stephen's College Unofficial Web Site
From: Kevin D'Souza

Dear Alumni,

It's time to update all your Links & Bookmarks. The unofficial website of St. Stephen's College is now on the World Wide Web. It is available at :

St. Stephen's College Unofficial Web Site .

This makes Stephen's one of the few colleges affiliated to Delhi University to have its own website. You have been registered automatically into the alumni directory. If you want to make changes to you existing entry please use the online registration form available in the Alumni page. I would be very grateful if you could visit the site and provide your valuable feedback.

Please do not hesitate if you can contribute in any possible way.

Thanks

Kevin
WEB MASTER

P.S. Kevin D'Souza ( Web master ) is a first year student studying B.Sc. Computer Science. Email Technical enquires to him at kevindsouza@technologist.com

There is a page of links to Stephanian related sites and sure enough, Sreeni from Columbia University and myself, had our links put up almost immediately. May I suggest that all of you put your links on that page.

In that context, Dr. Anthony P. Stone sent me this message:

Subject: Include Web Address Link
From: Dr. Anthony P. Stone

Dear Jacob,

If it's not there already, I should appreciate having my web page listed:

Dr. Anthony P Stone's Home Page

The India section gives some of my experiences. Otherwise a lot of it is mathematics.

Regards

Tony

and here was a message about the change of link address from Royans K Tharakan.

Subject: St. Stephens: my home page has changed
Sent: 7/11/98 16:02
From: Royans K Tharakan, rkt@sprintrpg.com

My Home page address has changed. The bookmark is

Royans K Tharakan

Would be kind of you to reflect the change against my name on your pages.

Regards,

Royans
Sprint RPG India Ltd
+91 11 6961722/6863172

With pleasure Roy.

And now to more nostalgia - if you can stomach it!!

I had written a letter to a few ancient Stephanians like me on the lines of:

"Being one of the oldest Stephanians registered at the Stephanian Alumni Registry, I would be grateful if you would kindly send me a few words about yourself to be included in one of the coming issues of Kooler Talk (Web Version)."

Subject: Re: Hi,
Sent: 14/10/98 01:07
From: Enver Masud, wisdom@twf.org

Judging by the dates, we must have been in Stephens together.

I have two resume's on the web. The shorter one at

E Masud

will lead you to the second. If I can add anything please let me know.

By the way, what do you do in Finland? I was supposed to be traveling to Latvia this weekend, but the trip has been delayed.

I have copied Sanjoy Acharya in Canada - a classmate at Stephens.

Enver Masud

And this was the continuation message including my reply to Enver:

Subject: Re: Hi 2
Sent: 14/10/98 14:59
From: wisdom@twf.org

Jacob wrote:

* Hi Enver,

* Till now, I was claiming to be the oldest Stephanian to maintain a web
* page - but now, and publicly, I will gladly hand over the title to you. I
* did not count Dr. Stone in that calculation as he was not a Stephanian by
* education, but that he later taught Mathematics there.

Enver:

How time flies.

Jacob wrote:

* You passed out in 1959, one year before I joined - but you would have
* been there the same time as my elder brother, Dr. Ranjit Matthan
* (now in Madras), who used to live in Q-block and he was a part of the BSc
* General crowd consisting of Anil Kumar (Annie) now in New
* York, T. J. Joseph (Josey) now in Bangalore and Kazim Raza
* who used to work as a steward inAir India till he died. You may also
* recall Ranjit Jacob who was part of that crowd, who fell off the
* train at Jamuna Bridge and returned to college a year later.

Enver:

You're right. I had the dates wrong. '60 to '63 is when I went to the University of Oklahoma. My memory must not be so good. Sanjoy's seems to be a lot better. I remember a Promod Chakravarty, and perhaps Kazim Raza. He must have been quite young when he passed away.

Jacob wrote:

* Of course, Kamalesh Sharma, now the Indian Ambassador at the
* UN and Arun Guha (who has just recently been in touch) will be
* those who are in touch with me which overlaps with you. You may also
* recall Chinmoy Banerjee who is presently in Canada. Samuel
* Alexander was also probably your time, but in the last few weeks I am
* having a problem with his email contact address.

* Dr. Peter Phlip joined the year you graduated - he lives in Bombay.

