Some things never change

Back in the days, I am told, the first students of Westcott were four orphan european girls. I imagine them as little girls with flaxen hair and soft eyes. I wonder if they were same age,  or different. I wonder what they felt when they first arrived at Namkum station tightly clutching their small suitcases and stepped off the train , still hissing with the smoky steam. Back then, Namkum was just a very tiny station with nothing much but a small shed for the station master amidst the thick forest. 

Our school was then just a small building with two rooms which were later called the old dining hall, the main office , the main corridor and the multipurpose hall. There were no extensive blocks of building as there are now, and also no electricity. The teachers quarters by the litchi trees by the hall (where incidentally now my family lives) used to be the hostel. 

Those girls must have spent their first night in one of the rooms in the hostel . It almost makes me shiver with excitement to know that one of those rooms could have been the same room where I have slept since my childhood. Were they curious of what future had in store for them, were they looking forward to a  life in a school which was as new to them as they were to the school? Did those four girls become life- long friends and did they find family within each other? 

Until 1976 , when my mother joined the school as a young girl about the same age as I am now, the first block was still being built and the jungles were still dense and wild. There was  wildly erratic electricity but most often that not , they had to depend on the paraffin lamps called petromax. Every night, the loud cry of jackals would reverberate through the clear night air along with the whistle of the train and the gatekeeper would escort people through the school campus carrying a long wooden stick and the paraffin lamp. The first floor for the hostel in the first block had then been built - and you could still hear the occasional giggles of little girls in the dormitories. 

As the school grew, the second and third blocks were built around the 1980s. And now they are also building a fourth block. Many changes have taken place so far. And yet,in the midst of changes, there some things which never change. Even now if you take a walk around the school campus at night ,you still can hear the whistle of the night train, the occasional giggles of little girls and the beat of the gatekeepers stick on the concrete ground as he takes his security round through the campus.

                                                       The main building of the school as in December 2010. 
                                                          The green lights are christmas celebration lights. 

The very beginning

I want to begin from the beginning. The beginning of Westcott not as we know it, but of how it came to be.    
You must have often walked down the corridors of the first block , either during the tiffin or the lunch breaks or even during the quiet class hours, and passed by the portrait of Bishop Foss Westcott looking down at you. I know I have. Countless times. And I have always stopped and looked at his picture for a few moments before I walked on, stared at his kind, smiling, bluish-grey eyes.I've wondered about his story , about what kind of person he might have been and what aspirations might have led him to build the school.


Historically, the journey dates back to about one and a half centuries ago in 1844, when four german Lutheran Christian missionaries set off from Europe to the mountains of Tibet. They traveled across the sea and were en route in Calcutta (now Kolkata) when they met a few ‘adivasis’ from Chota Nagpur (then, a combined name for Bihar, Jharkhand and Orissa) and through a twist of fate decided to follow them to Ranchi instead. The story goes that it took them 15 days to cover the distance from Calcutta to Ranchi on a horse driven cart.

Later in 1868, these german missionaries were replaced by priests of the Church of England and a certain Rev.J. C. Whitley was made superintendent of the Church in Chota-nagpur area. Whitley worked until 1904 and then passed on his responsibilities to his nephew, Rev. Bishop Foss Westcott- the founder of our school. 

This is the period when our school was first built.With just 125 students enrolled in the first year of its inception, the schools also served as a make shift hospital in world war II.  In 1914 , when the German missionaries in Chota Nagpur stopped getting supplies from Germany and were in grave financial constraints, Bishop Westcott appealed to all the Missions in India and asked for help on their behalf. Due to his efforts, the missionaries got Rs 70 per month to cover their expenses. In 1919, Bishop Foss Wescott became the Bishop of Calcutta and Metropolitan of India and continued to work in India until his death in 1949 in Darjeeling. 

  While I was researching some of these information, I came across some interesting articles and notes written by him on when our school was being built .Can you imagine my thrill and excitement?

Hill schools in the Himalayas were not only filled, but had long waiting lists, and in many cases fees and railway fares were more than our people could meet. Except in Jamshedpur, where Rs. 75,000 are annually spent on education, there are few good schools on the plains, and in any case the climatic conditions are injurious to growing children. The Provincial Government was also alive to the need and offered a splendid site at Namkum, near Ranchi, and one-half the capital cost up to a limit of Rs. 175,000 if the S.P.G. would undertake to provide a similar sum to provide and manage two good boarding schools, one for girls and one for boys, with dormitory space for 125 pupils in each. This enterprise was undertaken in 1920, and, as a memorial of the great services of the Metropolitan in this diocese, the schools were called the 'Bishop Westcott Schools."

"The Girls' School, power-house, etc., has now been built, and two years ago the Community of St. Denys, Warminster, with splendid courage undertook to provide the teaching staff. Accordingly, under the management of Sister Barbara, as Principal of the School, the Bishop Westcott School for Girls was opened in March 1922, and the first part of the programme was finished. "

" The buildings of the Boys' School have been begun, but some £3000 required to complete the project has not yet been raised. It is impossible for the diocese to run into debt, so the undertaking must mark time until the money is found."

These notes left me with strange feeling, of connecting with Bishop Foss Westcott  in a way I never had before. It was almost as is he was speaking to me himself - and ofcourse, I was being quite fanciful in my imagination. 

But Westcott kind of does that to you, doesn't it?

PS: If you are interested in knowing more on the history of the Church of England where I drew most of my information from- you can visit this link.