2012
the yearbook
The Yearbook 2012
Editorial
7
Co-curricular Programme: Clubs and Societies and STA’s
From the Headmaster
8
Committees Clubs & Societies STAs Student Exchange Expedition Publications Creative Writing
44 46 62 80 82 86 93
Curriculum: Serving the community at Doon (SUPW)
103
Curriculum- Serving the wider community (Social Service)
118
Hindi Section
125
Curriculum: Inside the Class Room Academics Careers Art Music Drama Life Skills and Counselling IT
11 14 16 18 22 26 27
Curriculum: Outside the Class Room 29
135 House Reports
157
Founder’s
168
Prize Giving & Sporting Achievements
183
Special Section
188
SC Leavers
192
In The Making
234
5
Contents
editorial
Being leaders of a publication as prestigious as The Yearbook, we often succumb to a sense of turmoil and perplexity that arises within. With such fundamental responsibility, we begin working on capturing and documenting yet another chapter in the school’s history, attempting to encapsulate an entire year in our own manner and style. It is then that the turmoil reaches its peak and we question ourselves; are we bringing perfection to a tradition?
Working on many Yearbooks throughout our Dosco lives, we take great pride in knowing that every year our readership trusts us and we attempt to live up to that trust while we create this publication. A delightful blend of elegance, innovation and perfection is what we intended to bring forth with our edition of this book and to achieve this, our facilities had to be exploited to unprecedented extents. The hours spent to materialize what we had envisioned are many, but as our Yearbook began to take form, we realized something extremely valuable. Something completely unexpected. We realized that every year, we will improve this publication and that we will better upon our predecessors. It is inevitable. Progress waits for no one and neither would it do so here, but if what we had realized was genuine, what is the true virtue of working for this ‘tradition’? Why strive to better oneself if that is what will happen in any case?
The Yearbook is not just a task at hand; it is a journey. A journey with a curious amalgamation of agony and pride and a journey which gets better every time one goes through with it. The peculiar part about this epiphany is that anything less than fantastic. It was not just about doing justice to a tradition or about the perceived expectations that weighed us down. It was not even about the pride that we felt every time we held a Yearbook; it was always Perfection cannot be achieved, only approached. In all probability, the next Yearbook will outstrip the one you are holding in your hands right now. Although we will continue to have the same pictures, the same sections and will maintain the same core ideologies, every new edition of this publication will bring forth the school in its own characteristic style. But then again, that is exactly what makes it so magical. Now, when we have reached the end of the path, all we can say is that we are honored to have been on this side of Chandbagh’s history; chronicling its existence as it ages evermore gracefully, year after year, every year. Subliminally. Perfectly. Agni Raj Singh Devesh Sharma
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From the Headmaster
8
I shall remember 2012 for many impressive school achievements, and for a number of other events and phenomena; but one feature of the year sticks in my mind, and that is the obsession of many Doscos with the prophesy, based on an entirely false reading of the for the election of the new School Captain on 1st February, but I have to admit that even I did have occasional thoughts along the lines of “What if it is true?” Interestingly, 2012 was also the centenary of the sinking of the ocean liner The Titanic, similarly the subject of empires, many of which struck the iceberg of the First World War and had perished by the end of it. and began taking them in new directions as they left our hallowed amphitheatre after the conclusion of their SC(L) year. In keeping with our time-honoured tradition, we sang Auld Lang Syne to them in the Rose Bowl as they made their way into their own often thought about, but wholly unpredictable, futures. The next time they reassemble in such numbers will most likely be at their silver imagined when they stepped through the gates of The Doon School for the last time as pupils. I can also safely predict that the great traditions of Doon, as recorded in these pages, will still live on and even be strengthened. In a school as successful as Doon, there was much to celebrate in the course of 2012. In the midst of all the boys accomplished outside were record results at ICSE and ISC for Classes X and XII, as well as for the IB batches passing out in both 2012 and 2013. This year-onparents. Ujjwal Dahuja’s exceptional achievement of attaining a straight 45-point diploma in the IB to sit alongside his scholarship to Dhairik Fuletra’s and Parth Gupta’s admissions to IIT and their outstanding ISC results, as well Sanat Thakur’s admission to AIIMS. Other highlights of 2012 included what is probably the best school play I have seen in thirty years as a master and headmaster; no-one who watched the stunning Hindi production of Court Martial in the Rose Bowl at Founder’s 2012, when the Vice-President of India was the Chief Guest for the speeches, will forget the electric atmosphere created by Mr. Farooqui’s cast and crew. Jesus Christ Superstar set the benchmark for musicals in 2011, and Court Martial set new standards for dramas. For me personally, the outstanding achievement of the year, and recognized as such at the special assembly for the departing batch, was the school soccer team’s second consecutive win at the IPSC national schools’ tournament; this victory and the goals scored had never been equaled in this tournament’s long history. Of course, the myriad activities of boys and masters that make me so proud to be the Headmaster of The Doon School are too numerous constraining any yearbook. However, across the entire spectrum of activity possible in a school such as ours, this has been an outstanding traditions continue to be upheld, and boys, like the departing batch, are constantly striking out in new directions and establishing new endeavours and enterprises. Long may this innovative streak in our boys continue! Sadly for all at Doon, Mr. Analjit Singh retired as Chairman of the Board of Governors at Founder’s in October 2012. His contribution to the development of the school was immense, and his personal generosity to Doon in terms of his time and energy, and his kindness as a donor, were quite extraordinary. It often takes decades before we humans appreciate what has been done for us by others, but I of The Doon School and that his achievements will still be recognized and appreciated by Doscos. My congratulations go to this year’s editorial team of the Yearbook and to the masters who worked with them for their immense and pictures, but this year I should like to thank the editors and all those who toiled tirelessly with them for their dedication and vision
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Academics 10
Curriculum: Inside the Class Room
Academic Council
Knowledge thy Light
Sitting (L to R): Mr Ambikesh Shukla, Mr Rajesh Majumdar, Mrs Priya Chaturvedi, Mr Prabhakaran Nair, Dr Peter McLaughlin, Mr Philip Burrett, Mr Vinay Pande, Mr Pankaj Joshi, Mr Aloke Bhowmick Standing (L to R): Mr Kamal Ahuja, Mr Debashish Chakrabarty, Mr Rahul Luther, Mr Sudhir Thapa
CURRICULUM – INSIDE THE CLASSROOM The Board results this year have been commendable. The details are given below: ISC 2013 Average marks 87.48% (exclusive of Environmental Education) No. of candidates who appeared for the exam
71
Percentage of candidates who averaged 90% and above Percentage of candidates who averaged 80% - 89% Percentage of candidates who averaged 70% - 79% Percentage of candidates who averaged 60% - 69% Percentage of candidates who averaged 50% - 59%
59% 21% 11% 6% 3%
ICSE 2013 Average marks 88.59% (exclusive of Environmental Education) No. of candidates who appeared for the exam
105
Percentage of candidates who averaged 90% and above Percentage of candidates who averaged 80% - 89% Percentage of candidates who averaged 70% - 79% Percentage of candidates who averaged 60% - 69%
45% 49% 6% 1% 11
ISC Result (2009-2013)
88
87.5
AVERAGE % 87
85.9
86
85
84.2
84.2
2009
2010
84.5
84
83
82
2011
2012
ICSE Result (2009-2013)
89
2013
88.6
AVERAGE %
88
87.3 87
86.1 86
85
84.8 84.2
84
83
82
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2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
INTERNATIONAL BACCALAUREATE (IB) This year 11 students took the May Diploma Programme examination. All were awarded the Diploma. The School’s pass percentage was 100% compared to the world average of about 78%. The average points score total of the School is 36.4 (the batch of May 2013 was 34.6) compared to the world average of about 30 points.
Results of May 2013 International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma Examination: Total students appeared
:
11
Result of examination
:
Diploma Awarded to 11 students
Average score of the School
:
36.4 (Out of Max. 45)
Student scoring highest points total 45
:
Ujjwal Dahuja
Students scoring second highest points total 39
:
Nivit Kochhar Abhishek Bansal
Comparative IB Results
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
Average points:
34.3
30.0
34.2
34.6
36.4
43(1) 42(1)
43(1)
45(1)
Higest scores:
Student scoring third highest points total 38
:
Number of students who scored points total 35-37
:
Number of students who scored points total 32-34
:
Pass %
:
Shivam Goyal
40(3) 39(2) 38(1) 37(1) 36(3) 35(1)
3
39(2) 38(1) 36(2) 35(1) 34(1) 33(2) 32(1)
33(1) 32(2) 31(2) 30(1)
33(1) 31(1)
40 points and over:
13%
0%
9%
9%
9%
35 points and over:
50%
35%
48%
59%
64%
30 points and over:
77%
64%
83%
77%
100%
Under 30 points
23%
35%
17%
23%
0%
Awarded Diploma
100%
72%
96%
96%
100%
100 %
35(5)
40(1) 39(5) 38(2) 37(2) 36(4)
35(3) 34(1) 33(1) 32(3) 31(2)
4
2012 was the sixth year of the IB Diploma Programme at The Doon School. It successfully passed its Five Year Review in 2012. The programme is becoming popular in the School and the sixth batch that will take the May 2014 examination has a strength of 34.
39(3) 38(2) 37(1)
34(2) 32(2) 31(1)
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Careers Department
Where to?
Head of Department
SCHOLARSHIPS 2013: Awards (in INR) USA: 1,26,779,960 Hong Kong: 17,214,400 Canada: 3,068,928 Sitting (L to R): Mr Vijay Kumar, Mrs Namrata Pandey, Ms Prachi Nagalia, Mrs Sonia Sharma
from SRCC, NMIMS, Ivy leagues, and Russell group universities to name a few. A lot of scholarships were awarded to students this year from all over the world! In the other events, students of A-form took the PSAT exam for the second time. In the month of February, the ‘Aptitude- InterestPersonality’ test was administered to A-form. Individual counselling was conducted to discuss results and give career options to the students. As part of the ‘Advanced 16+ Options’ all A-form students were individually counselled on subject choices and choice between IB and ISC in their Houses with their tutors. For the S form students, boys were trained by SAT instructors in the autumn term. Having seen an increase in takers for ACT (another ACT instead of SAT. application process of countries, exams to be taken, CV building, linking academics to co-curricular work, Discussion on SOP and exercises to understand which SOP worked and which did not, Admission process for UK, US, HK, Canada and timelines for the same, feedback on visits transcripts and their importance, value of predicted grades, recommendation letters and their importance, ability and how much college really costs. form of a brochure for all parents and students. The careers department continued its endeavour to establish links with colleges in India and abroad. The Careers team visited the following universities in India, US (Ivy leagues), Canada, Singapore and Hong Kong. There were many visits by universities this past year, including a visit by delegates from Delhi University, Ashoka University, Ivy League institutions in US, top liberal arts colleges, Russell group universities from UK and many more. 14
India AIIMS, Patna Army Dental College, Secunderabad Amity College, Delhi Amity Law School, Delhi Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS), Pilani College of Vocational Studies, Delhi Christ College, Bangalore Flame, Pune Government Law College, Mumbai Galgotia University, Noida Hansraj College, Delhi HR College, Mumbai Indian Institute of Management, Indore IIT Kharagpur IIT Roorkee Indian Institute of Medical Sciences (IMS)-BHU- Banaras Indian School of Business and Finance (ISBF), Delhi Institute of Hotel Management, Catering and Nutrition (IHM)-Pusa ILS Law College-Pune Jai Hind College, Mumbai Kasturba Medical College, Manipal Keshav Chand College, Delhi King George’s College, Lucknow Kirorimal College, Delhi Lloyd Law College, Delhi Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology (KIT), Bhubhaneshwar Guru Ram Rai College, Dehradun Mahant Indresh Medical College, Dehradun Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences, Mumbai MVJ College of Engineering, Bangalore Manipal University, Karnataka NMIMS, Bangalore National Law University (NLU), Raipur National Law Institute University (NLIU), Bhopal National Law University, Jodhpur The WB National University of
Juridical Sciences (NUJS), Calcutta National University of Study and Research in Law (NUSRL), Ranchi Ramjas College, Delhi Shaheed Sukhdev College of Business Studies, Delhi Shriram College of Commerce, Delhi St Xavier’s College, Mumbai St Xavier’s College, Kolkata Sri Venkateshwara College, Delhi Symbiosis Centre of Management Studies, Noida Symbiosis Institute of Business Management, Pune
USA American University Brown University Boston University Boston College Bryant University Chapman University Colby College Cornell University DePauw University Drexel University Emory University Franklin and Marshall College Georgia Institute of Technology George Washington University Geneseo, State University of NY Grinnell College Haverford College Hamilton University Indiana University-Bloomington Knox College Lafayette College Loyola Marymount University Macalester College New York University Northeastern University Northwestern University Oberlin College Pomona College Princeton University Purdue University
Rollins College Santa Clara University Skidmore College Trinity College Tufts University University of California- Berkeley University of California-Los Angeles University of California-San Diego University of Massachusetts, Amherst University of Chicago University of Michigan University of Miami University of Southern California University of Texas- Austin Union College (New York) University of Virginia University of Washington-Seattle Vassar College Wake Forest College Williams College Wesleyan College Yale-NUS
UK City University, London Coventry University Durham University Imperial College, London King’s College, London London School of Economics and Political Science Leeds Metropolitan University Manchester Metropolitan University Royal Holloway, Univ. of London Southampton University Queen Mary, University of London School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) The Arts University College at Bournemouth University College, London University of Bath University of Birmingham University of Bristol
University of Edinburgh University of Exeter University of Kent University of Lancaster University of Liverpool University of Leicester University of Manchester University of Nottingham University of St. Andrew’s University of Surrey University of Warwick University of York
CANADA Carleton University McGill University Ryerson University University of Alberta University of British Columbia University of Guelph University of Saskatchewan University of Toronto University of Victoria York University
HONG KONG Hong Kong University Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST)
SINGAPORE Singapore Management University
CHINA Southern Medical University, Guangzhou
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Art
16
Art Department
Beyond the Spectrum
Head of Department
Sitting (L to R): Mr Sanjib Kalsi, Ms Banita Bhau, Mr Aloke Tirtha Bhowmick, Mr Arnab Mukherjee, Mrs Mohua Bhowmick, Mr Tapan Barui
Art has an important role in Doscos’ lives during their stay at Chandbagh. The Art and Media School Making/Video Art and all forms of Sculpture, Photography and Experimental Art. Art is compulsory for D and C Forms and 25 boys have opted for Art as a subject in the ICSE and ISC. There are 37 boys and girls in the Art STA and 24 students are involved in the Art SUPW. Beside these, around 40 boys regularly attend to learn art at a personal level under the guidance of the art school teachers.
sculptural medium�. students took part. Dehradun.