Enver:

Now I'm sure my memory is failing. That's what my sister frequently says. I don't remember any of these folks. And I reply that one remembers what one gives priority to, or that which is reinforced by some other incident., etc.

Jacob wrote:

* PS: I live in North Finland about 700 km from Helsinki and very few
* Stephanians reach here - except possibly Prof. Ajeet Mathur, who
* lives in Tampere, Finland - grand reunion of the two Stephanians in
* Finland whenever we get the chance!!

Enver:

That is way up where it must be really cold. I assume you've learned to ski. My colleagues in Riga come from Norway. I've made several trips there. If it weren't so cold I might have considered relocating. It is beautiful, and the people somewhat more civilized than here in the U.S.

Best wishes,

Enver

But I had a more informative message from Sanjoy, even though in his first message (not included here) he did take me for being a cross between my brother, Dr. Ranjit Matthan and Ranjit Jacob, both being his year mates!!

Subject: Re: Hi 3
Sent: 14/10/98 04:30
From: Sanjoy Ahcarya, acharyas@idirect.com

Hello Jacob,

Yes, Enver and myself were indeed classmates together during Raja Ram's tenure at St.Stephen's.

We both scraped through "Compulsory Hindi".

We both enjoyed our 3 years at SS and the University of Delhi, under professors such as Dr. Kichhlu (Physics), Harnam Singh, Dr. Bannerjee (Physical Chemistry), etc. Mr. Sarkar and Mr. Nagpal taught us Mathematics at the SS home base.

We were both day boarders, but stayed for lunch at the college refectory.

Personally, I loved Wednesdays when we had Kaddhi and puri, so I used to sit at the "veg" table that day, even though I was a "non-veg" person normally.

Anyway, we both passed our B.Sc. degrees and I went to London, England to complete my Electrical Engineering degree. I worked at various companies in the UK, got married to Ann and had 3 children, Lalita, Ranjan and Manjula.

Then in 1998 we emigrated to Canada.

I currently work for Atomic Energy of Canada as an Instrumentation Engineer.

Regards to all Stephenians.

From the Acharya family.

Is it really possible that someone liked any college food served in the Mess? The days I was on the Mess Committee when I was JCR President, the complaints I had every week were mile long - the only acceptable stuff on the table being the green mirchis and the onions - now, I understand, in scarce supply in Delhi. Must be a riot in the Stephanian mess!!

Believe it or not, I must stop now, even though I am loaded wth great post from Stephanians from all corners of the globe (such as Arun, Amit, David, Reji, Deepu, Mariam, etc.....). I do read all my mail - that I prpmise. I will get around to putting up all your comments in some of the coming issues - that I promise, although I cannot quite promise it will be on time as previously.

Don't stop writing as I have the desperate urge to prove to Shujoy that Kooler Talk (Web Version) is something that Stephanians around the world appreciate and enjoy, not because it is just for chatting, but because we all have something to say and contribute to each other's lives - as Deepak's prayers in Bangalore have helped me and my wife, and our son, tremendously.

A short while ago, when the existence of all my web efforts was under threat, over 200 of you around the world sent me cheques to continue this page. Luckily, the issue was resolved and I was able to return all of the cheques, UNUSED!!

That spontaneous response showed me how supportive our community is online, and how much this effort of mine is valued. So, despite Shujoy's comment, I intend to continue it in the same framework, albeit, irregularly. Hope Shujoy will contribute some of those non-understandable jokes for us to digest.

Your Kooler Talk (Web Version) Honorary Editor

Jacob

Saturday, August 22, 1998

KTWV03 - Issue 4: St. Stephen's is TOPS

Dear Stephanian - wherever you are,

There has been a gap of three months since my last issue. The reasons are plentifold - but I have not vanished from the face of the earth - my heart is still pumping away.

My fellow Stephanian in Finland, Prof. Ajeet Mathur (1975 Economics) graced our home again last week on a flying visit, our second reunion of this year - he arrived by the 7.32 from Tampere and away on the 22.12, back to the industrial city of South Finland.

I wonder how many of you heard our own Kamalesh Sharma, Indian Ambassador to the UN, give his piece about the UN attitude to India after the tests. I think that his views were probably the most focussed that I have heard expressed by any diplomat. The Stephanian in him was pouring out through every decibel that he uttered. I wrote to him about his profound rebuttal to his interviewer and this was his email reply.

