Carol Service December 1978

And while we are on the subject of music...here are two pictures from the Carol Service held in the old School Hall

Music Maestro - Barbara Thomas

The Bell Rings… “Pens down girls….its the SINGING PERIOD”!!!
Gladly….the girls stopped wrestling with Fleming’s Left Hand Rule, Avogadro's number, Goh Cheng Leong's geographic definitions, the finer points of Akbar’s Din-i-Ilahi and Otto Bismarck’s plan for the Unification of Germany and made their way to the Singing Room. This is one occasion when hardly anyone straggled as they made tracks out of the quad…past the cycle stand, school toilets, pantry rear entrance, bathoo’s domain and tailor’s shed… and headed into the Chapel side entrance of the boarding block to the suite of Music rooms on the ground floor.

Music Maestro Mrs Barbara Thomas, more than the “Pied Piper that beckoned” was always at her piano. With good humour and an unparalleled passion for her art, she single-handedly transformed scores of discordant caterwauling noises to (dare I say ) voices of angels!!!! Scales, Rounds, Ditties, Folk, Religious, Classics and Contemporary…we did them all….who can forget the medley of My Fair Lady and the bewitching sounds of the Bohemian Rhapsody [yes very trendy then...and a still a hot fave today - my 18 year old is impressed that his Mum was taught to sing this in school in 1977]

Mrs Thomas' effort was relentless, her attention to detail - meticulous and the results - always spectacular… whether it was the Inter Class Singing Competitions, special choir numbers at School Prize Day or St Peter’s Evensong services, the fully choreographed events at the Carol Services…or the mega productions that began with Bluebeard once the new Auditorium was completed! Other successes followed...to read more check out the photos and piece on the famous Madras Choir Competition on this the blog!

Thanks Glenis Thomas (nee Mulleneux), who sent us this picture of Barbara Thomas taken in 2005 during a visit to Australia.

It’s lovely see Mrs Thomas looking so well and active. Readers will be pleased to know she continues to teach her beloved music - which as she remarked in a recent email “Keeps me in touch with young people, and hopefully their influence keeps my mind fairly trendy!!”

Cotton's Teachers circa 1950s

Here's another picture sent in by Celia, of the teaching staff at school during the 50s.

Emily Pharoah (Celia's aunt) is in the middle row, 6th from the left. Mr. Godbole, Hindi teacher is far right, top row, Miss Susheela is top row 3rd from left, and Miss Suares is middle row 2nd from the right.

Just in case the caption is hard to read, here is the list again (if anyone knows the missing names - or has more info on any of the people in the picture, do let us know so we can grow our history book!):

Top Row (left to right): Mr. Ramamurthy, Mrs. Galloway, Miss Sushila, Mrs. Whitbread, T5, Mrs. Pereira, T7, T8, T9, Mr. Godbole

Middle Row: M1, Mrs. Latt, Mrs. Robey, Miss Mortimer, Miss Britto, Miss Pharoah, Miss Mulley, Miss I. Stevens, Miss Stevens, Miss Suares, Mrs. Fewkes

Front Row: Mrs. Arkley, Mrs. Clark, Miss Moore, Mrs. C. Gaughan, Mrs. Schiff, Miss Biddy Scott, Miss Millington, Miss Holder, Mrs. Robinson

Sports Day 1962

Celia (Joyce) Fivash sent in this picture - here she is collecting the cup for Maiden House who won that year. Celia was captain of Maiden House, and she's also one of 10 girls from her batch who are getting together for a reunion of the 1962 batch in Bangalore in January 2009.

Reunion - batch of 1962

Not bad for us Old Girls (well, we can give the Internet a little credit too!) We have been reaching out and as a result, have been getting in touch with OCs around the world, with news and info and pix hopping about from continent to continent till they arrive here! This picture has travelled from New Jersey to Sydney to Bangalore!

Here's a picture of a "mini-reunion" of some of the batch of 1962, sent in by OC Gail Mendens (also batch of '62) from Sydney Australia. The girls in the picture are (left to right) Arti, Rama, Kala, Nalini and Malini, (sorry, don't know their surnames or maiden names) and the reunion took place in New Jersey USA in September this year.

A word (well, several) in thy green and gold ears ..

Cottons Girls is growing by leaps and bounds. Now, in addition to this blog, we've also set up an online group at Yahoo. It's easy enough to join, and you can use your existing email address to post messages. In addition to writing messages, there's also a database section on the group - one contains a list of all the Old Girls (with batch, house, and current location - for privacy reasons only the country is listed) and a second list contains all the staff. Of course it's still under construction, but we hope to build up a complete listing of every Old Girl one day!