and received many awards. Around 130 students took part in this workshop. the help of the Archeological Survey of India. 17
18
Music
MUSIC
School of Rock
Director of Music Captain
Sitting (L to R): Agni Raj Singh, Dhruv Singhal, Yuv Vir Khosla, Rishabh Nautiyal, Yash Mall Standing (L to R): Mr Avijit Chattopadhyay, Mrs Priya Chaturvedi, Mr Partho Roy Choudhury, Mr Arun Kumar
TRINITY GUILDHALL EXAMINEES
Octaves Above
Master-in-Charge Boy-in-Charge
Sitting 1st Row (L to R): Dhruv Johri, Anant Mohan, Rahil Chamola, Yogesh Agarwal, Laksh Sharaf, Umang Gupta, Madhav Goel, Utkarsh Agarwal, Prakhar Dwivedi, Madhav Singhal Sitting 2nd Row (L to R): Namanshree Jain, Agni Raj Singh, Aakanksha Mohan, Harshvardhan Bansal, Yash Mall, Mrs Priya Chaturvedi, Yuv Vir Khosla, Mr Arun Kumar, Saumil Agarwal, Hamza Khan, Imaan Mehta Standing (L to R): Yuvan Kumar, Tanishq Agarwala, Krishna Lohiya, Atrey Bhargava, Vansh Agarwal, Prabnur Singh Bal, Navraaj Randhawa, Daksh Bhatia, Shourya Kishorepuria, Codanda Chengappa, Yuvraj Nathani, Aditya Malik, Dhruv Ahuja, Rahul Garg 19
The Music Society began the year with two well-attended workshops and a concert of Hindustani classical music. Pt Sukhdev Mishra, internationally known maestro of the Banaras gharana held intensive sessions in the art of bowing for our young violinists, and Pt Arunangshu Choudhury, percussionist and composer, held a 2-day tabla workshop, which saw enthusiastic participation from both beginners and more advanced students. The culmination of their visit was a concert, in which the department`s faculty, Partho Roy Choudhury and Avijit Chattopadhyay, joined the artistes on stage to give an electrifying performance of Raga Jog. Boards, and Music as a 6th Group Subject in the IB Diploma Programme. It is compulsory for D-form, who study Voice Culture Appreciation at an Quartet academic level, and forperforming C-form, who for The Spring Term continued on a high note, withand the Music world-renowned Kodaly from Hungary incan the opt Rose Bowl, on a any instrument, which they learn through the academic year as a Craft. Eight students took the ICSE balmy April evening. Attila Falvay and Erika Toth on the violin, Janos Fejervari on the viola and Gyorgy Eder on the cello gave us, and intreat the subject average obtained 93.6 %; and oneofstudent took Western MusicSchubert, the invited schools andexamination guests, a rare indeedand withthe their performance of was some masterworks chamber music by Mozart, in the ISC examination and obtained 86%. This student has been given admission to the prestigious Dohnanyi and Gershwin. Bringing artistes of such eminence (under the banner of SPICMACAY’s World Heritage series, in collaboration Berklee College of Music U.S. Thirteen taken Music as a This subject the ICSE with the Hungarian Cultural Centre in new Delhi)in tothe Chandbagh was a students real scoophave for the Music Society. was for a concert that will be examination of 2014, and two for the ISC examination of 2014. long remembered. EXAMINATIONS The prize-giving and graduation ceremony in which we bade farewell to our outgoing SC form, and honoured them for their achievements, featured music performed by the School Orchestra and Choir. Appropriate to the occasion were the songs rendered- Paul Anka’s The School is a center forgently the Trinity College, London, international examinations music,goodbye and in to the My Way, and the nostalgic ballad Kaho kya khayal hai.grade It was our special in musical 2012 all 40 candidates who took the exam in grades ranging from Foundation to Advanced Levels batch of 2012. successfully achieved High Merit or Distinction awards. Five have topped the North India region in their respective grades and instruments, as follows: Yash Mall (Piano), Hamza Khan (Violin), Navraaj Randhawa May ushered in some high-voltage excitement with the Battle of Bands concert, featuring talent from across all year groups and- more (Singing), Dhruv Johri (Saxophone) and Umang Gupta (Classical Guitar). This year, 60 boys will be taking unusually- across all Houses. Inter-House rivalry gave way to a spirit of friendly competition, and some brisk auctioning and bidding, the examination in piano, drum kit, violin, classical guitar, singing and saxophone. The Music Department trains and prepares students in the syllabi for singing, percussion, and instrumental Hindustani classical special song- To Sir, With Love music forleaving externalSchool. examination Boards. competition’s judges, who was When our musicians returned in the Autumn Term, they were geared up to face the hectic music schedule that is so much a part of the ‘Founder’s’ term. Though Founder’s music production loomed large over all the Society’s activities, we did manage to host concerts and perform as well. The Independence Day celebration was marked by the rendition, in our own arrangement, of Vande Mataram, and featured all the instruments taught and played in School (including the rarely- seen ghatam) as well as a large choir. It was an ambitious project to complete in just two weeks, but the remark by our Chief Guest, Dr V Singh, that he had never heard Vande Mataram more musically and stirringly rendered, made it more than worth the hours of practice. In August, too, we had the internationally renowned Kathak dancer, Shovana Narayan, perform in the Music School ; organized by SPICMACAY, the concert was an eye-opener for the youngest members of the School community. Ms. Narayan not only gave them the opportunity to see the dazzling footwork of the dance form, but interacted with them closely, explaining and demonstrating the meaning behind the hand and footwork. She even had School Dance Captain Agni Raj Singh up on stage to execute some steps, portraying the god Krishna. The much-awaited, and thoroughly enjoyed Inter-House Music and Dance Competition presented eight categories in solo and ensemble challenging a cappella singing format, with no instrumental or percussion accompaniment. Piano , drum, tabla, vocal and Hindustani instrumental solos bore witness to the hours of practice that resulted in polished performances. As the monsoons abated, and the days grew shorter, we were into Founder’s mode- and mood. Entitled ( the name signifying a meeting of musical rivers), the composition by the Music Department faculty, drew upon the form, content and structure of music khajiri and ghatam and djembe to add tone colour and variety to its rhythmic cycles. A visual enhancement of the ensemble’s complex haunting and melodious Song of India saw a new orchestral arrangement, incorporating the distinctive timbres of the santoor, sarod, mandolin and sitar, with an arpeggiated underpinning by the pianos and a soaring melody line on the violins. The jazz ensemble Ragas Kalavati and Miyan ki Malhar. They engaged the orchestra’s instruments in lively dialogue, punctuated by some brilliant virtuoso passages. Melodic reiteration and harmonic richness combined to create the necessary tension and resolution, with a garland of ragas, 20
by the School Music Captain, Yuv Vir Khosla. Founder’s also has its own ‘fringe’ music event, the ever-popular open- air band concert. Called Walk of Life, with its theme the Dire Straits song of the same name, the concert was indeed a joyous, upbeat expression of music by the boys, and won a large audience and larger applause. lineage (she is the daughter of singers Roop and Sonali Rathod) was evident in her vibrant compositions and versatile singing style. The end of the year saw anxious young musicians polishing their pieces for the Trinity College London grade examinations. This year saw excellent performances, with North India region toppers from School in violin (Hamza Khan), piano (Yash Mall, who achieved a Distinction in Grade 8), saxophone (Dhruv Johri), guitar (Umang Gupta) and singing (Navraaj Randhawa). And so, with the new year round the corner, the prospect of more music, fresh challenges and the striving for that elusive thing called perfection, beckons.
21
22
Drama
English Dramatics
Repertoire
Master-in-Charge Boy-in-Charge English Drama Colours
Sitting (L to R): Aakanksha Mohan, Alawi Singh, Rahul Srivastava, Karan Singh, Mr Shrey Nagalia, Devesh Sharma, Rishabh Tusnial, Arjun Sharma Standing (L to R): Devansh Agarwal, Aamir Shah, Yasharth Goyal, Sayuj Dhandhania
in the MPH in the course of this year. The play was directed and produced by Karan Singh and all aspects student production in the history of the school. The play was well received by students and parents alike. The Film Society, Hindi Dramatics Club and Library Council held various performances during the year in the Library Hall as follows: Play Reading: Udbhav Agrawal and Eshaan Bhardwaj performed an English Film Screenplay “No More Lonely Nights� written by Paromita Vohra. The Marathi Play- Ritesh Shinde, Yashraj Agrawal and Arth Gupta read an adaptation in Hindi. Udbhav Agrawal read poetry translated into English from various Indian languages. The Inter House One Act results were as follows: Hyderabad House Sanat Verma (Hyderabad) Mrigank Khemka (Tata) and Devesh Sharma (Hyderabad) Gaurav Kothari (Jaipur) Hyderabad House
23
Hindi Dramatics
Lawyered
Master-in-Charge Boy-in-Charge Hindi Drama Colours
Vidit Sidana
Sitting (L to R): Malini Malviya, Sanat Verma, Saif Ali, Dr Mohammad Hammad Farooqui, Shubham Khemka, Ritesh Shinde, Yash Agrawal Standing (L to R): Aditya Dhingra, Mihir Kiran, Aashim Bansal, Sachin Mehra, Jai Ahuja, Azan Brar, Rishabh Sharma
Keeping the traditions alive for a main play during Founder’s 2012, the School presented “Court Martial”, an adaptation of Swadesh Deepak’s path-breaking play. This year was one of the most successful years for Hindi Dramatics in School. From holding various play readings to staging the Founder’s Play, ‘Court Martial‘, the boys have worked together to ensure the popularity of hindi Dramatics in School. Our year started early, on William Shakespeare’s birthday, 27th March, with a play reading. Our next reading was held on 23rd April, World Book Day, where the students performed extraordinarily well. The rest of the The second term began with the Founder’s Play practices being held regularly. Saif Ali, took on the lead role, along with the responsibility of ensuring the running of this play. Ritesh Shinde, Shubham Khemka and Shubham Dhingra were also lead characters in the play. The cast and crew of over 72 students received a standing ovation. It was directed by Mr Hammad Farooqui and produced by Mr Samik Das. Four shows were held and it turned out to one of the most successful plays. The Headmaster rated it as the best school play he had ever seen.
24
25
Life Skills and Counselling
The Emotional Quotient
Sitting (L to R) : Mr Ken McRae, Ms Anamika Ghose
The counselling of students, which started as part of the Development Plan to address the learning the students, continues to be developed. The counselors have had several individual sessions with students as well as group sessions within the boarding houses to address issues and help in pastoral care. Parents continue to interact via email as well as in the sessions arranged during the Parent-Teacher for counseling and have also helped parents better understand the need for counseling and life skills classes. The School has continued with its follow-up programme to help students with special needs. The coordinator for special needs has liaised with various heads of department about the special needs programme and they had a session with the counselor to help identify students they felt required assessment through the Woodcocke-Johnson test and further plan to design IEPs (individualized education programmes) for the students to help them cope with their academic subjects and perform to the best of their abilities. The life skills classes are conducted by the two counselors who also attended the TGELF workshop in May at Himjyoti School to equip and develop lessons to promote leadership and community service aspects and to dovetail this with the SEAL programme that is being followed in the School.
26
Information Technology
Boolean
Head of Department
Sitting (L to R) : Mr K C Maurya, Mr A K Mandhian, Mr Ambikesh Shukla, Mr Vishal Mohla, Mr Umung Varma, Mr Varun Walia
The Doon School’s IT department has worked to make IT fully accessible to all members of the community optic cable. In the interest of the student community and maintaining the School’s value system, The ERP is constantly keeping abreast of the latest developments in IT and wherever required and feasible, these are being incorporated in the operation of the system. The entire community is regularly using the ERP for their day-to-day operations and updates. As always, the students play an important role in decision-making at School and the Technology Council is no exception. The Council has met six times this year. The feedback and suggestions from students are discussed and actively considered. Apart from these regular issues, many new initiatives and developments have taken place. Some of the recent developments are as follows: 18.5” TFT monitors. screens. and Media school in order to provide easy access to printing for students’ projects and other academic work. For this we have tied up with the NIIT centre in Dehradun, so that teachers can use their own smart used in the classroom, like Apple computers, Extramarks software, Teach Next, and so on. 27
Curriculum: Outside the Class Room
28
ATHLETICS Master-in-Charge Captain
Sitting 1st Row (L to R): Dhruv Agarwal, Banda M S Lamba, Arjun Parmar, Adhiraj Thakran, Arjun Midha, Mr Mohammad Istemdad Ali, Adhiraj Singh, Siddharth Sarin, Ashish Rao, Shantanu Seth, Sidharth Sethi Sitting 2nd Row (L to R): Shivaan Seth, Palash Kanwar, Suyash Bishnoi, Gopal Singh Mann, Satvik Narain, Abhishek Bansal, Karan Shinghal, Madhavan Saklani, Nipurn Datta, Rishavraj Das, Jai Khanna Sitting 3rd Row (L to R): Rajkumar Vijay, Sarthak Katiyar, Karan Dhillon, Nikhil Saraf, Kartikay Garg, Kartikeya Kardam, Angad Shergill, Ishaan Kapoor, Sikandar Suri, Yasir Iqbal
The Athletics season was an extraordinary one, which saw the School once again hosting the InterSchool Annual District Meet after a gap of eight years. Twenty-nine schools of Dehradun participated in the event. The Doon School was represented by 42 boys in the U-16, U-18, U-20 and open categories. Siddharth Sarin won Gold in U-20 Discus, Silver in U-20 Shot Put and Bronze in Discus in the open categories. Arjun Parmar won a Gold in the Long Jump U-20 category while Arjun Midha won a Silver medal in the 800m U-20 and Bronze in the Shot Put U-20 category. In the Inter-House Athletics, Siddharth Sarin set up a new record in the Discus throw of 29.38m in the mediums category. Adhiraj Singh won the Mumtaz Ahmed Trophy for the Best Athlete of the championship. Angad Shergill won the Most Promising Junior Athlete award. Inter House Athletics 2012
Full Colours
Half Colours
House Cup Senior Cup Mediums Cup Junior Cup
Arjun Parmar Siddharth Sarin Adhiraj Singh
Banda Lamba Siddharth Sethi Yash Aggarwal Ashish Rao Dhruv Aggarwal
Tata House Tata House Oberoi House Oberoi House
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BADMINTON Master-in-Charge Captain
Sitting 1st Row (L to R): Aditya Gandhi, Arjun Khaitan, Abhishek Parasrampuria, Mr Chandan Singh Ghughtyal, Kabir Sethi, Sidharth Sethi, Vidit Sidana Stamding (L to R): Vineet Puri, Akarsh Tibrewal, Vansh Agarwal, Saket Golyan, Ashish Pande
The performance of the team has been excellent in the last two terms. It is highly commendable that tournament in which our overall performance was good. The following were the results:
on the basis of their performance in the IPSC tournament held at Lawrence School , Sanawar. In the district tournament, the School’s performance was appreciable. Abhishek Parasrampuria won the individual Silver medal and mixed doubles Gold medal. The Inter-House Badminton tournament was revived after several years. Oberoi House won the trophy and Hyderabad was declared runners-up. In the individual championship 76 players participated. School defeated Summer Valley School, Welham Boys’ School, Cambrian Hall School, Aryan School, Pestle Weed School and Guru Nanak School.
Senior
Winner
Runner Up
Full Colours
Half Colours
Kabir Sethi
Sidharth Sethi
Arjun Khaitan Vidit Sidana Kabir Sethi
Sidharth Sethi
Medium Akarsh Tibrewal Junior 30
Jehan Jhaveri
Kartikay Garg Atrey Guruprasad
BASKETBALL Master-in-Charge Captain
Sitting (L to R): Kushagr Singh, Abhishek Bansal, Adhiraj Thakran, Mr Ashish Dean, Khalid Amin Alawneh, Udit Rungta, Waseefullah Khan Sherwani Standing (L to R): Nihal Singh Dhillon, Shivaan Seth, Suhel Karara, Suyash Bishnoi, Nachiket Jain, Rahul Srivastava, Atharva Matta
The 23rd Afzal Khan Basketball tournament was held at The Doon School. The School team reached the In the Win Mumby Basketball tournament held at Woodstock School and the Golden Jubilee Basketball tournament held at Welham Boys’ School, the School team was knocked out in the group stage matches of both. District / IPSC – Senior:
Championship, 2013. The team reached Inter House Basketball 2012 Full Colours
Half Colours
Khalid Amin Alawneh Udit Rungta Arjun Midha
Kushagr Singh Suhel Karara Abhishek Bansal Waseefullah Khan
Senior Cup Jaipur House Junior Cup Tata House House Cup Jaipur House 31
BOXING Master-in-Charge Captain
Sitting 1st Row (L to R): Yuv Vir Khosla, Tanmay Kapoor, Nivit Kochhar, Mr Sudhir Thapa, Shantanu Seth, Gopal Singh Mann, Karan Shinghal Sitting 2nd Row (L to R): Nikhil Chauhan, Kartikeya Kardam, Dhruv Agarwal, Chirag Mittal, Yash Kuldeep Mishra, Sasyak Pattnaik
Regular practices for boxing were held throughout October and November and the boxers showed much enthusiasm and determination. All the rules and technical aspects of the game were strictly followed for the 74th Inter-House Boxing Competition. The total number of bouts was 40 in a total 10 of categories. Emerging talents in the Junior Categories were Kartikey Kardam, Yash Mishra and Nikhil Chauhan. Inter-House Boxing 2012: Junior Cup
Senior Cup
House Cup
Hyderabad
Jaipur
Hyderabad and Jaipur
Best Loser Tanmay Kapoor
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Shantanu Seth
Full Colours
Half Colours
Shantanu Seth Tanmay Kapoor Yuv Khosla
Karan Singhal Dhruv Agarwal Durgesh Agarwal
CRICKET Master-in-Charge Captain
Sitting 1st Row (L to R): Eeshat Tiwary, Kabir Sethi, Adhiraj Singh, Mr Manish Pant, Siddhant Sachdev, Mr Vidhukesh Vimal, Dhruv Agarwal, Arjun Midha, Sidharth Sethi Sitting 2nd Row (L to R): Waseefullah Khan, Saksham Agarwal, Suhel Karara, Nabeel Shah, Shantanu Seth, Rishavraj Das, Aditya Vir Roy
The season began early in the year, with the team touring Kolkata in December. The team, with minimum practice, performed aWnd managed to produce a good start by winning one match and narrowly losing the other two. Adhiraj Singh was the highlight of the tour, with his excellent performance with the bat as well as the bowl. When the team came back the following term, Siddhant Sachdev was appointed as Captain of showed exceptional performances and were on a roll. The School team participated in the Scindia School Cricket Tournament, and admirable performances were seen in the games of Adhiraj Singh, Kabir Sethi and Arjun Khanna. In Abdul Majeed Qureshi Cricket Match, the boys faltered at the last minute and lost by a close margin of 5 runs. The award for Best Fielder was given to Siddhant Sachdev and Best All-Rounder to Adhiraj Singh. All in all, the cricket season was a commendable one and the school team’s future looks bright in the near future. Inter House Cricket 2012 House Cup Senior Cup Junior Cup
Hyderabad House Hyderabad House Tata House
Full Colours
Half Colours
Adhiraj Singh Kabir Sethi Dhruv Agarwal
Arjun Midha Siddharth Sethi Arjun Khanna Eeshat Tiwari
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FOOTBALL Master-in-Charge Captain
Sitting 1st Row (L to R): Siddhant Sachdev, Raghav Nath, Arjun Midha, Dhruv Agarwal, Mr Michael James, Yuv Vir Khosla, Arjun Parmar, Shivaan Seth, Nabeel Shah Sitting 2nd Row (L to R): Kismat Chopra, Rajkumar Vijay, Anant Singh Mann, Suraj Bishnoi, Khalid Alawneh, Ashish Rao, Ayush Tripathi, Shantanu Seth, Jai Khanna
During the summer holidays the School organized a pre-season Football camp from 20th -31st of July 2012. This camp was only for the School Senior and Junior teams. After the camp, both teams went on and G.D. Goenka School. Both the teams performed well. The Junior team visited Pine Grove School average. In September, after the Inter-House competition, the Senior team participated in the Senior Dehradun In October, the School team went for the IPSC U-19 Soccer Tournament at BPS, Pillani. There, the defeated Lawrence School, Lovedale (Ooty). This is the second time in a row that Doon has won the tournament. Shivaan Seth and Yuv Vir Khosla were declared the best football players in the IPSC Tournament. The team played a total of twenty three matches and won twenty two. They lost no matches in the entire season and drew one. Inter House Football 2012: Junior Cup Jaipur House
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Senior Cup
House Cup
Jaipur House
Jaipur House
Full Colours
Half Colours
Re-awarded Full Colours
Re-awarded Half Colours
Arjun Parmar Siddhant Sachdev
Khalid Alawneh Nabeel Shah Raghav Nath Jai Khanna
Shivaan Seth Dhruv Agarwal
Aayush Tripathi Ashish Rao
GOLF Master-in-Charge Captain
Sitting 1st Row (L to R): Kismat Chopra, Anant Singh Mann, Gopal Singh Mann, Zahaan Qureshi, Mr Sanjeev Bathla, Shivam Goyal, Alawi Singh, Karan Shinghal, Aditya Vikram Gupta Sitting 2nd Row (L to R): Varun Sehgal, Rishi Raj Deva, Jayadityavir Singh, Abhayraj Jain, Yash Dhandhania, Vivek Vishwanathan, Rohan Agarwal, Jaivir Puri, Vivan Sharma, Rishabh Agarwal, Ashvin Singh Solanki, Divij Kapoor, Ranveer Modi
In March, eight boys and the Master-in-Charge, Mr. Sanjiv Bathla, attended the World Schools’ Golf Challenge at Hua Hin, Thailand. This was the highest level of Golf tournament attended so far. Twentysix teams from all over the world participated. The Doon School team was the only one from the Indian sub-continent. The team stood in 15th position at the senior level and Zahaan Qureshi and Varun Sehgal stood in 10th position in individual scores. Zahaan Qureshi and Sumer Sehgal represented the School in the Madhav Rao Scindia Inter-School Gold Tournament, where the School emerged the winners.