From : Kamalesh Sharma, PR, New York

To : Mr Sushil Jacob Matthan, Finland

I am sorry I have taken a while in responding to your message of 6th June, which I was delighted to receive.

I was interested to learn that you had heard the BBC broadcast in which I was interviewed. I thought nobody paid attention to these things and that this was something done by radio journalists to earn a living !

I am delighted to know that Kooler Talk is still kicking and has kept up with the IT revolution.

Great to hear from you.

Kamalesh Sharma

I had lots of other email during this period and here is the pick of them. This message from Luke was most inspiring.

From: Luke George Haokip
Subject: Kooler Talk
Date: Thu, 25 Jun 1998 04:48:37 PDT

Dear Mr Matthan,

I passed out from college in 1995. Since then I have been working with Outlook, India's "Most Exciting" Weekly News magazine. I know your loyalties lie elsewhere (The Week - the Matthews). But his (Stephanian Philip Mathew's) sons are good friends (Amit and Riyadh..hey, no offence but Outlook's definitely better)

Stephanians are almost everywhere as we keep reading in "Kooler Talk Online" (please remember it is I who first called it Kooler Talk Online - KTO).

( Ed: Maybe it is worth taking a vote whether we should adopt this name or whether we keep using the name "Kooler Talk - Web Version." I like both. I leave it up to you to put me right and maybe to give Luke his day and place in our Online History .)

Outlook is published by Deepak Shourie (another Stephanian) who was in Eco sometime (?) back (younger bro of Arun Shourie) And then in the editorial we have quite a few Stephanians..

I must say that it is very satisfying (?) to read about Stephanians and identify yourself with them... whatever that means and achieves.. I used to cringe at people whenever they brought the Stephanian thing on.. still do.. but it is kind of fun to have something exclusive!!!!! But really - we must restrict it just to "FUN".

( Ed: Let me assure Luke that whatever I have ever done is for FUN, for me. Hence, unless this was FUN, I would not be doing it. But I cannot say that it is fun for anyone else, although from my mailbag, I seem to sense that a lot of others are having FUN with me!)

In NDTV (Prannoy Roy's) 80% of the people are Stephanians so they say. So, if you are a Stephaninian you stand a good chance to get employment there. But - if you are a Bong (Bengali) and a Stephanian (i.e., Stephanian Bong) then even God can't stop you. WHAT IS THIS... kind of dark humour. (Ed: In some circles it may be called LUKE's PONG HUMOUR or its more traditional Stephanian name PJ.)

I don't know how it was during your time but when I was in college we had several "types" of "Groups" we had the Mallus; Bongs; The Harrys; The Chinkis; Mayoites (that is everyone who relentlessly went to the gym and came for meals together in a line - always a group of more than 10 - this included mayoites, doscos and a lot of Rajputs.

( Ed: I can remember some groups when guys first came into college (mainly the Doscoites), but that vanished very quickly as we became Stephanians. Of course, you did identify with your "groups" on certain issues, but it was not a factor for very long. When I was rather uniquely elected as JCR President in my second year, I had the support of all, across the year divide as well, and despite the groups card being raised by some - it just did not work that way during our time. Issues were far more important.)

Now, when I got into College, I was straightaway classified into one of these groups - The Chinkie. And now the thing was they don't get ragged. Every evening (I was in Rud North) all my neighbours were called to various rooms and it looked like they had a lot of fun getting ragged even though they always complained..

My routine after 10:00 and signing of the "Reg" was to sleep lamenting my fate (of not being ragged).

One day someone knocked at my door (I was without a roommate for 3 months) and growled "hey fuccha (i.e., a combo of fresher and baccha) so raha hain, wake up"

I was like "Yes!! finally someone to rag me."

This guy was really aggressive. When I opened my door he just barged in and got a hold of me - then he realized his fatal mistake "Oh huh its a chinkie - Hi i am Arvind Vepa, III year History.. You are... "

"I am Luke first year..."

"Huh nice meeting you Luke, my room is in Rud South any problems let me know..."

Now, that is my ragging experience (hey, it wasn't really Arvind it was someone else.. just can't remember the name)

Then there were so many guys in rez who I remember - apart from people I'm still in touch with - there was Saurav Sen who is in Merton (ox, Unimesh (Cambridge), Parthasarthy Singh Rathore, Tommy, Shen, Kitto (All Mukh East alias the Far east.. I thought Mukh East was a km away from the main college block in my first.