Here on the blog, if you'd like to be a contributor do let us know. As a contributor, you can write articles and post pictures. About posting comments - many girls said they had difficulty with this, I have corrected our settings and you should be able to post now, regardless of whether you're a gmail user or not. However, comments will be "moderated" which means that one of us contributors will have to approve the message before allowing it to appear on the blog. This is just to reduce spam and make sure no one posts sensitive information.

Please remember this blog is in the public domain - so do use your judgment when posting a story, a picture or a comment, and NEVER write your email address, contact information or sensitive personal details. Over on the Yahoo group, you can write messages with more abandon as only invited members can view the messages, databases, etc (members will only be accepted if they are Old Girls or staff).

There are also quite a lot of us OCs on Facebook, so if you are on there too, search for one of us to join in the fun.

Finally, if you have a personal website or blog that you'd like fellow OCs to visit, please mail me the link and I'll add it to the Links section here (bottom of the page).

2004 reunion of some of the 1974 batch

Jane sent me some pix for the blog, of this get-together of 1974 batch-mates at the Bangalore Club - pix taken in July/Aug 2004

front row - L to R - Mina Calla, Radha C V Iyer, Yasmin Tonse, Jane John. Back row - L to R - non-Cottonian Anita (who could not be cropped out of the picture without also chopping Mina's head off), Usha Philips and Sheela Mathew ... all except Sheela (1975) were '74 batch.

"The one with us sitting inside are Mina Calla standing behind, L to R Yasmin, Usha, Jane and Sheela ... "

Thanks for sharing, Jane!

Any other OCs out there want to share your pix with the rest of us? Do get in touch!

Reunion - Batch of 1975

It's been amazing to see the number of Old Cottonians re-connecting with one another on facebook and the blog in recent months! As Kala Lingham remarked recently it seems that the arrival of facebook and the blog coincided with a time when "we 40 somethings are all feeling a little nostalgic for that simple life we had back in the 70' and 80's! .... its been slightly surreal"!!!

Well here's a bunch that have stayed in touch over the years...The batch of 1975! This photo sent in by Sheela Mathew, was taken a few years ago. We hear the gang continues to meet regularly in Bangalore!1st row - front - Janaki KV, Shobana Swamy, Vijitha Reddy and Sandhya Seetharam
2nd row - back - Sudha Rao, Sandhya Vani, Roopa Rathnam, Sheela Mathew, Hema Shetty and Heera Nawaz.
Thanks to Ameetha V (unfortunately not in this picture) for helping out with the names...

Another Sporting Moment!

As Cottonians, all of us will remember our heroes smashing records and winning medals for Cottons at the Inter School Athletics Competitions...For those who studied in the 70's, names such as Nandini Prasad, Hema Shetty, Nirmal Cariappa, and Kala Arasi will strike a chord...Mind you there were hosts of other champs...my apologies..their names escape me at the moment!

The non sporting ones like me sat in the stands of Kanteerava Stadium and cried ourselves hoarse :
"GINGER LIME AND SODA POP...WE WANT COTTONS ON THE TOP"
and "2 4 6 8 ... WHOM DO WE APPRECIATE? .... COTTONS"
or "KALA" (clap clap clap) "KALA" (clap clap clap) "KA la ... SHhhhhhh....Quiet Girls! Swaree says HUSH!!! Don't distract the girls!...."

The competition and rivalry at the School Sports was equally fanatic...our own version of Quidditch...when the 3 houses in those days Barton Maiden and Foley were pitted against each other "in the spirit of sportmanship to the honour and glory of sports"!

So against this background here is a classic... Latha Gowda or GOWDI, as Suaree christened her, from Maiden House and Nimmi Ramakrishnan (not Rao as I first posted, thanks Lakshmi Daniel) relegate Barton House darling and Queen of Sports Kala Arasi to 3rd place in the Discuss Competition in 1977! (...Lakshmi thinks Nimmi was also in Barton)

Face spotters will enjoy the picture of Latha receiving her prize from chief guest Sr Vaughn who was principal of Sophia's. We can spy Miss James, and a bunch of Foleyites - Maya Mathani, Shanthalakshmi, Jyoti Devraj Havilah, Lisa Koshy, and Amina and of course Latha's many Baby Dorm PHANS perched on the parapet!

[btw if you can identify others, please add names to the comments, we'd also love to hear from you if you wish to become a contributor or send us your pictures...you can find most of us through our profile pages or facebook!]

A picture of Miss Suares - from the 1980's

Maya Thomas (1983) sent in this picture of Miss Suares smiling away. Mrs Clarke is in the background, and the teacher seated on the left is Mrs Collison.
Can someone with good eyesight figure what the thought for the day says on the black board and also help identify the other seated teacher please?