35
HOCKEY Master-in-Charge Captain
Sitting 1st Row (L to R): Pranav Aggarwal, Siddhant Sachdev, Arjun Parmar, Shantanu Seth, Dhruv Agarwal, Dr Arvindanabha Shukla, Adhiraj Singh, Yuv Vir Khosla, Eeshat Tiwary, Gopal Singh Mann Sitting 2nd Row (L to R): Anubhav Agarwal, Rishabh Pande, Anant Singh Mann, Dhruv Prasad, Ashish Rao, Ishan Sandhu, Akhil Ranjan
After an amazingly successful year of hockey in 2011, this year’s school team looked to take the level of hockey in school to unprecedented heights. Practices for school team members began early and under the guidance of the Master-in-Charge, Dr Arvindanabha Shukla, the old members of the team carried on enhancing what they had learnt over the years while the new entrants into the team prospered with the surfeit of experience and knowledge about the game. The school team played some friendlies and quickly moved into tournaments. With major tournaments such as the Annual Kandhari Hockey Tournament at Welham Boys’ School and the Councils Hockey In the tournaments, an astounding display of skill was put up by many including Yuv Vir Khosla, Siddhant Sachdev, Dhruv Prasad and Ashish Rao while juniors including Anubhav Agarwal and Ishan Sandhu also gave excellent performances. With a great overall performance and with many new faces on the team, passes. Inter House Hockey 2012
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Junior Cup
Senior Cup
House Cup
Kashmir House
Jaipur and Tata House
Tata House
PT Master-in-Charge Senior PT Leader
Sitting 1st Row (L to R): Madhavan Sakhlani, Yuv Vir Khosla, Dhruv Agarwal, Mr Michael James, Tanmay Kapoor, Nabeel Shah, Nivit Kochhar Sitting 2nd Row (L to R): Kumar Sambhav, Alawi Singh, Banda M S Lamba, Arjun Parmar, Aditya Vikram Gupta, Animesh Jain
of the Sprint Term was devoid of any organized PT as the PT Leaders had not been appointed. However, as soon as the Leaders were appointed, with Dhruv Agarwal as School PT Leader, all squads began training. Throughout the greater part of the term, the squads trained without the S formers, which led to a problem. Even though this problem was a great one, the PT Squads came
Inter House PT Competition 2012 House
Oberoi House
Best P.T. Leader
Junior
Oberoi House
Dhruv Agarwal
Senior
Oberoi House
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SQUASH Master-in-Charge
Sitting (L to R): Jai Ahuja, Kabir Sethi, Tanmay Kapoor, Mr Ramesh Bhardwaj, Ishan Sandhu, Madhavan Sakhlani, Sidharth Sethi Standing (L to R): Rishi Raj Deva, Naadir Singh, Dhananjaya Mukul Bansal, Shourya Kishorepuria, Sudhansh Agrawal, Sajal Bansal
winning 3 and losing 2. The team participated in a Triangular Fixture with Welham Boys’ School and Woodstock School, in which we emerged victorious. We also played against various schools namely, Pine Grove School, Subathu, Army Public School, Dagshai and PPS, Nabha, against whom we won all matches played. The team also participated in the National Squash Tournament where Ishan Sandhu, Jai Ahuja and Dhananjaya Bansal won matches for Uttarakhand. In the Individual Squash tournament held at School, Sidharth Sethi won the U-19 Category, Dhananjaya Bansal the U-17 Category, Shourya Kishorepuria the U-15 Category and Ajatshatru Singh the U-13 Category.
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Re-awarded Full Colours
Half Colours
Inter House Squash 2012
Ishan Sandhu
Madhavan Saklani Tanmay Kapoor
House Cup
Tata House
SWIMMING Master-in-Charge Captain
Sitting 1st Row (L to R): Pratyaksh Parmar, Udai Nath Behl, Sumer Sehgal, Raj Surana, Mrs Anez Katre, Aditya Vikram Gupta, Mr Samik Das, Animesh Jain, Yash Jalan , Karan Shinghal, Divyant Sapra, Abhishek Pai Sitting 2nd Row (L to R): Pranjalya Shukla, Rishabh Agarwal, Kismat Chopra, Gaurav Kothari, Shantanu Seth, Rohan Agarwal, Josh Pasricha, Yasir Iqbal Sitting 3rd Row (L to R): Varun Sehgal, Nehansh Saxena, Nikhil Chauhan, Nasir Iqbal, Arunabh Utkarsh, Dhruv Kharbanda, Nihal Singh Mann, Rahul Bhagchandani
Four new records were set this year, three in the juniors’ category and one in the seniors’ category. The participated in the tournament, which included outstation schools. The School Swimming team won all the three categories, and consequently the overall championship. At the IPSC Swimming at DPS RK Puram, the School‘s performance was the best-ever. In the U-14 Category, Udai Nath Behl won two Gold medals and Pratyaksh Parmar won two Silver and one Gold medals. The U-14 Team won the Medley Relay and the U-14 team won the Runners’ Up Trophy. In the U-19 Category, Aditya Gupta won one silver medal and Zorawar Whig won two silver medals in his Breaststroke Events. In the Council’s Swimming Tournament, the team brought back 10 Individual Gold medals, 8 Individual Silver medals and all medals in the team events. The team brought back the winners cup. Along with the new initiatives like The Doon School Aquatic Meet and best-ever performance at the IPSC level, this report points to the huge possibilities for the future in terms of junior swimmers in the School. Full Colours Yash Jalan Raj Surana Zorawar Whig Animesh Jain
Half Colours Karan Shingal Divyant Sapra Sumer Sehgal Udai Nath Behl Pratyaksh Parmar Abhishek Pai
Inter House Swimming 2012 House Cup Senior Cup Mediums Cup Junior Cup
Jaipur House Jaipur House Oberoi House Hyderabad House
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TABLE TENNIS Master-in-Charge Captain
Sitting (L to R): Rishabh Sharma, Shivan Tandon, Mr Anand Kumar Mandhian, Raghav Kothiwal, Mr Chitranjan Kagdee, Rishabh Chaddha, Shrey Raj Kapoor Standing (L to R): Ishaan Jhawar, Chaitanya Agarwal, Siddhant Gupta, Kanav Agarwal
The School played a total of 16 friendly matches with Summer Valley, Welham Boys’ School, Sai Club, District Sports Club and Pestle Weed College and won 7. In the Individual Table Tennis competition Raghav Kothiwal won the Senior category and Kanav Agarwal won in the Junior’s category.
40
Full Colours
Half Colours
Inter-House Winner
Rishabh Chadda Shivan Tandon
Shrey Raj Kapoor Rishabh Sharma
Tata House
TENNIS Master-in-Charge Captain
Sitting (L to R): Yash Johri, Mr Piyush Bhardwaj, Raghav Nath, Mr Vishal Mohla, Yash Jalan Standing (L to R): Devang Mehra, Arush Sood, Chaitanya Fatehpuria, Siddharth Bhardwaj, Ruhaan Dev Tyagi, Shivan Tandon, Rohan Chaudhari, Leonardo Pamei
Our School junior and senior teams performed brilliantly in the Council Schools’ Table Tennis tournament organized a coaching camp for seniors from 4 August to 18 August 2012. The senior School team acquired some great tactics, tips and techniques from a person who had coached the India team in the recent past. This year we are providing coaching to our sub-junior and junior teams. Under the rich guidance of Mr. Narendra Singh, many players are grooming their talent in tennis. In the Sardar Mohd. Tennis Tournament for Seniors, Arush Sood was declared the winner and in the Dr. S.R. Vohra Tennis Tournament for Juniors, Leonardo Pamei was declared the winner. In the 15th Uttarakhand State Open
Promising Tennis Player, 2012, was awarded to Leonardo Pamei. Inter-House Winner Hyderabad House Full Colours
Half Colours
Re-awarded Full Colours
Re-awarded Half Colours
Yash Jalan
Devang Mehra
Arush Sood
Shivan Tandon Siddharth Bhardwaj
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42
Activities
Committees Clubs & Socities Spare Time Activities Student Exchange
43
GAMES’ COMMITTEE
Playstation
Chairperson Secretary
Sitting (L to R): Mr Chandan Singh Ghughtyal, Mr Srinivas Swamy, Mr Sudhir Thapa, Dr Vidhukesh Vimal, Dr Arvindanabha Shukla, Mr Samik Das, Mr Michael James, Mr Deepak Sharma, Yuv Vir Khosla, Mr Philip Burrett, Mr Ashish Dean, Mr Vishal Mohla, Mr Manish Pant, Mr Anand Kumar Mandhian, Mr Mohammad Istemdad Ali, Mr Ramesh Bhardwaj Standing (L to R): Siddhant Sachdev, Aditya Vikram Gupta, Raghav Kothiwal, Nivit Kochhar, Arjun Midha, Adhiraj Thakran, Raghav Nath, Dhruv Agarwal, Abhishek Parasrampuria
LIBRARY COUNCIL
Literally
Chairperson Secretary
Sitting (L to R): Mr Manoj Pandey, Alawi Singh, Ms Priyanka Bhattacharya, Mr Ambikesh Shukla, Mrs Priya Chaturvedi, Sanat Kumar Thakur, Dr Peter McLaughlin, Mr Pankaj Das, Mr Vinay Pande, Mr Samik Das, Ms Anamika Ghose, Yash Johri, Mr Manu Mehrotra Standing (L to R): Yash Dhandhania, Himanshu Todi, Arnaav Bhavanani, Mohammad Omar Chisti, Shivam Goyal, Siddharth Kaul, Ruhaan Tyagi, Dhruv Kharbanda, Arhant Khullar, Akshaj Garg
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MESS COMMITTEE
Eat fresh
Chairperson Secretary
Sitting (L to R): Mr Ashish Dean, Mrs Ranjit Kaur, Mr Philip Burrett, Shrish Srivastav, Mr Sameer Katre, Mr Sanjay Makhija, Divyank Sharma Standing (L to R): Siddhant Gupta, Shawn Kapur, Raghav Gupta, Dhruv Johri, Nikunj Agarwal
TECHNOLOGY COUNCIL
Blocked by Fortinet!
Chairperson Secretary
Sitting (L to R): Mr Arnab Mukherjee, Mr Kamal Ahuja, Mr Rajesh Majumdar, Siddhant Gupta, Mr Ambikesh Shukla, Nivit Kochhar, Dr Peter McLaughlin, Sookrit Malik, Mr Vishal Mohla, Gaurav Garg, Mr Vikram Sabharwal , Mr Biren Chamola, Mr K C Maurya Standing (L to R): Ishmam Chowdhury, Arjun Kapur, Samarth Makhija, Guruansh Singh
45
Co-curricular Programme 46
Curriculum: Clubs & Societies
ASTRONOMY
Across the universe
Master-in-Charge Boy-in-Charge
Sitting 1st Row (L to R): Ananay Sethi, Tanay Agarwal, Kartik Mohan Sitting 2nd Row (L to R): Shrey Aryan, Yash Upadhyay, Tushar Mohan, Mr Rajesh Majumdar, Shivam Goyal, Jai Khanna, Agastya Bellad Standing (L to R): Ayush Sarawgi, Arnav Jain, Ishmam Chowdhury, Yasir Nizam, Dhruv Kharbanda, Shourya Kishorepuria, Madhav Singhal, Ritzy Rajaswi, Arth Gupta
In the Astronomical Society there were 25 members who attended meetings every Wednesday. Some special events were:
47
BUSINESS CLUB
Keep the money rolling
Master-in-Charge Boy-in-Charge
Sitting (L to R): Uday Lakhanpal, Sidharth Kaul, Vidit Sadana, Mr Md Istemdad Ali, Aditya Vikram Gupta, Himanshu Todi, Karan Shinghal Standing (L to R): Anshul Tibrewal, Harshil Aggarwal
Boys have taken an active interest in the Business Club’s virtual stock market game. Some members are eager to make transactions in the real stock markets, but the law forbids people below the age of 18 years to do so. As a result they are taking an active interest in the portfolios of their parents. In the regular sessions held, boys have been given a theoretical perspective of some key concepts and ratios. They have learnt to calculate and apply them while choosing stocks. Apart from this, the business bulletin board has been regularly updated with news and information from the business world. Vidit Sidana and Aditya Vikram Gupta deserve special mentions as they carried this activity forward, and helped in its development among the members of the school community.
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DSMUN
This motion passes.
Master-in-Charge Secretary General Boy-in-Charge
Sitting 1st Row (L to R): Shivinderjit Cheema, Pulkit Agarwal, Sachin Mehra, Gaurav Kothari, Harshvardhan Singh, Prabnur Bal, Ishan Sandhu, Siddarth Sarin, Armaan Imam, Divyansh Goel, Arush Sood Sitting 2nd Row (L to R): Rayhaan Imam, Aditya Vikram Gupta, Dhruv Singhal, Siddhant Sachdev, Mr Rashid Sharfuddin, Sookrit Malik, Nabeel Shah, Rishabh Tusnial, Kunal Kanodia, Alawi Singh Standing (L to R): Sayuj Dhandhania, Anshul Tibrewal, Pranay Raj Kapoor, Shashvat Dhandhania, Nakul Talwar, Madhav Dutt, Arnav Joshi, Raniz Bordoloi, Devesh Sharma, Zorawar Whig, Utkarsh Jha, Kabir Sethi, Dhruv Prasad, Rahul Srivatsava, Aamir Shah, Imroz Suri
The Doon School Model United Nations Programme continues to enjoy huge popularity in School, especially among B, A, S, and SC forms. Last year, the School participated in seven national and won two prizes at the Harvard MUN, Boston, where Aahan Menon won the Outstanding Delegate award in the press corps and Arnav Joshi won a Special Commendation in the NATO committee. Many of our boys also won at the Harvard China WEMUN Conference. The School also hosted its own DSMUN in August that saw participation from 42 schools from India and abroad.
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JUNIOR ENGLISH DEBATING SOCIETY
The Opposition
Master-in-Charge Secretary
Sitting 1st Row (L to R): Aditya Vardhan Agarwal, Siddhant Kumar, Jashan Kalra, Tanay Agarwal, Shashwat Gandhi , Ahaan Sanjay Gupta,Nehansh Saxena, Ishan Jhawar, Vatsal Gupta Sitting 2nd Row (L to R): Yash Dhandhania, Rahul Bhagchandani, Saksham Goel, Aviral Garg, Madhav Mall, Vaibhav Chandak, Tejit Pabari, Ananay Sethi, Arth Gupta, Tushaar Sharma, C C Chengappa, Sasyak Pattnaik Sitting 3rd Row (L to R): Anvay Grover, Nihal Dhillon, Manan Pradhan, Smayan Sahni, Devansh Agarwal, Mr Debashish Chakrabarty, Chaitanya Kediyal, Vivek Vishwanathan, Yasharth Goyal , Aditya Maheshwari, Shrey Aryan Standing (L to R): Udai Behl, Tanmay Nautiyal, Ritzy Rajeswi, Jaiaditya Singh, Rishabh Agarwal, Jaivir Puri, Prabhsharan Mamik, Rohan Agarwal, Dhruv Kharbanda, Ishaan Kapoor, Rishi Raj Deva, Nihal Mann, Arya Khanal, Madhav Singhal
Due to the reorganization of the School day introduced from February 2013, the JEDS decided to remain a Society and not an STA. Rather, The Scholar’s Cup was designated as an STA instead of JEDS. The JEDS also trained for inter-house debating in a new format - a combination of Oxford style four member teams had to have at least one speaker from each of the three forms – D, C & B—to ensure broad-based participation. Tata House secured the Inter-House Junior Cup, and plenty of talent was showcased in such competitions. Many boys also got to hone their skills at the Scholar’s Cup, held in Singapore.