Getting back - Saurav Sen was studying to get the Radhakrishnan Schloraship to go to Oxford - he used to study 16 hrs a day!!!??? And I was his neighbour.. It was not unusual for him to walk into my room in the middle of the night and he would try to explain to me very graphically "the theory of chaos" and some principles of some math funda.. It was quite amazing.... Then he was very amazed at how I could throw a knife and always get it "stuck" on the door.. He used to do that to relax late at night... bang bang bang, and when I went to check up on him once, he nearly killed me.....

Now I know I have been tedious.. but really after reading kooler talk - moa mind took a jog thru mem'ry lane -

Luke George Haokip

Anyone else feeling like that. Meanwhile, I had a very nice message from an ex-editor of Kooler Talk:

From: Mr. C.K. Joseph

My email id is sandeepjoseph@hotmail.com

I was one of the editors of KT during the early 90s - 93-94, I think. It was great time to be young, for ideals, the clear stream of reason flowed, India was liberalising... all in all, a good time was to be had.

And we had it, me and some friends, down by the kooler, or the cafe, with hari mohan and bhaiyyan to serve us mince cutlets...

or in the lawns, or playing block cricket ( Ed: Can anyone wise me on this block cricket thing)... bye bye miss american

pie...love..ad dei gloriam...

CKJ

CKJ has that rumbling feeling in his stomach, the same that churns mine when I think of Ganga, Dolly, Shelly and Sebastian and Sukhia!!

Now, here was a message about the Top 10 Colleges of India sent to me from a soulmate Stephanian (i.e., if you read the last few lines of his message). The rest of the message and the link should chuff you all up a bit.

jacob

i trust you've seen the results of the india today survey on the best college in india? if not, here is where you go:

Top 10 Colleges of India by Vijay Jung Thapa

cheers,

david c king, toronto, canada
tel: (905) 305-7720 fax: (905) 305-7714 net: raga@the-wire.com, raga@usa.net

"The amount of intelligence in the universe is a constant. Unfortunately, the population keeps increasing". -- Arthur C Clarke

"An ancient eastern proverb says: I complained because I had no shoes; then I met a man who had no feet. For the 90's: I complained because I had no PowerMac; then I met a man who used Windows." --Cloyce Sutton

Get a Macintosh! There's no better!!

Sreeni did send me the full text of this article as well but so as to not violate copyright law I am not reproducing it here, but repeating the above link. But the message from Dr. Tara Chand to Sreeni is included below.

Date: Mon, 6 Jul 1998 15:32:22 -0400 (EDT)
From: Sreenath Sreenivasan
Subject: IT & St. Stephen's

hello, hello... i received the following note from prof. tara chand at SSC and thought i would share it with you. turns out that india today has repeated last year's package on india's top colleges and once again, a certain college in delhi has done pretty well.

as you may recall, last year's listings had some controversy, so they seem to have made it a little more scientific this year, and have done a better job of explaining their methodology. last year, for example, presidency-cal had a better individual score in every category, but SSC was rated ahead of presidency overall (grin)...

below you will find dr. tara chand's note, followed by excerpts from the IT article stolen from the web. most of the IT package is available at

Top 10 Colleges of India by Vijay Jung Thapa

that's it... trust you are all having a nice summer...

cheers, sree

sreenath sreenivasan | columbia graduate school of journalism
ss221@columbia.edu * 212-854-5979 * 2950 broadway, nyc 10027

---------- Forwarded message ----------

Date: Sun, 5 Jul 1998 19:38:11 +0500 (GMT+0500)
From: TARA CHAND tarac@giasdl01.vsnl.net.in
Subject: On top once again

Dear Sree,

The India Today-ORG-MARG poll has once again rated St.Stephen's as India's best college, both in Arts and Science categories.

Arts
1. St.Stephen's
2. Presidency, Calcutta
3. St.Xavier's, Calcutta

(There is no other Delhi college in the top 10)

Science
1. St.Stephen's
2. Presidency, Calcutta
3. St.Xavier's, Mumbai

(LSR and Hindu figure in the top 10 )

Commerce
1. SRCC, Delhi

Engineering
1. IIT, Mumbai & IIT, Kanpur (tie)

Medicine
1. AIIMS, New Delhi

Law
1. National School of Law, Bangalore

With warm regards

Tara Chand

In the past three months I discovered an uncle, but my junior, and his mail is interesting to us Stephanians. I guess he may also be a Stephanian. It is sort of implied.