50
SENIOR ENGLISH DEBATING SOCIETY
August House
Master-in-Charge Secretary
Sitting (L to R): Udbhav Aggarwal, Rayhaan Imam, Shashvat Dhandania, Ms Priyanka Bhattacharya, Rahul Srivastava, Sidharth Kaul, Ujjwal Dahuja Standing (L to R): Sayuj Dhandania, Yuvraj Nathani, Arnav Joshi, Sookrit Malik, Yash Johri, Utkarsh Jha, Vikramaditya Kapur, Husain Haider, Pulkit Agarwal
represented the School successfully in locations around the country and the world. At the International Independent Schools’ Public Speaking Conference, The Doon School emerged as the Best Overseas Team, while Udbhav Agarwal was adjudged the Best Overseas Speaker. Arnav Joshi World Individual Debating and Public Speaking Championship, held in Moreton Boys’, Brisbane: The team comprised of six A-Formers namely Sayuj Dhandhania, Pulkit Agarwal, Abhinav Kejriwal, Husain were noteworthy. Back home, The Doon School, represented by Pulkit Agarwal and Sayuj Dhandhania, made it to the Finals of the nationally recognized Frank Anthony Memorial Debates in Kolkata. The Doon School also made it to the Finals of the Mayo Girls’ Silver Jubilee Debate. At our own Chuckerbutty Memorial Debates, The Doon School, represented by Shashvat Dhandhania, Ujjwal Dahuja, Rahul Srivastava and Udbhav Agarwal, reached the Finals for the seventh straight
The Senior Inter-House Debates were held throughout the Spring Term. Eventually, Hyderabad House emerged as the winner for the second consecutive time. Rahul Srivastava was adjudged the Best Speaker. Debating continues to attract participation and interest from many students across all forms. 51
ENGLISH LITERARY SOCIETY
The Literatti
Master-in-Charge Boy-in-Charge
Sitting (L to R): Yash Dhandhania, Rayhaan Imam, Rahul Srivastava, Ms Priya Chauhan, Aditya Vikram Gupta, Mr Debashish Chakrabarty, Agni Raj Singh, Arnav Joshi, Smayan Sahani Standing (L to R): Vallavi Shukla, Krishnamit Bharghava, Pulkit Agarwal, Sookrit Malik, Nabeel Shah, Aakanksha Mohan, Manan Pradhan, Abhinav Kejriwal, Mahak Sharma
and the authors that they study in class. The society also organizes competitions that are geared to assess the skill sets the boys have already acquired in class. This year Dr Hammad Farooqui and Mr Debashish Chakrabarty escorted a group of eleven students accompanied by six other teachers. This was the third trip by the department to the Jaipur Literary Festival and has now become an annual feature.
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FILM SOCIETY
Now Screening
Master-in-Charge Boy-in-Charge
Sitting (L to R): Aamir Shah, Mr Dhanesh Joshi, Saif Ali, Dr Md Hammad Farooqui, Yashraj Agarwal
In 2012, the school’s Film Society had a very eventful year. The student members, along with the them at regular intervals during the year. Along with these meetings were interspersed sessions of
A variety of movies were brought under the lens, varying from some of Satyajit Ray’s masterpieces to Dhobi Ghat and from Gone With The Wind to The Artist. Such range allowed for the development
Overall, the society had an amazing year and with growth in members, the society can only look to grow in the years to come.
53
HINDI DEBATING SOCIETY Master-in-Charge
Sitting (L to R): Atrey Bhargava, Sakcham Bhalotia, Mr Devendra Kumar Mishra, Tanmay Nautiyal, Priyanshu Raj Standing : Nehansh Saxena
BHARAT VANI - Seniors Master-in-Charge Secretary
Sitting (L to R): Ujjwal Dahuja, Shubham Khemka, Sanat Kumar Thakur, Dr Md Hammad Farooqui, Yash Agrawal, Ritesh Shinde, Aditya Dhingra 54
The School is making steady progress in Hindi debating. Fifteen to twenty students regularly attended the meetings. The format of the Inter-House Hindi debates has been changed to make it more logical and original. The concept of the Doon premier league debates has been introduced to create interest in junior students for Hindi debating. In this competition, teams are led and trained by the senior students. Forty junior students took part in this competition. The Hindi debating team has participated except one and won three debates. It was a great delight to win our own inter-school Kamla Jeevan debates. Our team has earned respect and is considered the most formidable team on the Hindi debating circuit at present. Sanat Kumar Thakur, Ritesh Shinde, Abhinav Kejriwal, Arnav Joshi, Yash Agarwal, Udbhav Agarwal and Arth Gupta are actively involved in the activity and performed consistently well at inter-school debates. Hindi debating has gone through a lot of changes in the last year. One of the major changes was in the the year. Highlights of the year:
Won the inter-school debates at Daly College, Indore Results of the Inter-House Hindi Debates: Jaipur House Tata House
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HISTORICAL CIRCLE
Digging into the past
Master-in-Charge Boy-in-Charge
Sitting (L to R): Shashvat Dhandhania, Mr Piyush Malviya, Yash Johri, Ms Purnima Dutta, Rayhaan Imam Standing (L to R): Vansh Agarwal, Varun Sehgal, Guruansh Singh
The Historical Circle society organized many lectures and talks with the intent of inciting boys to view certain aspects of life from the eyes of those who are already successful and experienced. Students interacted and picked up ideas from those in various walks of life and these ideas ranged from professional ideas to revelations regarding what is usually arcane in the life of an average teenager. Certain guest speakers who addressed the boys were: Padma Bhushan Dr. Manju Sharma – “The Wonders Of Biotechnology And Its Role In Future.” Mr. Akhil Bakshi – Former Adviser to the Late Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi – “The Gondwana Land Theory and Mapping of Cultures on this land by a road expedition.” Mr. Rohit Bansal – Board Member, News Broadcasters Association – “Why The Media Shows So Much Nonsense And Its Role In Future “ Dr. Col. G.S. Ahlowalia - Human Behaviour Expert and Motivational Speaker – “ Motivation In Sports” Dr. Sucharita Sengupta – Assistant Professor, Jamia Milia University – “Gender Issues And Gender Sensitivity” Mr. Rakshit Tandon – Consultant, Internet And Mobile Association Of India – “ Cyber Crimes And Safe Dr. Col. G.S. Ahlowalia – “Nutrition In Sports” Dr. Ravi Chopra – Director, People’s Institute for Science – “Dams And Doom” The society also hosted the annual Ishan Das Kapur Historical Circle Essay Contest which gave history enthusiasts an opportunity to discuss important international issues. Mahak Sharma, who wrote about Arvind Kejriwal’s rise in the political scheme of India, won this year’s edition. 56
LAMDA
Enunciate
Master-in-Charge Boy-in-Charge
Sitting 1st Row (L to R): Yash Dhandhania, Ananay Sethi, Smayan Sahni, Vineet Puri, Rahul Bhagchandani, Tejit Pabari, Shivam Sharma, Rahul Garg Sitting 2nd Row (L to R): Mahak Sharma, Nabeel Shah, Vikramaditya Kapur, Ujjwal Dahuja, Ms Priya Chauhan, Aditya Vikram Gupta, Aakanksha Mohan, Devesh Sharma, Sookrit Malik Standing (L to R): Chaitanya Kediyal, Abhinav Kejriwal, Pulkit Agarwal, Vivan Sharma, Dhruv Ahuja, Atrey Bhargava, Vansh Agarwal, Pranay Raj Kapoor, Ishaan Kapoor, Karan Dhillon, Rudra Srivastava, Rishi Raj Deva, Anant Mohan
The year 2012-2013 has seen larger numbers than ever give the popular Speaking of Verse and Prose exam conducted by the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts (LAMDA). The exam is conducted in School twice a year with the examiner coming out from LAMDA, London every year to examine the students. In the past year, exams were held in August and February. Roughly 250 students gave the exam. The exam is held on a one-on-one basis, with the student putting up an individual performance in front of the examiner. At the junior levels, students perform a piece each of prose and poetry, one of which is taken from the LAMDA selection and one is the student’s own choice. At the senior levels, the students have an additional sonnet to perform. The teacher trainers have been working with the students in a bid to sharpen their understanding of the nuances of tone, colour, cadence, and expression. The technical side of LAMDA is the compulsory theory component, which helps students appreciate poetic devices, shades and shifts in meaning, subtleties of tone and timbre. At the silver level, students study the entire speech apparatus. The study of the novel at the gold level gives students insight into the text, subtext and context of a novel. LAMDA is compulsory at the D and C forms. Students thereafter must clear the audition to be eligible for the bronze, silver and gold levels. 154 boys appeared: 34 were awarded a Distinction and 75 were awarded Merits. 57
MATH COLLOQUIUM Master-in-Charge
Sitting 1st Row (L to R): Utkarsh Agarwal, Saksham Goel, Tanay Gopal Agarwal, Ayush Sarawgi, Anvay Grover Sitting 2nd Row (L to R): Shourya Agarwal, Shlok Jain, Mr Sudhir Thapa, Dr Mona Khanna, Mr Rahul Luther, Arnav Joshi, Ujjwal Dahuja Standing (L to R): Parth Aggarwal, Samarth Juneja, Priyanshu Raj, Rishith Agarwal, Arunabh Utkarsh, Parth Khanna, Nikhil Saraf, Siddhant Gupta, Manan Dadhania
This activity encompassed a number of Mathematics-orientated activities: interesting topics in Mathematics
software such as Geometric Sketch Pad (GSP), Autograph and Graph 4.3 were used to bring awareness of latest technologies in Mathematics to the boys
All these activities enriched their knowledge of the subject and its importance in the modern world and, most importantly, it creates a fun-loving approach to the subject
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PUBLIC SPEAKING ENGLISH
Loud and clear
Master-in-Charge Boy-in-Charge
Sitting (L to R): Karan Kairon, Nabeel Shah, Mr Piyush Malviya, Yash Johri, Yuvan Kumar Standing (L to R): Ananay Sethi, Eshaan Bhardwaj, Abhinav Kejriwal
Public Speaking at Doon is something that allows any boy wishing to express himself in a public forum, to do so, that too without any hiccups. Assembly talks are given every Wednesdays and Fridays. On Wednesdays, boys give talks in English and on Fridays in Hindi. The speakers talk about topics ranging controversial issues. The boys insure that they give talks that would ensure public attention. The year 2012 saw some extremely gripping and controversial topics being talked about. Talks by Yuvan Kumar about “Success”, Abhinav Kejriwal’s various talks in Hindi and English were some of the talks that were the highlights of the year. Yash Johri’s was the Boy-in-Charge for all English Assembly talks and Ritesh Shinde was in-Charge for all Hindi talks. The year concluded with Yash Johri’s talk being adjudged best talk of the year. Overall, the year seemed to be a successful one with every assembly talk, being better than the previous and the number of boys participating consistently increasing.
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QUIZ SOCIETY
Riddle me this
Master-in-Charge Secretary
Sitting (L to R): Sanat Thakur, Ujjwal Dahuja, Karan Kairon, Mr John Xavier, Yash Johri, Agni Raj Singh, Suyash Raj Shivam Standing (L to R): Shlok Jain, Harshvardhan Singh, Aditya Bhardwaj, Dhruv Johri
The Quiz Society, led by Yash Johri, met regularly in the evenings. Boys are encouraged to read the daily newspapers, and at Society meetings participants eagerly compete to display their knowledge of current events in India and around the world. General knowledge of history, cultural landmarks, science, and sports are also popular topics for the meetings. This year, The Doon School Quiz was not held. However, in the Spring, boys traveled to The Daly College, Indore, for the P.G. Miller Memorial Quiz; the Welham Girls’ School for the Mrs. Russell G.K. and Nature Quiz; the Rashtriya Indian Military College for the Hugh Catchpole Inter-school Challenge Quiz; and Scholar’s Home for the Rajeev Khanna Memorial Inter-School Quiz. The School has been ably represented at these events by many boys, especially Aditya Bhattacharya, Aditya Bhardwaj, and Agni Raj Singh. Ecology Doon School Quiz Society plans to follow closely these topics in the news.
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SCIENCE SOCIETY
The Big Bang Theory
Master-in-Charge Boy-in-Charge
Sitting (L to R): Ujjwal Dahuja, Mr Ramesh Bhardwaj, Sanat Thakur, Mr Vivek Kumar, Aviral Gupta, Mr Srinivas Swamy, Shivank Singh Standing (L to R): Abhinav Kejriwal, Shlok Jain, Vansh Aggarwal, Parth Khanna, Pranav Kothiwal, Ishita Bhardwaj
This year the School has merged the Science Society and Nature Club activities. A number of activities were held during the year. There were visits to Science City, Kapurthala, and GPS and GIS Mapping Workshop inside the School campus, Science Exhibition during Founder’s, Collaborative Experimental work with Groton School, USA, Earth Day Celebration, Wild Life Quiz By WII, Dehradun, Biotechnology Quest at CMS, Lucknow, Moth Trapping Experiment in the campus, Photography exhibition and the Wild Life Week Celebration. The Shanti Swaroop Essay Writing Competition and the Dipanker Sen conducted with the help of the society boys and a Science Lecture Series was also held over the year.
second in the IIRS Waste Material Exhibition conducted during Earth Day.
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Co-curricular Programme 62
Curriculum: Spare Time Activities
AEROMODELLING
Antonov
Master-in-Charge Boy-in-Charge
Sitting (L to R): Jai Khanna, Shivam Goyal, Mr Ashish Dean, Jairaj Sadana, Nirvan Dogra Standing (L to R): Kartik Mohan, Yash Mittal, Samrat Singh Rawat, Ahaan Agarwal, Fateh Raj Khanna
Aeromodelling STA has always been one of the most challenging and exciting STAs at School. To give it a more professional approach, the club invited Mr Arvind Gupta, CEO, Aero Sports International to School. Under his guidance, regular classes were organized during STA time. In those classes the basic concepts of designing and the use of tools and glue were taught. Since the club comprised mostly junior boys, stress was laid on designing and cutting their own models. The boys made paper Aero-modeling workshop was held at Gen-Next School, Noida, on 13 April, 2012, for junior and senior boys. The boys were trained to make rubber-powered gliders. To make this STA more interesting and informative, the club has decided to visit various local and outstation Air Force bases, museums (for planes) and, if possible, air shows.
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JUNIOR CHEMISTS
Aqua Fortis
Master-in-Charge
Sitting (L to R): Mohammad Zaid Bin Shameen, Mrs Meeta Sharma, Mr Anand Kumar Mandhian, Shreyansh Pandey Standing (L to R): Atreya Guru Prasad, Advait Ganpathy
Industrial chemistry was reintroduced as the Senior Chemists Club and has successfully completed pollutants at the Bindal River slum to the presence of insecticides and pesticides on fruits and A number of daily use chemicals were prepared, such as Liquid Soap, Tooth Paste, Ink, Ointments (Iodex and more), Pimple Remover, Chocolates, Metal Polish, Currency Cleaner, etc. Processes probes and Spectro-Photometer were introduced. A trip to Pushpa Gujral Science City, Jalandhar was organized with a total of ten boys, escorted by Anand Kumar Mandhian.
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SENIOR CHEMISTS
Dexter’s Laboratory
Master-in-Charge Boy-in-Charge
Sitting (L to R): Shivank Singh, Aakanksha Mohan, Mrs Malvika Bhatt, Mahak Sharma, Dhairik Fuletra Standing (L to R): Parth Gupta, Sanat Kumar Thakur, Aayush Tripathi
At Founder’s Day 2012 the Chemistry Exhibition was greatly appreciated by one and all. An entire room was converted into a Planetarium. It was a photo exhibition depicting the evolution of elements on earth. The entire recording of a voice-over with music was done in the School. Dhruv Singhal deserves a special mention. He helped us with the recording and editing in a very professional way. A planetarium was prepared in a classroom depicting the Inter-SE Positions of stars/ heavenly bodies viewed in the Dehradun sky on October 8. Their details were obtained from a star map of the city for the day. A picture exhibition of the chemical evolution of Earth was displayed with a voice-over for the audience.
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CHESS
Black or White?
Master-in-Charge Captain
Sitting 1st Row (L to R): Suchet Khurana , Mudit Bajaj Sitting 2nd Row (L to R): Shreshta Mehra, Parth Khanna, Mr Arvind Dethe, Ujjwal Dahuja, Mr Chit Ranjan Kagdee, Shreyash Agarwal, Udbhav Agarwal Standing (L to R): Mihir Gupta, Vatsal Bora, Shashank Mittal, Gatik Gupta, Salman Mallick, Viraaj Gaur, Chaitanya Agarwal, Akshat Jha, Devansh Sharma
competitions in chess, this analytical game has progressed a great deal. Today, the students get a chance to participate in a plethora of tournaments. This gives them an amazing exposure and they end up performing well in most of the tournaments. In August 2012 two of our boys participated in the Council’s DCSA Inter School Boys and Girls Chess Tournament, which was organized by Ann Mary School, Dehradun, and 18 Council schools participated in the tournament. In the junior boys category, Sarthak Gupta won the trophy. The school also hosted The Shriram Bansidhar Inter-School Chess School, Barakhamba Road emerged victorious in the tournament, followed by Modern School, Vasant Vihar, whereas The Doon School A team, comprising Ujjwal Dahuja, Sarthak Gupta, Shaurya Agarwal and Gopal Singh Mann, was adjudged second runner-up. In the School’s Individual Chess Runner-up. The School’s Individual Trophy (Juniors) for 2013 was won by Anuman Goel with Shreshta Championship, 2012 organized by AICF.
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COOKING
Masterchef
Master-in-Charge
Sitting (L to R): Arnav Jain, Viren Aggarwal, Dr Ritu Bahl Mohan, Vishankaditya Parmar, Kanav Gupta Standing (L to R): Kalpit Sharma, Vivan Sharma, Tejveer Singh Kohli, Sambhav Agarwal
The Junior Cooking STA enthusiasts were all out to learn new dishes and experiment with new ideas. The boys continued with the rudiments of basic cooking (washing dishes and chopping onions), but also started experimenting with new tastes and dishes from across the world. The boys went out to exotic restaurants and tried out new dishes and analyzed the ingredients, although some Japanese dishes did not hit the popularity chart. There were 13 boys with Dr Ritu Mohan in the activity.
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CYCLING
Wheelie
Master-in-Charge Girl-in-Charge
Sitting 1st row (L to R): Vivek Sinha, Tanay Agarwal, Shubham Dhiman, Shlok Jain, Arnav Kumar, Manan Dadhania Sitting 2nd row (L to R): Abhishek Kakkar, Mr Manu Mehrotra, Mahak Sharma, Mrs Meeta Sharma, Jai Singh Yadav Standing (L to R): Naman Lodha, Ishmam Chowdhary, Vedant Agarwal, Shashwat Agarwal, Aditya Bhardwaj, Kartikey Garg, Kartikey Kardam, Imaad Parvez
Cycling has become one of the most sought-after STAs in School. A large number of SC Leavers go for cycling with the master-in-charge in the cantonment area to cycle and relax. It helps them destress at the time of the examinations. Currently, 15 junior boys and 28 senior boys are enrolled. observe if they will be able to cycle outside the campus. They are then taken outside the estate
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DESIGN & TECHNOLOGY
Carving it out
Master-in-Charge Boy-in-Charge
Sitting (L to R): Mr Furkan Khan, Mr Vijay Kumar, Mr Dinesh Chandra Bhatkoti, Avik Gugalia, Mr A R Singh, Chaitanya Fatehpuria, Mr Hari Om Standing (L to R): Shrey Raj Kapoor, Vibhav Gupta
Design and Technology is an integral part of D & C forms as a subject. It helps the boys to identify that the boys have adapted to Design and Technology fairly well. Apart from being a subject, Design and Technology facilities are available for boys to use in their spare time in the evenings. There are 50 boys at present who use this facility and enjoy creating new artifacts. It is one of the most popular areas of craft at The Doon School. The boys design and produce artifacts in wood, metal and acrylic. They use machines like metal lathes, wood turning lathes, jigsaws, etc. The boys have produced chessboards. There were over four hundred artifacts made by boys last year.
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DOON POETS’ SOCIETY
Verse-atile
Masters-in-Charge
Boy-in-Charge
Sitting (L to R): Adarsh Lanka, Mr Devendra Kumar Mishra, Shivank Singh, Mr John Xavier, Nehansh Saxena Standing (L to R): Shubham Dhiman, Priyanshu Raj, Sahir Chaudhary, Ritzy Rajaswi, Siddharth Mishra
Over the past term, The Doon School Poets Society has achieved a lot. The society hosted a programme where the boys and girls of The Doon School were encouraged to come up to the podium and recite their original poems in front of a full capacity audience. This programme was successful in encouraging the boys to take part in writing poetry. This term also saw the visit of poet and author Mrs. Sukrita Paul, and there were a the select group of very enthusiastic boys to interact and recite their poems to her. There were discussions regarding the various styles of writing poems, and the boys learnt a lot from such interactions.
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DOON SCHOOL STOCK EXCHANGE
Sharing is caring
Master-in-Charge Boy-in-Charge Vidit Sidana
Sitting (L to R): Udayvir Lakhanpal, Sidharth Kaul, Mr Kamal Ahuja, Vidit Sadana, Mr Md Istemdad Ali, Himanshu Todi, Karan Shinghal Standing (L to R): Anshul Tibrewal, Adhiraj Singh, Harshil Agarwal, Aditya Vikram Gupta
The Doon Stock Exchange has had a very interesting year packed with intense learning and competition in the virtual stock exchange simulation exercise. At present there are nine boys who are part of the STA. There are presently more than 150 boys playing the virtual stock exchange were a number of interesting discussions on the movement of the sensitive index and the launch of market capitalization method. The STA seeks to add more modules that are interesting for the members in the next term.
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ELECTRONICS & ROBOTICS
Robocop
Master-in-Charge Boy-in-Charge
Sitting 1st Row (L to R): Dhruv Pais, Arnav Gupta, Bharat Hari Choudhary, Hitansh Prakash Nagdev, Prakarsh Gupta. Sitting 2nd Row (L to R): Vireshwar Singh Sidhu, Pratyush Bharti, Mr Ramesh Bhardwaj, Sookrit Malik, Mr Rajesh Majumdar, Sabhya Katia, Abhayraj Jain Standing (L to R): Aryaman Saluja, Raj Rahul Sankla, Rushil Goyal, Yash Dhandhania, Nikhil Saraf, Madhav Bardhwaj, Ayush Sarawgi, Pragun Agarwal, Aryan Singla
A two-day Robotics workshop was conducted to train the boys in hardware and software development. The School bought four new robotic kits and two new resource kits to give more hands-on working experience to the boys.
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HAM RADIO
Alpha Tango Charlie
Master-in-Charge Boy-in-Charge
Sitting (L to R): Shrey Raj Kapoor, Aviral Gupta, Mr Manish Pant, Himanshu Todi, Ashutosh Goyal Standing (L to R): Yasharth Goyal, Eshaan Bhardwaj
We have been starting earlier with the classes and preparation for the HAM radio operator licence exam. This year many boys have not only shown a keen interest in the activity but also appeared for the license exam. Five boys appeared for the exam held on the 30th of May, 2012 in Delhi. Eight to ten more boys were preparing to appear for the licence operator examination during the Autumn the activity. A guest speaker, Dr. Ram Mohan, Director of NAIR, Hyderabad, conducted a three-day workshop on amateur radio, its advantages and the handling of radio sets from 30th August to 1st of September, 2012. Apart from this, during STA hours, students were also taught the complete functioning of the radio and Morse key.
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MOTOR MECHANICS
Pit crew
Master-in-Charge Boy-in-Charge
Sitting (L to R): Yash Upadhyay, Shubham Agarwal, Dr Praveen Dwivedi, Shubham Khemka, Aditya Oberai Standing(L to R): Yugvansh Chawla, Agastya Shetty, Sarvagya Dhiman
During the year, the boys learnt about the various technical aspects of two-wheelers, especially motorcycle engines. The primary focus was on the working of four-stroke engines. Motor Mechanics STA has also successfully given an altogether new look to an indigenized, locally made auto cart by had the opportunity of witnessing the service camp organized by the STA. During this service camp others), including geared motorcycles and scooters (geared and un-geared), were serviced free of cost. The service camp included an intensive 25-point checkup of the vehicles and engine oil change. Apart from the service camp, junior boys also learnt about the various road signs, which is very important for their safe driving. Masters and boys also witnessed the safety riding demonstration, boys also witnessed the second Formula One Indian Grand Prix in Noida, UP. Over all it was a successful year for the team of 18 boys in the Motor Mechanics STA.
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PHOTOGRAPHY
Tres, Dos, Uno
Masters-in-Charge
Boys-in-Charge
Sitting (L to R): Yasharth Goyal, Aditya Dhingra, Mr Ashad Qezilbash, Abhishek Pande, Shreshtha Verma, Mr Sanjiv Bathla, Orijit Chatterjee, Amal Agarwal Standing(L to R): Pranav Kothiwal, Harshvardhan Singh, Arjun Kapur, Rishith Agarwal, Rohan Chaudhari
The boys learnt various techniques for enhancing their skills, and enjoed the versatile and creative nature of this activity. The boys learnt through capturing on camera most school events, including sports and cultural events. They were exposed to outdoor photography during midterms and other outings. Quality exhibitions at various Parent-Teacher Meetings and Founder’s Day were staged. The boys had taken all The Yearbook photographs and added to the archival treasure of the School. Abhishek Pande and Shreshtha Verma had been the motivating boys-in-charge of the Photography STA. Shreshtha Verma also exhibited some of his works in Dehradun and had taken to professional photography as a career path. Workshops on skills and the use of appropriate lenses and apertures, as well as using Photoshop, were conducted to expose boys to the nuances of photography. Workshops were held by external experts and masters from the School.
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VIDEO CLUB
Snapchat
Master-in-Charge Boy-in-Charge
Sitting (L to R): Shashwat Agarwal, Azan Brar, Arnav Jain, Dr Vidhukesh Vimal, Abhayraj Jain, Ashvin Solanki, Sharat Kumar Nambiar Standing (L to R): Ritzy Rajaswi, Aarya Tamrakar, Aditya Bhardwaj, Fateh Phoolka, Navraaj Randhawa, Ritvik Khare, Shreyansh Pandey, Umang Garg
The Video Club screened movies for the John Martyn Memorial School students and initiated a rental DVD system, which cut down on the budget required. The Video Club went through a great change in the past year. Students can choose this activity as an STA or SUPW. Presently, 59 students have opted for the Video Club as their SUPW. The Video Club is also gaining popularity as an STA amongst the students. They started making their own short movies on topics of social relevance. The club moved to a new clubroom, bought new equipment and started training in editing as well as DSMUN, the STA Gala and Earth Day were appreciated by everyone. We are encouraging our boys to make documentaries on social issues such as a movie made about voting rights and duties. The boys recorded all major events of School in the video format as well as still photography for digital
DSMUN 2012 and other major school events has been the highlight of the term.
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YOGA
Surya Namaskar
Master-in-Charge Boy-in-Charge
Sitting 1st row(L to R): Tarang Garg, Nehansh Saxena, Raj Rahul Sankla, Yash Killa Sitting 2nd (L to R): Yash Mishra, Preetham Mohan, Arnav Joshi, Mr Kirti Pal Singh Tomar, Vibhav Gupta, Udbhav Agarwal, Ashvin Solanki Standing (L to R): Prakhar Dwiwedi, Atharva Shukla, Siddharth Jain, Sakcham Bhalotia, Yasir Nizam, Siddharth Goel, Rahul Garg, Utkarsh Agarwal
Yoga is one of the most important activities in The Doon School. There are more than 21 boys in the Yoga STA/SUPW. This year we have started new destinations for our yoga activities outside School namely, Nanda Ki Chowki, John Martyn School and Panchayat Ghar. Boys have done a wonderful job in spreading the importance of Yoga at the Panchayat Ghar. for under-privileged children and all are enjoying learning Yoga from our boys and are willing to demonstrate Yoga during special School occasions. At John Martyn School, our boys visited and worked with the school community there. Members of the John Martyn School Community are excited to see the Yoga demonstrations by their school children on special occasions. All in all, Yoga had a fruitful year.
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International Award for Young People Bronze
Sitting (L to R): Lakshya Kothari, Mr Manu Mehrotra, Mr Skand Bali, Shubham Dhingra, Mahak Sharma, Mr Manish Pant, Sayuj Dhandania Standing 1st Row (L to R): Lakshay Varshney, Ishmam Chowdhury, Vedant Agarwal, Parth Khanna, Arjun Singh Kapur, Yasharth Goyal, Rishit Agarwal, Sabir Singh, Shrey Aryan, Yasser Iqbal Standing 2nd Row(L to R): Arnav Jain, Nikunj Agarwal, Saamarth Juneja, Shlok Jain, Hritihik Shukla, Agastya Shetty, Yogesh Agarwal, Rishabh Agarwal, Ruhaan Dev Thyagi Standing 3rd Row( Lto R): Kunal Verma, Tanay Agarwal, Sharat Nambiar, Anvay Grover, Umang Gupta, Ayush Sarawgi, Aditya Maheshwari
International Award for Young People Silver
Sitting (L to R): Mr Manu Mehrotra, Shubham Dhingra, Mr Skand Bali, Mahak Sharma, Mr Manish Pant Standing 1st Row (L to R): Shubham Sikaria, Vatsal Agarwal, Lakshya Kothari, Anmol Jain, Sabhya Katia, Arjun Sharma Standing 2nd Row (L to R): Vibhav Gupta, Digvijay Gupta, Arush Sood, Divyansh Goel, Sarthak Gupta, Ritvik Kar, Ashutosh Goyal 78
International Award for Young People Gold
Sitting (L to R): Mudit Agarwal, Arjun Khaitan, Mr Manu Mehrotra, Shubham Dhingra, Mr Skand Bali, Mahak Sharma, Mr Manish Pant, Neelansh Khurana, Abhishek Pande Standing 1st Row (L to R): Vidit Sidana, Himanshu Todi, Aakanksha Mohan, Lakshya Kothari, Aviral Gupta, Tanmay Kapoor, Avik Gugalia
The School hosted the YES Training Workshop at Chandbagh. Around 20 participants from all over India were trained in this workshop. The Doon School has taken the IAYP programme to the two Government schools in Kotdwar and is going to introduce it in another 130 government schools this year in collaboration with the state government. Mr Anand Kumar Mandhian and Mr Devindra Mishra were sent for the IAYP training workshop at the Daly College, Indore. Mr Manish Pant and Mr Rahul Luther were sent for the IAYP training workshop at the Good Shepherd School, Ooty. Mr Saknd Bali went to Jain International School, Bangalore to conduct the International “T4T” course (trainers’ workshop). Mr. Bali was Bronze – 73 Silver – 38 Gold – 15
Master-in-Charge Boy-in-Charge
IAYP Blazer for those gaining all three awards - 15
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STUDENT EXCHANGE
Switch
Sitting 1st Row (L to R): Ritesh Shinde, Chaitanya Fatehpuria, Kunal Kanodia, Vikramaditya Kapur, Sidharth Sethi, Shivaan Seth, Vishal Tummala Sitting 2nd Row (L to R): Yashraj Agrawal, Udbhav Agarwal, Hamza Khan, Divyant Sapra, Mr Ambikesh Shukla, Kabir Sethi, Durgesh Agarwal, Aamir Shah, Uday Goyal Standing (L to R): Shubham Agrawal, Jairaj Singh Sadana, Harsh Singhania, Vedant Khanna, Abhishek Kakkar, Shrestha Khaitan, Sarvshrest Singh, Anshul Tibrewal, Abhijit Kejriwal, Jai Singh Yadav
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Outgoing Exchange for the Year 2012
Incoming Exchange for the Year 2012
Yashraj Agrawal
St Marks School, Texas, USA
Rahul Magnati
St Mark’s School, Dallas, Texas, USA
Shivaan Seth
Eton College, UK
Rohin Magnati
St Mark’s School, Dallas, Texas, USA
Abhishek Kakkar
Anglican Church Grammar School, Brisbane, Australia
Harry Elliot Bazett Matthews
Stowe School, UK
Suraj Bishnoi
The Armidale School, Australia
Amaan Naushad
Sidharth Sethi
Stowe School, UK
Suneet D’silva
Southridge School, Canada
Ritesh Shinde
Groton School, US
Nicolas Berenguer
Stowe School, UK
Kunal Kanodia
St Philips School, Australia
Jack Owlett
Bridgehouse School, South Africa
George Hurley
Scotch College, Melbourne, Australia
Vishal Vivekananda
Scotch College, Melbourne, Australia
Abhijit Kejriwal Harsh Singhania Sarvshrest Singh Jai Yadav
Kings School, Australia
Bryan Morley
The Armidale School, Australia
Vishal Tummala
Southridge School, Canada
Sean Attridge
Sithian School,South Africa
Udbhav Agarwal
St Stithenian School, South Africa
Marius Bousinger
Aamir Shah
Kings School, Australia
Alex Rensburg
Bridgehouse School, South Africa
Hamza Khan
St Edwards School, UK
Angus Calvert
Kings School, Australia
Divyant Sapra
Stowe School, UK
Angad Roy
Kings School, Australia
Hugh Sutton
Westminister School, Australia
Jairaj Sadana Vedant Khanna
Hutchins, Australia
Alex Wills
The Compton School, London, UK
Mahanaaryaman Scindia
St Edwards School, UK
Max Wills
The Compton School, London, UK
Shubham Agarwal
Regents School, Thailand
Chaitanya Fatehpuria
Hutchins, Australia
Durgesh Agarwal
St Andrews School, Florida
Uday Goyal Aahan Menon Lanka Adarsh Anshul Tibrewal
Scotch College, Melbourne, Australia
Vikramaditya Kapur
Mrkham College, Peru
Kabir Sethi
Merchiston Castle School, Edinburgh, UK
Shreshta Khetan
Scotch College, Melbourne, Australia
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Expedition
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EXPEDITION
Into the wild
Sitting (L to R): Ritvik Kar, Mr Pankaj Joshi, Dr Arvindanabha Shukla, Yash Malhotra Standing (L to R): Vallavi Shukla, Jai Ahuja, Ritvik Khare, Yash Dhandhania
Between the 3rd and 10th of January 2012, a team consisting of 14 members- 12 students and 2 masters set out on an expedition to amongst students and masters alike. Bikaner was where we assembled on the 3rd of January. After a round of greetings, we all settled down in our respective rooms in the prestigious Raj Vilas Palace. Later that night, we witnessed a cultural program in the hotel itself following which we were told of our plan for the week to come. The next morning we had breakfast at 9:30 and then deposited our luggage in the vehicles that were to take us to our starting point, a few kilometers from Bikaner. The sight of six camel carts along with greatly experienced members of the Camel Man Team (our tour operators) greeted us there, who were to accompany us throughout the trek. With a heart full of anxiety and thrill, we set out for the deserts of Thar. However we were astounded when we saw the comparatively colossal amount of greenery around us. As the day get tired. By 1 o’clock we reached Mehrasar and stopped there for lunch. We were told to take some rest and were given the news that again with a goal to walk another ten kilometers before setting our camp. As the evening fell upon us the temperature went constantly down. Worn out, we reached Karnisar at about 5:45p.m. and set up our tents. By now, it was getting chilly cold and we got a refreshing
middle of the desert. The heat had got to us all and with every second of rest was like a second life for us. The cooks escorting us have rodent holes and mysterious citrus fruits were what grabbed everyone’s attention. At night, ASH’s stories enthralled us all. After the plan for the next day was revealed by ASH and PKJ, we snuggled into our tents and had a siesta. Canal. The sun didn’t come up till about noon and the temperature stayed low for a major part of the morning. We went all the way to 682 Ramaija Head about 12 kilometers from Devasar and stopped there for lunch. The beauty of the area near the canal was breath 83
The fourth day of our expedition was one that was utterly demanding. Since we were no longer greenhorns our distance from our destination, namely Daly Talai had been increased. We continued trekking along the Raj Canal, which is a branch of the famed Indira Gandhi Canal. Unlike the other days, this day was cold throughout. The extremity of temperatures was certainly not felt. A possible reason for this is the fact that we were travelling next to the canal. Almost midway though our trek, we ventured into the desert right trees stood in our path on this day. We reached our campsite at 6 that day but the sight that unveiled before us blew us apart. There was guesthouse right in the middle of the desert! Cell phones were charged, family was informed of our doings, hot pakoras were
for about 10kms and then we sat on the camel carts for the remainder. We stayed near a remote village and to our surprise we were visited by Shreshtha’s father (who also got a whole stock of goodies for us!). After an interesting conversation with ‘Ballo’s’ father, we thanked him and caught some rest. Day six was an exhilarating one. We started a bit late on this day and were absolutely dazzled by the environment. So far the desert we had witnessed had been one that did capture the true essence of a desert. However, the miles of sand around us left us with a satisfactory feeling in our stomach. Like the couple of days prior to this, we had a big target on this day too. Nervousness was starting caught up with us. To avoid any kind of an unstable situation we hopped onto the carts and peacefully reached our venue with smiles etched upon our faces, on all except two. Our party leaders, though pleased with the group’s performance were tense about the forthcoming day. We were informed that our next day was going to be a test of our determination, manliness and vigor, as we had to complete 30 kilometers before lunch or go back without seeing the Indo Pak boarder, which had been our goal.