Dear Matthan achayan (Ed: a form of respect to an elder amongst us Mallus)

I am Philip Kandathil Pothen of Nedumbroth Kandathil, Purackal branch of Tiruvalla. Presently, I am in New Delhi. I am, Founder and Director of AV&T Foundation and AV&T group of companies. AV&T is the largest access control system company. You can see us at vingcard.com and glplus.com.

I will read the Stephanian's magazine and also forward to Rev Valsan Thambu of St. Stephens. (Ed: Someone could wise me on this Reverend.)

Philip Kandathil Pothen

The prize, however, for the best email received goes to this message from Gops. Maybe some of you can work on Alok (Alok Chandra now at International Distillers in Bombay) to donate a bottle, or better still a crate, of his fabulous product range for the best email of the month - obviously to be split with fellow Stephanians in the locality!! A parallel crate for the judge - me, would be well in order while I rack my grey cells to arrive at the final decision every month.

From: Gopkiran V. Rao
Subject: Blacksmith's lads
Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1998 11:11:58 -0700

Dear Jacob,

As a result of what must be a singularly nasty and unique genetic defect, I am seized by great gushes of paralysing pleasure when I chance upon all things Stephanian. I first chanced upon your page three years ago when I was still a cuckold in the harbours of bonny bombay. I read, then I got mistyeyed and froze.

I've made some progress westward ho since then, and today, after being seized with similarly painful convulsions of pleasurable reading through KT I was almost prone to tuck away another bookmark... and re-retire to solemn nostalgic contemplation.

But I have in a manner of speaking grasped my bull by the horns and thus this self affirmative missive to all at large. More so, as it appears that many of my time that passed through the portals of KRC's and Mr. Malhan's eco classes and rudra north in the grand years of 1990-93 have been similarly seized with paranoid anonymity in great gusto.

I'm glad to see your efforts to maintain the tenuous links of contact are so fruitful and I would certainly enjoy keeping up with the fruit of the loom, especially now that I am now once again, ex post the groves of academe, on the brink of unemployment.

Gopkiran V. Rao (Gops)
From that almost last outpost of natural beauty
Monterey, California

First, let me state that unemployment is a state of mind - although I have no visible means of support from a job myself, I have not considered myself unemployed for a moment as there are so many things to do, like outputting this Web Version of Kooler Talk to fill my life - and, of course, all six foot two of me careering after my toddling grandson.

Like me, and most of Kooler Talk hard copy editors before my Web Version, Gops has the absolute knack of putting down 10 lines which sound great, but translate to the gibberish nostalgia that I manage to pump up regularly - without any help from Viagra!!

Keep writing folks - there are a whole herd of lurkers out there - and by my last count almost 600 of them, that are devouring this junk as heartily as they flushed down the scrambled eggs with tamatar on toast with some of that great chay from the canteen, while flipping the matchbox.

The early summer in Finland was excellent in that the 24 hour sunshine was as it should be - but as July wore on into August, the rainy weather has tended to prevail. The cold is now setting in. Today I noted the first signs of yellowing of the leaves. Autumn will be upon us shortly and soon there will not be many leaves left on the trees. However, the scenery in September is glorious as all the shades of yellow and red paint the skyline, whichever direction you look, and as the days grow shorter and the leaves fall to the ground, we shall be waiting for the first snowfall to brighten up the long dark days and to see the northern lights as they dance majestically in the sky above.

Sorry for this lengthy issue and HOPEFULLY more next month,

Your Kooler Talk (Web Version) Honorary Editor

Jacob

Friday, May 22, 1998

KTWV03 - Issue 3: Check-in time

Dear nostalgic Stephanian,

Guess what, on the 30th of April through to 2nd May, we had a Stephanian Finland Alumni Reunion, held at my residence, and we had 100% attendance (even poor Sree can claim that sort of success) - can any other chapter claim such a feat!!

All two of us were present - Prof. Ajeet Mathur from the industrial town in South Finland, Professor of International Business Studies at the Unversity of Tampere and Visiting Professor at the Helsinki School of Business Administration, and yours truly.