our lunch spot and hastily grabbed a bite. Subsequently, we got onto the carts and covered the remaining 10 kilometers before you can say ”Thar”. The sight of the border revived the hunger; the thirst of the expedition instantly and with joy enjoyed a round of the Sanchu Border Post. After that, we all cozily got into a couple of jeeps and returned to Bikaner. At Bikaner, we had dinner at Shreshtha’s house and then went back to the hotel. The next day, after visiting a few sites of the city we
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Publications
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Circle
Round Table
Master-in-Charge Editor-in-Chief
Sitting (L to R): Rayhaan Imam, Yash Johri, M s Purnima Dutta, Shashvat Dhandhania, Rishabh Tusnial Standing (L to R): Dhruv Johri, Guruansh Singh
Doon School Art Magazine
Pallete People
Master-in-Charge Editor-in-Chief
Sitting(L to R): Abhijeet Karwa, Aviral Gupta, Mr Aloke Tirthe Bhowmick, Shreshtha Verma, Mr Arnab Mukherjee, Jaskrit Singh, Divyank Sharma Standing (L to R): Anirudh Popli, Satvik Narain, Palash Kanwar, Madhav Dutt, Arjun Singh Kapur, Ashutosh Goyal, Orijit Chatterjee
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Doon School Information Review
CritiquĂŠ
Master-in-Charge Editor-in-Chief
Sitting (L to R): Agni Raj Singh, Mahak Sharma, Imroz Suri, Ms Anamika Ghose, Rayhaan Imam, Ms Priyanka Bhattacharya, Rahul Srivastava, Arjun Parmar, Alawi Singh Standing (L to R): Chaitanya Kediyal, Yash Dhandhania, Udbhav Agarwal, Armaan Imam, Kunal Kanodia, Raghuraj Rathi, Madhav Dutt, Nakul Talwar, Zayaan Jal Khodaiji
Doon School Weekly
The Week Gone By
Masters-in-Charge
Editor-in-Chief
Sitting 1st Row (L to R): Devansh Agarwal, Arnaav Bhavanani, Rakshit Sinha, Anvay Grover, Vallavi Shukla Sitting 2nd Row (L to R): Ms Anamika Ghose, Mr Vishal Mohla, Mr Shrey Nagalia, Shashvat Dhandhania, Mr Philip Burrett, Yuv Vir Khosla, Dr Aravindanabha Shukla, Mr Rashid Sharfuddin, Mr Umung Varma Standing (L to R): Aakanksha Mohan, Ritesh Popat Shinde, Madhav Dutt, Kunal Kanodia, Shivank Singh, Roniz Bordoloi, Utkarsh Jha, Vikramaditya Kapur, Aditya Bhattacharya, Armaan Imam, Arjun Kamdar 88
Echo
There and back again
Master-in-Charge Editor-in-Chief
Sitting (L to R): Devesh Sharma, Nivit Kochhar, Banda M S Lamba, Mr Umung Verma, Madhav Dutt, Alawi Singh, Aditya Vikram Gupta Standing (L to R): Yash Dhandhania, Udbhav Agarwal, Harshvardhan Singh, Aditya Bhattacharya, Karan Sethy, Abhinav Kejriwal
Econocrat
Goldman Sachs and Co.
Master-in-Charge Editor-in-Chief
Sitting (L to R): Rishabh Tusnial, Aditya Vikram Gupta, Kunal Kanodia, Mr Md Istemdad Ali, Nivit Kochhar, Arnav Joshi, Madhav Dutt Standing (L to R): Devansh Agarwal, Jai Ahuja, Ritvik Kar, Abhinav Kejriwal
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Out of the box
Master-in-Charge Editor-in-Chief
Sitting (L to R): Shivam Goyal, Mr Sudhir Thapa, Ujjwal Dahuja, Mr Anjan Kumar Chaudhary, Aditya Vikram Gupta, Dr Mona Khanna, Aviral Gupta, Mr Chandan Singh Ghugtyal, Udbhav Agarwal Standing (L to R): Abhinav Kejriwal, Rishith Agarwal, Azan Brar, Sidharth Suri, Devesh Sharma, Harshvardhan Singh, Sabhya Katia, Parth Khanna
Srijan Prayas
Nationalists
Master-in-Charge Editor-in-Chief
Sitting (L to R): Ritesh Popat Shinde, Sanat Kumar Thakur, Dr Vidhukesh Vimal, Tanmay Kapoor, Apekshit Goel Standing (L to R): Suyash Raj Shivam, Kartikeya Kardam, Kartikeya Jain, Sidharth Pahuja, Kunal Verma 90
The Yearbook
A shot at perfection
Master-in-Charge Editors-in-Chief
Sitting 1st Row (L to R): Arjun Singh Kapur, Akarsh Tibrewal, Ashvin Solanki Sitting 2nd Row (L to R): Mr Arnab Mukherjee, Nivit Kochhar, Mr Skand Bali, Eeshat Tiwary, Mrs Purnima Dutta, Arjun Khaitan, Dr MWxd Hammad Farooqui, Siddhant Sachdev, Ms Stuti Kuthiala Standing (L to R): Guruansh Singh, Raghuraj Rathi, Suhel Karara, Rishabh Tusnial, Devesh Sharma, Agni Raj Singh, Rahul Srivastava, Jai Ahuja, Divyansh Goel, Ritvik Kar
Yuv Arpan
Vernacular Spirit
Master-in-Charge Editor-in-Chief
Sitting (L to R): Abhishek Pande, Tanmay Kapoor, Sanat Kumar Thakur, Mr Manoj Pandey, Shubham Dhingra, Mudit Agarwal, Vidit Sidana Standing (L to R): Vihaan Bhatnagar, Abhinav Kejriwal, Atharva Matta, Chaitanya Fatehpuria, Yasharth Goyal, Sachin Mehra, Vansh Agarwal, Parth Khanna, Ashutosh Goyal, Atrey Bhargava, Yogesh Agarwal 91
Creative Writing
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Bakhle Memorial English Essay Prize Test 38-Hyderabad House
As a student of Western art music, I have studied the life of Beethoven quite extensively and more than just knowing his name, as many other people do, I believed in knowing him; I tried to delve into his emotions as I read through factual knowledge. As he was turning deaf, he considered killing himself so seriously, that he began to pen down a suicide note. As he did so, he arrived at a point. A crossroad. A choice to make. An ethereal life or a deaf existence? What is now known as the Heiligenstadt Testament was the note hope, by deciding to live for his art. An extreme choice was what he had and he chose to live. Music was his “entrance into the higher world of knowledge”, not death. Life gives everyone crossroads. From something as trivial as choosing between two shirts to wear, to choosing whether or not euthanasia is an intelligent option for a poor family’s dying member, it is our own choices that decide our fate. An amalgamation of how we perceive something through logic and how we perceive something through emotion creates a point where a plethora of
an entity in himself or herself, a human being needs to know who he or she is by expressing oneself through choices. Though ostensibly, it may seem that knowing the self, the soul, is not important, it is extremely necessary for a better existence to know oneself and to know one’s conscious and subconscious thought processes. The road to ‘self-discovery’ or the aforementioned introspection lies in the choices we keep making throughout our lives, but even in these choices, there are no right or wrong choices. There is only that which happened and that which could have happened. Beethoven’s suicide may have conditioned one of his siblings to compose music mainly through emotional turmoil and this may have resulted in music even greater than that of Beethoven’s himself. The fact that we do not know the alternate reality which may have taken place due to the other choice acquaints us with the a choice gives to a person’s character. The fact that a choice is neither right nor wrong actually puts the individual in question in a wrong or what condition of mind that person took that decision in. Seeing the choices I made two years ago and the choices I make who they really are. An individual’s existence revolves around the many facets of his or her life and though these revolutions are constant and their stops are ephemeral, there are those points where these revolutions stand still. These crossroads where lives stop are where there are abrupt ends, fresh beginnings, trampled hopes and new tomorrows. Choices make us and choices break us, but it is these choices chance to create new human beings. You, me and everyone on the face of this earth. We can choose. We have a choice. 93
Bakhle Memorial English Literature Prize Test One-Act Play: 48-Hyderabad House Scene 2
Why hello Mr. Miller! May I come in? Do let me come in, the winter’s settling in and I hate to see myself standing outside in the unsettling winter.
I-I-I’m sorry. I understand the winter’s unsettling conditions, but I can’t let you stay in my house unless you tell me who you are. Maniac (breaks into laughter after sitting on the sofa): Well, I’ve already settled myself on your rather comfortable couch so there’s not much you can do about that.
I’m sorry, but WHO ARE YOU? (Suddenly, holding the letter) Your brainchild, your very creation stands before you, and you stand to deny its existence? How many people you think you can fool with your innocence? We live in a democracy my friend! Such treachery never goes unnoticed! Huh? Why I’m Joe Keller, the character from your play “All my Sons.” Ah yes, I was expecting Joe. But you sound too pompous for ole Joe. Keller was a wealthy businessman no doubt, but no, I would have recognized my own creation. That hardly surprises me. When you wrote “All My Sons,” you had tasted as much commercial success as the guitarist collecting pennies two blocks down the street on the left. Of course you will forget those who sprang you to fame and fortune, such traits are embedded in humanity. No no, I must get you my original scripts. I remember fairly well that you had an unpolished demeanor. (Miller begins to walk towards the ‘shoulder’). Just wait I will go-
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Bakhle Memorial English Literature Prize Test Considering any two plays you have read, compare the impact of some arrivals and departures from the stage on the overall meaning of the play. 74-Hyderabad House If we compare the impact of the timing and setting of these arrivals, in both the playwrights’ works, the arrival of a character is being used to change the mood and alter the direction of the plot. As seen from the above instances, whenever the lieutenant or captain enter in the play Widows, the mood becomes darker and the audience anticipates some unfortunate happening or injustice. When they depart after having performed the actions, which are usually negative, the atmosphere is left dull and with a tinge of uncertainty about what they will do next and what will be the response of the Widows. Also, the direction of the plot is often altered using in Hayavadana, the constant presence of Bhagavata without any arrival or departure joins all the plot and subplot together while the arrival of Actor 1 at the very beginning of the play in Act 1 allows the playwright to introduce the plot of Hayavadana’s tale. The sudden arrival of Actor 1 in Hayavadana also helps change the mood just as in Widows as his sudden entry at the very beginning has readers for the story to move on as this is just the beginning of the play and the audience is expecting an abstract or introduction which will set consistent context for the play. Even the departure of the Kapila and Padmini together to the Rudra temple without Devadatta helps develop the context of how close they have become and as already elucidated marks a major transition point in the plot, the mood and the context as it allows Deavadatta to depart and kill himself at the Kali temple. These are the major similarities that can be seen in the impact of the timing and setting in Karnad’s plays. There may be many similarities when we talk of arrivals and departures in the works of these two playwrights, as the usage of this device is a fundamental element in most plays. However, Karnad and Dorfman do not use this device of timing and setting of arrival and departure in the exact same way or to have an absolutely identical impact. Dorfman’s works are Aristotelian tragedies, which require some well-rounded character with consistency in their actions. The arrivals and departures are hence less frequently used in Dorfman’s works than in Karnad’s works to convey meaning and change the mood and tone. Dorfman often uses the change in light, sound and other theatrical devices much more than just arrivals or departures to give hints and develop the plot and context through non-dialogical means as opposed to frequently using the timing and setting of characters’ arrival and departure. We have seen that his play Widows has its share of usage of timing and setting of arrival of the characters like the Captain, lieutenant, orderly, Fidelia, Alexandra etc. to help the audience get a gist of the context, the mood and the direction of the plot. However, if we note closely, the entrances and exits are far less in Dorfman’s play than in the plays of Karnad. The characters are often already there on stage when the scene begins. The usage of visual imagery is more abundant as important parts are brightened (by making the light rise in them). This is seen in Dorfman’s play Reader when Daniel Lucas has those illusions of being able to see what he is reading and lights rise on reader, this can also be seen in various other instances like in Act 1 when a shadow suddenly becomes Nick gagged and tied to a chair
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B.G. Pitre Cup for Best Science Fiction Short Story 112-Jaipur House The courtroom went silent. Everyone stared down at the man in black robes. The jury wasn’t sure how to react. The case had just gotten even more peculiar. The witness stand on the left contained Mr. Harold Smith, a respectable man of 27. The one on the right, also, contained Mr. Harold Smith. No, not a namesake, but Harold Smith himself, eight years younger, but the same person nevertheless. His lawyer, Greg House, enjoyed the attention as everyone around him searched for an explanation. He knew they needed time to process what he had just said. of law. “A parallel universe, your honour. To clarify, I would like Mr. Smith to remind us how he came here.” Both the Smiths stared at each other, unsure if they were to speak. “Oh! I am sorry. My client, the young Mr. Smith.” Mr. Smith looked around the court. Everyone already knew story, but they seemed willing to hear it again. He took a deep breath, “Everyday on my way to college, I was used to seeing this abandoned building. It only had one story, and was unoccupied for as long as I can remember. One day out of curiosity, I decided to go inside. As I entered, I saw that the building was three stories tall! It didn’t make sense, but that wasn’t the end of it; I climbed up the cobweb-riddled staircase, but somehow ended up in the basement. Puzzled, I opened one of the doors. It was a bedroom. I looked out a window and saw my own back! I ran out scared and took the stairs back down. I yanked open the main door but instead of leading me outside, the door opened up in the attic! I was trapped, but then I noticed a window. It showed the street outside. I dashed for it and leapt out. Finally out of the house, I ran for my home. I remember looking back and seeing that instead of the one story, the house now consisted only of the other two stories, which had been absent earlier. I reached back home and noticed that a lot had changed in my absence. My mother was in the kitchen and she looked older. “Mom” I called out. She turned around and seemed surprised to see me. “Who is it?” someone shouted from behind. I looked back and then I saw him.” Harold pointed at the older Harold standing opposite him, “He called the police when I told him to get out of my house, and here I am.” The court was met with the same murmur it had experienced last time the incident was told. The jury expressed varied emotions. Some members showed pity, some showed disbelief while the others just frowned with skepticism. and the resemblance was simply stunning. He wished their similarity was just a coincidence, but the forensic reports and the paternity
He took a sip of water. “So, Mr. House, you said something about a parallel universe?” “Yes your honour.” The lawyer stood up. “Thank you Mr. Smith. I would now like to call upon Dr. Leonard Nicoya to the witness stand.” “Permission Granted.” An old man from the audience walked up, and replaced the young Harold Smith. “Dr. Nicoya is a world renowned physicist and a former scientist at fermilab. He has volunteered to share his theory on our present case. So Dr. Nicoya, did you just hear Mr. Smith’s testimony?” “I most certainly did.” replied the old man. “Could you please shed some light on this increasingly unusual identity crisis we have out here.” states simultaneously, but when measured, gives a result corresponding to only one of its states. results. 96
Neils Bohr said that this happens because when we try to observe the system, the universe forces it into one comprehensible state, but a young physicist, Hugh Everett disagreed. He proposed his own theory, now popularly known as the “many worlds theory”. He said that when we try to observe a system, the universe does not force it into one outcome, but itself splits up to accommodate all of the possible outcomes. This means whenever we toss a coin, the universe splits into two parallel universes. We see tails in one, and heads in the other. In short, if an action has more than one possible outcome, the universe splits when that action is taken.” None of the jury members understood what Dr. Nicoya just said, but they knowingly nodded their heads at each other. He continued, “In the present case, something seemed to have caused the abandoned house to slip into a fourth dimension, making it a possible wormhole. When the old Mr. Smith, eight years ago, walked past the house, he considered going inside but decided against causing this entire episode. We could try and send him back, but wormholes don’t remain active for long, and the house has probably gone back to where it was.” Greg House stood up again, “Thank you Dr. Nicoya. You may step down now.” He then faced the judge, “Your honour, Dr. Nicoya’s theory perfectly explains the forensics reports. It also conforms to Mr. Smith’ s testimony. This is the only plausible explanation the court has heard in light of current events. Hereby, I rest my case.” The court broke into a murmur again. a few formalities, “Before I proceed any further, I would like to ask the prosecution if he has anything to add to the matter.” The judge was about to continue, when a heavy voice replied, “Yes, your honour.” All heads turned towards Mr. John Dominic, lawyer for the older Mr. Smith. “I would like to call upon young Mr. Harold Smith back to the witness stand.” Mr. Dominic had been quiet for most of the case and no one could sense where he was going with this. Maybe he was just clinging onto the last hope of steering this case in his favor. of the universe, but somewhere amidst the advancement, we have forgotten how to think simple. The answer is not always as complex as the puzzle may seem.” “Objection your honour!” shrieked Greg House. “Objection overruled.” Dismissed the judge, curiously watching the drama unfold. Smith just stood there, topless with his head hung down. What followed was a perfectly clean stomach - no marks, no scars… no navel. “Nineteen years old Harold Smith does not come from some other universe, he comes from a petri dish. He is a human clone made from a DNA sample of my client. A conspiracy, by no other than the venerable Dr. Nicoya himself.” The jury stared at him with utter disbelief. The judge suddenly seemed interested. “Dr. Nicoya was a fermilab physicist, researching on the many worlds theory. About twenty years ago, fermilab faced a budget cut and stopped funding Dr. Nicoya’s project, citing it as futile and fallacious. As a result, he was left unemployed. Dr. Nicoya, after years of research, couldn’t bear the humiliation and devised an ingenious plan to win back faith in the many worlds theory. He managed to get a hair strand from an eight years old Harold Smith, and grew a human clone. He knew that everyday, my client used to pass by an abandoned house, and so he came up with his cock and bull wormhole story. Young Smith’s testimony was a mere lie.” “And with that, your Honour, I rest my case.” 97
Shanti Swarup Science Essay Writing Competition 651-Oberoi House
We have reached far from the dark ages of technology, when a child would satisfy himself from playing physical sports in bright sunshine and dust, now these have been outdated by advent of phenomena called video games. But there is something else to them; they have become the backbone of a new culture. A professional game designer earns anything from a thousand and a million dollars for a game. Things like video game awards and global as well as local gaming competitions have boomed the gaming market to an outrageous 74 billion dollars. Gaming has become an integral part of our life. But gaming has its repercussions, the greatest of which According to a research carried out by AIIMS, children who spend long hours playing video games experience somatic complaints, such as gastrointestinal issues, heartburn nausea and frequent headaches. Lack of necessary physical workout has lead to lethal ‘disease’ known as obesity . It is a matter of great worry for nations such as America and China where rate of obese children has reached to an abnormal stunning level. But more importantly, the children become prone to exhibit attention problems such as hyperactivity. Newspapers tell us that after dead during the screening of The Dark Knight Rises. Psychologists believe that he was trying to enact the infamous Joker from the Batman trilogy. Thus we can say that people try to imitate what they see. Such is also the case for video games. It has been noticed that people after playing soccer games like FIFA, impersonate the tricks and emotions of the virtual players. Another important instance is that of wrestling. It is household knowledge that games like WWE, Raw hyperactivity induced by excess gaming. If this would have been a small issue, it could have been neglected but the consequences of gaming are widespread on our general behavior. We choose to act like our favorite gaming character and speak the dialogues spoken in the games. We pretty much imply everything we see in the games to the real life and so games have a huge say on our general attitude. senior professor at University Of Science and Technology gaming is a medium that is potentially more dangerous than exposure to violent television and movies. The chief reason is that this genre of video games provides a forum for learning and practicing aggressive in the virtual gaming world, by a certain sect of society that is responsible for crime in the world. The games have made violence more scans of kids who played a violent video game and showed an increase in emotional arousal – and a corresponding decrease of activity in brain areas involved in self-control, inhibition and attention. Furthermore, it makes humans less empathetic towards their family and peers. These incontrovertible evidences suggests the dominant role of gaming in the worsening the behavior of humans by making them more aggressive. in the perspective of the virtual gaming world and reality .The appealing graphics of video games give credibility to the environment of the virtual world. This discourages a person to think beyond the possibilities introduced to a person by means of games. Therefore, this reason could be held accountable for lack of creativity in the younger generations. To state the importance of imagination, I would 98
like to quote Jamie Paolinetti, a world renowned cyclist who once rightly said,” Limitations live only in our mind. But if we use our imaginations, our possibilities become limitless.” From the dull graphics of Pacman to realistic graphics of Call Of Duty it has indeed been an eventful journey of development, both revealed that a gamer becomes vulnerable to revealing his character when he is compelled to make decisions in the virtual world. He question that has been imposed on contemporary thinkers. It leads to active involvement of human in the captivating virtual world. Williams is also suggesting that video games put humans under a delusion that they are facing reality on the screen and making choices that would be decisive for the future in the ‘realistic world’. But even more astounding are the new generation games i.e. Angry Birds and Fruit Ninja. These games have changed the world of gaming. These are far from the cool world of SIMS and the serious action of Hitman, these are the games of the new generation. They play it in her free time and a father can use it before a meeting. Slowly one gets addicted to these games and fails to move away from its screens. There comes another genre of games called multiplayer social games. They include Farmville and Millionaire city of Facebook. Since these are real time games one ends spending a lot of his time on these sites. Thus we can say that games like angry birds and farmville eat into a lot of our time and thus are a waste of it. We start neglecting outdoor activities and end up becoming couch potatoes. The reason is that gamers think that their characters in games like Farmville or in Facebook are a integral part of their life, thus they start neglecting their real life by allotting their time to the ‘realistic world’ created by the games.
appealing graphics and characters in the game. The games not only provide pleasure to a human also impresses his psychology. It is primarily due to the capacity of games to provoke feelings of autonomy, competence and relatedness. They not only motivate to further play video games but enhances the psychological desire of a human that is readily available to him. This compels a person to waste a lot of precious time engrossed in the video time which could be otherwise utilized in interacting in his social circles. Unknowingly a person makes himself an introvert personality and is considered to be an antisocial element. Appallingly, games also harbour stealing. This is done in the form of Piracy from torrents and hacking(the issue is so grave that the U.S government had to pass a legislation against sharing on internet called SOPA) . Hacking exposes children to unethical practises and has Hacking and Piracy due to the craze of games is done unintentionally but it has grave consequences when the child grows up.
games augment a lot of human’s mental capabilities.
in this modern world. Changes which range from a change in attitude to a change in attitude to physical form. Changes which can be either good or bad.
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Historical Circle Essay Competition 599-Tata House
Alan Moorer raises the philosophical question in the superhero graphic novel ‘Watchmen’:Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Who watches the watchmen?)The peoples representatives in the opposition watch the government Then why do we need a KEJRIWAL? Who is he? Is Kejriwal, the This middle aged man with a combed moustache is hogging headlines day after day. Yesterday the arm chair critics, the scornful columnists were labling him to be impregnated with equal measures of Fascist and Maoists tendencies ,today the media has no other jokes to crack no other cartoon
mind space. He aims at making the meek the all-powerful. He is promising them a hopeful morrow. We have always had two options at the moment of crisis. Be it Bose or Gandhi, Martin Luther Jr. or Malcolm X. The Magsaysay award winning social activist turned reformist politician Kejriwal has legitimatising this momentum. Income Tax in New Delhi is a “lucrative” profession then why be a social activist and enter the murky arena which is often termed”last refuge of scoundrels”? The answer may be Altruism. It is this very attribute which inspired thousands of ordinary Indians to participate in the freedom movement around six decades ago. There were no monetary rewards to gain by the struggling for independence but just everything to lose. The catalyst was a strong desire to get rid of colonial British rule back then, today it is to take on the ugly -multi headed many legged arachnoid monster
associated with Corruption. India is under re-invention demographically. About 65% of India is below 35 years of age, that is, two out of three Indians are below 35 years old. India’s youthful population is the demographic dividend. These young people till recently did not know what it was stoked their legitimate dreams. Transfer payments social schemes by the government have resulted in keeping the poor poor. He is delegitimising the existing law system. A forum is being provided to Aam admi to articulate his grievances. Kejriwal is asking the right questions, but he is a short on hard facts and real proof and clueless about details. His questions raise serious issues regarding propriety. He has an incomplete approach of hammering the nail. Post Facto and deterrent through legislation. Every problem seems to be a nail that has to hammer as seen appropriate by him. When the missile stabilization is lost by getting into unchartered spaces, it self-destructs. He has the courage to challenge those of the top lot whom our political parties could not. But one should not underestimate the danger of getting caught in a whirlpool. Rightly he deserves kudos for bringing out the issue of a cosy nexus between politicians and businessmen, but economics of selling petrol or diesel or cooking gas at less than market prices has its own costs. These deals involving crony capitalism and sleaze. It is hard to book them under the current legal system. The need is for transparency on government and corporate nexuses. Over are the old ways of dealing behind closed doors favouring one at the cost of the other. The issue he highlights are important though there are a lot of blanks in his narratives. He is throwing the spotlight on the right issues but not the right way. He will have to 100
think of systematic reforms of incentive and market. He has changed the nature of the political discourse between Congress and BJP. His immediate strategy seems to be exposing individual politicians than looking at the whole picture of the game of the political arena. Enough people are providing him with information but could they be manipulating him to get even with whom they want to? Will he reach far or fade into oblivion as fast as he emerged? Kejriwal’s game play is buying him time. He is jolting and unnerving political parties. He is using media to his advantage and given it a wakeup call. He has put an extra bright search light on the prevailing sick system. The mob the masses are now not ready to hear anything else besides his moment nor indicate solutions to India’s problems. But what he needs to comprehend is that replacement of corrupt people by a new set of people is not the resolution of the crisis the country is facing. He is human with all dichotomies and one should not demotivate him, for he is working for better INDIA at large. He is a brave man but ill-educated in public policy and economics, but he is the need of the hour. The newness of his allegations need not be evaluated but the facts need to be 1977 Jaya Prakash Narayan got the opposition forces united to take on the congress for imposing emergency. He shied away and did not join impact of his interventions and the powerful message he sends to Indians that the aam aadmi can challenge the high and mighty if united and strong in their mind. He is mad and methodical at the same time. The climate in receptivity to policies has changed- he is not breaking new ground in terms of his disclosures on “the corrupt”. Reliance’s close links in our leader’s credibility’s and the public is willing to believe anything Kejriwal says is true. Frequencies are matching; there is loud resonance between the urban middle class people The Scams have created an atmosphere for him whereby he is looked upon as a blessing to mankind. believes in. Kejriwal has disrupted the politics and created a credibility gap. This gap is widening. The Congress and the BJP have been discredited in the media, and neither of them is giving coherent responses to the charges Kejriwal hurls at them. Challenged are the political narratives. Moses parted the seas and Kejriwal has parted both congress and BJP and created political space for himself. It is now impossible for the UPA to manage bureaucracy is in two minds about the longevity of the government. Short-to medium term, Kejriwal is bad news for the Indian economy. If the system is cleaned up over the medium-term, he may be a messiah. But who knows he may have to fear for life and limb? The Footwear hailed at Kejriwal is indicative of disruption .The forces against him may gang up and shut him up. Things could get nastier. Law of increasing returns currently in Kejriwal’s favour. But change is the only constant. The law of diminishing returns may kick in, and Kejriwal may has changed the game, this creates more challenges for him. Will this weaken national parties? Will it lead to chaos and collapse of the governance system? Will there be a fractured mandate in the next elections. Will it threaten the well-being of the same middleclass that is currently rooting for Kejriwal? Kejriwal could be making a misjudgement on the Indian polity’s demoralization with corruption. Indians could be less judgemental about corruption and prefer good governance over corruption. We are on the verge of a cosmic change. Never before has there been a collective catharsis that less than what it reveals. Kejriwal, a wild card entry future Kejriwals to trod and further his endeavour for entry on a national stage of demagoguery. One small step is the beginning of many miles. Corruption will never be the same again. Kejriwal has shown that no one is too big to target. The prying, probing and accusing eyes are all around us. Each one will be answerable and accountable to his deeds. No one is too big, no one too small .He is giving courage to the average Indian to speak up for himself. 101
Curriculum 102
Serving the community at Doon (SUPW)
ARCHIVES
The Legacy
Master-in-Charge Boys-in-Charge
Sitting 1st Row (L to R): Anvay Grover, Atharva Shukla, Arpit Chaddha, Ananay Sethi Sitting 2nd Row (L to R): Rishabh Tusnial, Nipurn Datta, Abhishek Pande, Mrs Abia Qezilbash, Aditya Vikram Gupta, Arjun Khaitan, Apekshit Goel Standing (L to R): Uday Rathore, Vireshwar Sidhu, Gatik Gupta, Arjun Kapur, Anmol Jain, Suhel Karara, Pulkit Agarwal, Anant Mohan
The Archives has conducted several activities and hosted many events for the School and Old Boys’ Community. An array of activities was undertaken by the society this year. The members of the Archives from countless issues of 77 years of and presentation of facts of Doon School history at the D-form Induction and at Founder’s Day. A new initiative was undertaken by the Archives to print a set of postcards inscribed with a sketch of Mr. A. E. Foot and quotes from his speeches. They were sold at Founder’s Day. During Founder’s Day, an Archives exhibition was put up for the batch of 1987 on their Silver Jubilee. It displayed a list of the individual achievements of each member of the batch of 1987.Memorabilia was designed and given as a gift to each member of the batch of 1987. An Archives activity trip was organized to the Museum of National Archives, Teen Murti Bhawan and the Indira Gandhi Memorial for the senior squad to understand the importance of archiving, preservation and conservation. We were fortunate enough to view artifacts that dated back 3000 years. The trip was an eye-opener and an enriching experience for us. The new junior squad was given the responsibility of photographing and recording the various sculptures and outdoor installation of art on the Chandbagh their records. In addition to all of that, The Archives room is open around the year for every member of The Doon School community, (including Old Boys) and allows them access to rich archival data and resources. The facility has been seeing an increased footfall over the past couple of years and the SUPW has grown in popularity among the boys. Some recent requisitions include artifacts, copies of speeches and letters between Arthur Foot and many correspondents, ranging from Tagore to Pandit
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AUDIO VISUAL SQUAD
Wired
Master-in-Charge Boys-in-Charge
Sitting 1st Row (L to R): Parth Aggarwal, Sahir Chaudhary, Kartavya Nagpal, Saamarth Juneja, Lakshya Varshney, Mohammad Zaid Bin Shameem, Dhruv Ahuja, Chinmaya Sharma, Tanmay Gupta, Samarth Bhardwaj Sitting 2nd Row (L to R): Varun Michael Pais, Kumar Sambhav, Nivit Kochhar, Mr Ramesh Bhardwaj, Rohil Mehrotra, Mr Ashish Dean, Arjun Khaitan, Pranav Agarwal, Shantanu Singh Standing (L to R): Ritvik Kar, Shubham Sikaria, Paramdeep Singh, Aashim Bansal, Jai Ahuja, Arihant Arora, Nachiket Jain, Hamza Khan, Vedant Agarwal, Rishabh Agarwal, Yogesh Agarwal, Guruansh Singh
As usual the AV squad rises to the occasion and puts up the best possible show in every event, even with their limited resources. In addition to regular school requirements, house socials, inter-school socials and Founder’s day program, the squad extended support to the Annual Day function at John Martyn School, a Jam session for the DSMUN held at Madhuban Hotel, and various events for the School Band and Jam Sessions.