My dear wife tolerated all our chit-chat and served up some delicious food - Indian cuisine on one evening followed by Chinese the next - so remember to let me know if any of you are happening to visit this northernmost outpost in Scandinavia, and maybe we can organise another such reunion.

Here is some mail I received from Stephanians around the world.

Date: Sat, 04 Apr 1998 05:45:57 PST
From: Vikas Sahni email address supplied
Subject: A Stephanian in Dublin

I was in college for 6 years, 1980-86. I did my B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Physics, and then taught for a year.

I currently teach in Hansraj College.

I am in Dublin till 8th May.

I chanced upon Kooler Talk, while surfing around looking for old friends, and have spent a couple of hours visiting your site.

Is the real stuff (YES - SPICE) also available on the Web ?

Thanks,

Vikas Sahni

Date: Mon, 06 Apr 1998 01:08:35 PDT
From: Vikas Sahni

Hi Jacob,

Thank for your reply.

As far as SPICE is concerned, KOOLER TALK has always tried to parody it, but failed ! No wonder, dear editor, that you have not been able to lay your hands on even a single issue of Spice.

When I was in college, Spice was the variety of life, and Kooler Talk existed only to be parodied in the next issue of Spice.

Do you also send the new issues by e-mail ?

(Ed: Sadly, No, as I get more returned mail then receipts as our very considerate 475 Stephanians in over 70 countries are too busy to let me know their change of addresses!!)

Date: Wed, 08 Apr 1998 00:56:14 PDT
From: Vikas Sahni

Hi Jacob,

Thank you for your reply. I agree with you - email addresses change so frequently that I and many of my friends are using hotmail or usa.net accounts for stability.

(Ed: This was nice till some ISP's have put these two free service providers on their spam return list, so I hardly use that address for sending mail.)

I'll read the web version, and as you have mentioned, will print it and circulate it among my circle (Ed: Make a nice large one wth someone in there who can help sponsor some issues!!) when I am back in Delhi.

Vikas Sahni

Date: Wed, 22 Apr 1998 04:07:08 PDT
From: alex joseph email address supplied
Subject: Fellow STEPHANIAN

Dear Sir,

I was browsing the net when I came across the Stephen's website. (Ed: This is not an official Stephen's web site, and I do not want to claim it to be, too much of a responsibility for this dinosaur - just my musings!!)

My name is Alex and I am also a Malayalee who, like you studied, in this great Alma Mater of ours.

Hope to hear from soon.

May God bless you and your family.

With regards,

Alex ( class of 97)

Date: Thu, 23 Apr 1998 06:32:15 PDT
From: alex joseph
Subject: Thanks a ton

Dear Sir,

Thank's a million for your prompt reply. I am currently working for a buying house as a management trainee in the textiles division. I really like this field and am looking for opportunities in this field.

Are Indian textiles well received in Finland? (Ed: Yes, but sadly they are squeezing the blood out of our producers!!)

Sir, someday I plan to start my own business in this field and It all depends on God's grace.

Lets see how things work out in the near future.

Are there lots of Malayalees in Finland? (Ed: Alex, where in the world are there NOT tons of Malayalees?)

Do let me know sir once again thanks.

With Regards,

Alex

Date: Wed, 06 May 1998 13:49:58 PDT
From: juno V email address supplied
Subject: Mission college kooler yet

1967 graduate, Allnut North, various rooms, I believe h2 then h4. Few lines for Katy 1965-66?

Some of those who appear on the KT surfed a few minutes ago well remembered - Rajen, Philip. Not mentioned, but in this part of the wuruld - Arun Chacko at the WWF Trust Geneva, Rishpal Singh might still be the Gen Consul at Geneva (did not call back last month, so might be elsewhere now). Arif Hussain is also at Geneva. Brijesh Khandaria as well.

In Luxembourg a 54 graduate: Yogeshwar. Sharp clear mind, twinkling eyes.

And that leaves yours truly,

Verghese Varkki /Juno.

Were these not nice letters to receive?

And now for a diversion with couple of pictures of my grandson, Samuel, on the wings of his plane with my son-in-law, Computer Wizard Tony, and in-flight with his English philologist mom - who works as a Technical Writer for Nokia, my younger daughter, Joanna. I am working on the little fellow (already) and her to send Samuel to Stephania!! Hopefully, sometime soon, I will find an excuse to steal in in some photographs of my devastatingly beautiful granddaughter, Asha, her mom, Susanna, and my other son-in-law Chris, who is a brilliant violinist and musician (or so says his father-in-law)!!

Samuel with his father, Tony

Samuel with his mother, Joanna

For all of you who wrote in concerned about the accident that all three of them were involved in, as you can see from the pictures above, they are all fit and well. We, however, discovered that the accident was not due to black ice as I had reported, but the front axle of their Citroen, which they had bought just recently, had snapped. It was God's grace that they survived.

More next month,

Your Kooler Talk (Web Version) Honorary Editor

Jacob

Saturday, April 11, 1998

KTWV03 - Issue 2: Jumping gates

Dear Stephanians in many parts of the world,

I have a slight problem in that my hard disk is so full that most of my email lies on my server. I have to compress and put away several of my programmes on my hard disk. As a result most of the addresses of Stephanians world-wide have been stashed away till better times. (Would you believe that I am managing three webletters and all my other work with just a 120MB Hard Disk and one 100MB Zip Iomega Disk!!)

If any of you are in Ireland - please contact me as we have one visiting Stephanian who is anxious to contact any others who may be there. I do know there are a couple of you on my mailing list who are in Ireland - so if you do get some time drop me a line so that I can put you in touch.

Spring is supposed to be upon us here near the Arctic, but we had heavy snowfall last week and the temperature dipped to -12 Centigrade.

Our daughter had a close shave when she, her husband and our little one year-old grandson were returning from a trip to see the ice castle, which has become a popular tourist attraction during the winter months in a town about 1-hour north of us. As she was driving down the highway on a road which seemed absolutely dry, she saw a patch of what she thought was just water across the road. Before she realised it, the car was slithering out of control as she had hit what we call a stretch of black ice.

Joanna says she does not know what she did, but she managed to reduce the speed of the car as it slid from the fast lane into the slow lane, doing a couple of full circles in the process. As the car continued to slither, it rammed into the packed snow at the side of the road, on the driver's side, and did one more spin before it finally came to rest.

Her husband had just finished feeding our grandson and did not have his seat belt on, but seeing what was happening, managed to cover his head and lay down on the back seat. Little Samuel was safe in his new and expensive car seat that they had bought for him just a week before. He screamed his head off but was totally protected by the seat belt and the excellent seat design.

Cars stopped and the police were there in less than 5 minutes, but there had been no physical damage to anyone. They were all badly shaken, and as the breath test proved, no-one had had any alcohol - Joanna is a tea-totaller, anyway.

Passers-by helped to drag the car back on to the road and Tony limped it back home, which was just about 15 minutes away. One can truly say that God was with them those few moments and saved them any real tragedy.

So you can see, that we are still living in difficult wintry conditions even at this time of the year when many of you are shedding your clothes and complaining about the heat.

Getting back to the sixties, I want to recall a few moments of those days when we used to jump gates to go and see a late night movie. After the movie we used to go to some cheap coffee shop 'dhaba' and spend a few minutes there till we worked out our strategy to get back to college. As we were usually 6 to 8 in the group, we usually had a tough time talking to a taxi driver to get him to accept a reasonable price to cram all of us into his cab (usually it worked out at a rupee per head).

And the route - the Dharayaganj route was taboo as we had to pass to many police points, so it was always the route past New Delhi railway station and past St. Stephen's Hospital till we were deposited a safe distance from the college somewhere on top of the ridge. From there we would work our way back into college and jump in through the hedge behind Mukarji Block.

On one occasion we had all gone through, save, I think, Ajay Verma, when we noticed Dean Rajpal out for a midnight stroll. As we tried to whisper to Ajay to stay put till the coast was clear, Dean Rajpal hearing some sounds decided to come our way. We fled. Ajay was midway through the fence when he saw Dean Rajpal approaching. Luckily there were no lights just at that spot and by the time Dean reached the gaping hole in the fence, Ajay had got through and fled.

The next day there was a great dal of activity as Dean Rajpal personally supervised the mending of the barbed wire fence. There was a stern talk given to all the gyps of Mukarji block that they were to report if any further holes in the fences were noted by them.

Within a week - half a dozen holes were again opened in that hedge and it stayed that way right through my time in college!!

More next month,

Your Kooler Talk (Web Version) Honorary Editor

Jacob