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BOYS’ BANK & TUCK SHOP
Cheque Bounced
Masters-in-Charge
Boys-in-Charge
Sitting 1st Row(L to R): Ajitesh Gupta, Rudra Srivastava, Codanda Cariappa Chengappa, Madhav Mall, Hamza Khan, Amol Pajni, Nikunj Agarwal, Samarth Prasad, Sasyak Pattnaik, Kanav Agarwal, Ashwath Madhok Sitting 2nd Row(L to R): Avik Gugalia, Mr Chandan Singh Ghugtyal, Mr Ambikesh Shukla, Mr Shadeep Adhikari, Abhishek Pande, Neelansh Khurana, Mr Manoj Pandey, Mr Malvika Bhatt, Mr Sudhir Thapa, Jai Singh Yadav Standing (L to R): Arya Khanal, Vatsal Goenka, Varun Michael Pais, Anshul Tibrewal, Amal Agarwal, Jaivir Puri, Kunal Srivastava, Vatsal Agarwal, Aashim Bansal, Syed Mohammed Amaan Kazmi, Nakul Talwar, Rishit Agarwal, Laksh Sharaf, Vrindam Nagpal, Madhav Mundra
The Boys’ Bank is one of the biggest activities in school. This activity operates like a real bank and teaches boys how to deal with the customer service aspect and to be co-operative. This year, the Boys’ Bank broke the record for issuing the highest number of coupons over a long period of time, which shows the willingness of the Doscos to come to the Boys’ Bank and The Tuck Shop.
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ENTERTAINMENT COMMITTEE
20th Century Fox
Master-in-Charge Boys-in-Charge
Sitting (L to R): Guruansh Singh, Jaskrit Singh, Kumar Sambhav, Mr Ashish Dean, Arjun Khaitan, Ritvik Kar, Suhel Karara Standing (L to R): Devang Mehra, Jai Ahuja, Arush Sood, Sayuj Dhandhania
As usual the Entertainment Committee ensured that the students of the School, didn’t have to spend even a single weekend, the entire year, without a movie to watch. This year, not only did the students ensure picking of popular movies, but they also ensured that movies that haven’t even been heard of were screened. The one thing that made this year very special for all of us, was that for over half the year, the students, screened the movies entirely themselves. From the Audio Visual Equipment to the projecting aspect, the students did it all. Overall, the year seemed seemed to be a great success.
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FIRST AID
Grey’s Anatomy
Master-in-Charge Boy-in-Charge
Sitting (L to R): Arush Sood, Devang Mehra, Adarsh Lanka, Dr Lanka Amar, Shubham Agarwal, Vatsal Goenka, Yash Malhotra Standing (L to R): Sakcham Bhalotia, Sarvagya Dhiman
First Aid is an essential life skill which comes in handy in all nooks of life. Keeping in mind the importance of First Aid, the Wellness Centre organized a host of workshops for boys over the year. organized in collaboration with the Safety Circle for senior boys. Boys were trained in advanced aiding techniques and emergency situation management. Post that, boys performed the aid on dummies in order to practically understand the techniques involved. The Wellness Centre also to all involved. All in all First Aid prospered in the year 2012.
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LOST PROPERTY OFFICE
Cupboard under the stairs.
Master-in-Charge Boy-in-Charge
Sitting (L to R): Arjun Kamdar, Mr Prabhakaran Nair, Vivaan Sharma Standing (L to R): Shivam Sharma, Sanjeet Suhag, Aditya Gupta
geographically in the middle of the Main Building, which can be easily accessed by all students. It can be visited by the boys during their break time every day, some handing in lost items and others looking for theirs. Twice a week, the boys involved with the LPO, along with the help of the Guard on duty, search the Main Building for any lost and unclaimed items. These unclaimed items include books, umbrellas, school bags, water bottles and other valuable items such as digital calculators. Lost books and stationery constitute a major part of the LPO and over 65% of these are returned to their owners during the year. A group of six boys under a Master-in-Charge helps the students to recover their lost items. This squad intends to inculcate a sense of help and service to the students, especially the junior boys.
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PAPER RECYCLING
Go Green!
Master-in-Charge Boys-in-Charge
Sitting 1st Row(L to R): Manan Dadhania, Madhav Singhal, Tanmay Nautiyal, Shlok Jain, Kismat Chopra, Vibhav Gupta, Devang Mehra, Siddhant Gupta Sitting 2nd Row(L to R): Palash Kanwar, Rishavraj Das, Shubham Agarwal, Mr Vinay Pande, Eeshat Tiwary, Madhav Dutt, Mr Srinivas Swamy, Parth Vohra, Yash Malhotra, Agni Raj Singh Standing (L to R): Rishikant Sharma, Udayan Sinha, Sajal Bansal, Atharva Shri Matta, Harshvardhan Singh, Varun Sinha, Devesh Sharma, Rahul Srivastava, Preetam Mohan, Divyansh Goel, Dhananjay Bansal, Ashutosh Goyal
Paper recycling is one of the most sought-after SUPW activities in the School. The unit carried out its recycling unit of The National Institute for the Visually Handicapped (NIVH), Dehradun to learn the latest methods of recycling paper and generating quality output. On the same lines, the paper-recycling unit is planning to revamp and renovate the equipment and in this process has started looking to generate funds and acquire the latest instruments.
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RLSS - LIFE SAVERS
How to save a life
Masters-in-Charge
Boys-in-Charge
Sitting (L to R): Anirudh Popli, Shubham Agarwal, Nihal Singh Maan, Mr Sanjiv Bathla, Mrs Anez Katre, Agastya Shetty, Yash Mishra, Varun Sehgal Standing (L to R): Yash Dhandhania, Mrigank Khemka, Shourya Kishorepuria, Arunabh Utkarsh, Gaurav Kothari, Rishabh Agarwal, Devansh Agarwal
Life Saving as an SUPW has been growing steadily. Last year we had 25 students qualify, 10 as Life Guards and 15 as Life Savers. The practices were held regularly, Thursdays for Life Savers and Tuesdays for Life Guards. All the applying candidates were required to give all tests including Entries, Major Strokes, Life Saving Strokes, Saving Methods and the Endurance Test.
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RLSS - LIFE GUARDS
Standing Guard
Masters-in-Charge
Boys-in-Charge
Sitting (L to R): Karan Chabbra, Aditya Vikram Gupta, Mr Sanjiv Bathla, Mrs Anez Katre, Agni Raj Singh, Palash Kanwar Standing : Rohan Agarwal
The tests were documented in an orderly fashion and full records were kept. The students also had two weeks of intensive First Aid training followed by their First Aid Exam. Our Boys-in-Charge, Raj Surana and Animesh Jain did an amazing job in organizing the training sessions and ensured that every boy attends practices regularly.
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STAGE COMMITTEE
Behind the scenes
Master-in-Charge Boy-in-Charge
Sitting 1st Row (L to R): Savar Khanna, Siddharth Jain, Rohan Agarwal, Ayushman Arora, Ashish Pande, Atharva Matta Sitting 2nd Row (L to R): Harshil Agarwal, Mr Vivek Kumar, Aditya Vikram Gupta, Mr Samik Das, Abhijeet Karwa, Mr Dhanesh Joshi, Farhan Anis Standing (L to R): Sidharth Suri, Namanshree Jain, Raghav Bansal, Nihal Sharma, Suhel Karara, Vatsal Agarwal, Anmol Jain, Kunal Srivastava
The Stage Committee consists of boys from C to SC forms. They work for all the in-house functions, talks, competitions and many other events that happen in School. The Stage Committee prepares the stages, and takes care of props and stage management during plays. It requires a lot of planning and this helps the boys to learn organizational skills.
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TROPHY SQUAD
And the award goes to…
Master-in-Charge Boy-in-Charge
Sitting (L to R): Sarthak Gupta, Arjun Singh Mann, Rahil Arora, Mr Anand Kumar Mandhian, Suyash Bishnoi, Mr Pankaj Das, Sachin Mehra, Yuvan Kumar, Aditya Dhingra Standing (L to R): Tushhar Sharma, Kanav Agarwal, Arnav Kumar, Aditya Maheshwari, Suryansh Agarwal, Raghav Gupta, Arunabh Utkarsh, Naman Lodha, Aryaman Panwar, Rohan Chaudhari, Vivek Vishwanathan, Aviral Garg
The squad organized training sessions from time to time for junior boys where senior members of and chemicals to give the perfect shine to trophies. One of the creative innovations was to design a royal “Doon School Cup” which was carved out of sheesham wood by Art instructor Mr Lawanshaiba Kharmawlong and then mounted on teak wood with the Doon School lamp etched on its pillar. The
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WEATHER REPORTING
Here Comes The Sun
Master-in-Charge Boys-in-Charge
Sitting (L to R): Banda M S Lamba, Mr Srinivas Swamy, Arjun Sharma Standing (L to R): Kartikey Kardam, Shivinderjit Cheema, Nikhil Saraf
The Weather Reporting SUPW is very interesting and informative. Students take an interest in generating the weather data conventionally and comparing it with web-based information every day. Later they collate the data and display it for everyone’s information and use. This year they even went ahead with predicting the weather before most of the inter-house cricket matches. The latest Davis Pro2 digital weather station has been aquired and installed which will provide the real time weather data of the campus. This is planned to be displayed via LED TVs for the community. We are also planning to have it connected to our School website so that parents, the community, as well as the visitors, will have an idea of the weather in school.
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Curriculum 116
Serving the wider community, social service and social responsibility
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COMMUNITY SERVICE
Sitting (L to R): Sanat Kumar Thakur, Sookrit Malik, Aviral Gupta, Mrs Amrit Burrett, Jaskrit Singh, Avik Gugalia, Himanshu Todi Standing (L to R): Aakanksha Mohan, Dhairik Fuletra, Udayvir Lakhanpal, Abhishek Pande
To bring quality and transparence to Social Service work, an advisory body with the Headmaster as Chairman has been set up. The body meets once a month to share the work done and to check the quality as well. Boys are welcome to start initiatives but a presentation is made before the advisory board and only after approval from the Board does the students go ahead. The body comprises the HM, coordinator. With every boy required to do mandatory hours, service has achieved a remarkable response from the students. Interact Club This year in School, we introduced The Interact Club (the youth wing of the Rotary Club) with the aim to provide a platform for the students interested in service to continue even after School as Rotary members. The charter was presented to the boy-in-charge in a ceremony conducted in School. The aim of International Peace was celebrated by planting trees on the estate and a short candle march. Clean Doon, Green Doon With the motto “Clean Doon, Green Doon� the Oberoi House students, tutors and Housemasters worked on cleaning walls in the city. This was to create awareness amongst the citizens of the Doon Valley. The boys go out on Sundays and clean walls near and around the School. Udaan Apart from the regular visits to the slum addressing the substance abuse issue and encouraging children to curb their addiction, this year the Udaan team raised funds to support two boys from the Bindal slum who are undergoing treatment at an Ashram at Rudarpur. Children from the Udaan team are working with Nijaat, an NGO dealing with the addiction problem in Dehradun. The exchange students from Groton School also worked with Udaan. 118
Dandapur The school there is now permanently registered. It was previously held up due to the lack of infrastructure. Mulookchand Construction of the school building has started and next year it will be able to apply for registration as well.
Batoli A medical camp at Batoli was organized with the help of Indresh Hospital. Over 175 people visited the camp. It was a mini-clinic that was attended by a team of 14 doctors. Two follow-on camps were also held after that. Free medication was dispensed and cases that required further attention were referred to the hospital for free treatment.
Rasulpur The village was visited by all the Kashmir House students. A number of cleaning programmes were conducted by the students escorted by the teachers. S form also spent a weekend in the village. In spite of the distance and bad road, this is a very popular village project. A primary school with 60 students is also ready. It is a project undertaken in collaboration with the Oakham School in the United Kingdom.
Uttarkashi The school reached out by providing 3 pedestal sewing machines and 3 interlock machines to the tailors who had lost their shops. The science block of Saraswati School which was washed away was reconstructed and equipment put in place. The Doon School science department has taken over this part of the project and is sending teachers in turn to strengthen the science block.
Second Helping An initiative by Ujjwal Dahuja, which has been taken over by Parth Vohra, entails taking leftover food after lunch from the CDH and distributing it at the Bindal slum. This regular activity happens almost every day. Many more boys have joined this initiative.
John Martyn School The music and art schools have extended their resources and taken students to train the John Martyn students regularly. This term a number of musical instruments were donated by the music school.
IPSC Social Service Project Chaitanya Fatehpuria, Siddarth Popli, Abhishek Kakkar, Apekshit Goel and Avik Gugalia escorted by Banita Banu attended the IPSC selected for this project. The village is about 20 Kms away from the School. The 100 families of the village live in abject poverty, since the majority of them were snake catchers and charmers, a trade which has been banned by the Government. It is predominantly a Harijan village and the villagers cannot draw water from the sources that lie in a more prosperous village just 200 metres away. 119
ROUND SQUARE CONFERENCE
Back to the square
Sitting (L to R): Jai Ahuja, Mr Aloke Tirtha Bhowmick, Devang Mehra, Mr Vishal Mohla, Aditya Gupta, Mr Ambikesh Shukla, Vireshwar Sidhu, Mr Nitin Chauhan, Arush Sood, Varun Sinha, Ritvik Kar Standing (L to R): Ananay Sethi, Atharva Shukla, Samarth Juneja, Sahir Chowdhury, Preetham Mohan, Vishesh Khetan, Kanav Agarwal, Dhruv Ahuja, Jagjit Singh, Varun Sehgal
RSC Kenya to Nairobi, Kenya, to attend the 2012 Annual International Round Square Pre-Conference and the Conference itself which were to be held at Brookhouse International School, Nairobi. The School delegation consisted of Avik Gugalia, Pulkit Bansal, Anant Singh Mann, Anirudh Gupta, AKS and I. As scheduled, we met with the rest of the pre-conference schools at a hotel in Nairobi on the 27th afternoon. After a couple of hours of rest, we were all called for dinner and the initial awkwardness one experiences on meeting new people soon melted away and paved the way for new friendships. We then retired to our rooms for an early night as we were all jet lagged -so much so that one particular delegate began talking to the bellboy in Hindi! Masai Mara, the most famous game park in Africa. After a four-hour journey that involved bumps, twists, turns and the occasional jump,
the red-butted baboons along with many other animals. Over the next few days we explored the depths of the Mara and even visited a local Masai village where the Masai people showed us some of their traditions and shared with us their way of life. We then did a little bit of shopping in their market where being Indian really helped us to strike good deals with the locals. After an adventurous three days at the Mara it was time to say goodbye and head to our next destination, which was the coastal city of Mombasa. After a four-hour journey back to Nairobi and a visit to Brookhouse School and to the hotel to locate AKS’s vanished bag (he survived three days with only one set of clothing!), we made our way to the airport where after technical problems that almost ruins, went snorkeling, did beach cleaning, taught the others how to play cricket, learnt how to salsa and made some amazing friends. 120
The scheduled work with physically challenged people in Mombasa next day could not happen due to a grenade attack, and so the day was spent in our resort itself. Next morning we left Mombasa behind and reached Nairobi for the main conference. The actual conference, comprising forty-one schools was every bit as exciting as the pre-conference during which the Headmaster joined the delegation. The opening ceremony was a huge hit and the musical styles of Eric Wainaina and ‘The best band in Africa’ had everyone on their feet in appreciation. Then we were split up into groups and sent to stay with host families for the conference. The next few days were spent listening to interesting speakers talk about Kenya’s future and student delegate discussions on topics such as democracy, good governance, leadership and conservation of wildlife. Also during the conference was the adventure day where one either went for the safari walk, which epitomized the conference theme- “No existence without co-existence”, or for river rafting or to the animal conservation center known as ‘William Holden’. Next there was the service day where wae were divided into service groups and each group had a particular service project to complete. We spent the whole day working on these projects and it was amazing to see Brookhouse’s contribution to service for the community. Finally, there was a cultural night where we saw performances from places such as Armenia, Canada, Peru, Scotland and Kenya. It was truly a great spectacle to watch. As the next day was the last day of the conference we got to experience the wonders of Nairobi, having enjoyed which, we came back for the closing ceremony. This conference was a truly amazing experience and even though I am back from Africa I will never forget my experiences or the African lifetimes.
RSC Dubai Eighteen Schools from across India, Armenia, Bangladesh and Oman participated in the Junior Regional Round Square Conference hosted by The Millennium School, Dubai. A total of 176 student delegates and 17 teachers took part in the conference held between March 22 and 25. The theme of the conference was “Be the Change” On Thursday 22nd we had the conference photograph followed by Michael Guzder, Principal of The Millennium School addressing the gathering. The Conference started with the opening ceremony and several mesmerizing dance and musical performances were put up by the host school. Mr. Sudhir Verma, Indian Consul General to the UAE, spoke on the importance of change within oneself and one’s information on the need for change in the modern world of materialistic interests. This was followed by an inspiring talk by Oksana Tashakova, from the Academia of Human Potential. who gave us a lesson on how to live our dreams and be who we are. Following this was a Barazza session wherein all three speeches were thoroughly discussed and analyzed. Next on our schedule were the workshops organized by the teachers and students of the host school on art, music, dance, theatre and cookery.The third day, Friday 23rd began with a calming Sahaja yoga session. The Principal of The Millenium School, Mr. Michael Guzder, gave an inspiring speech followed by leadership building activities, which helped us realize the importance of teamwork, dedication and belief in oneself. The same workshops were conducted on the third day so everyone was able to complete their works. In the afternoon we had time to practice the skit that we had prepared for the closing ceremony, “Truth A Sin.” speech. The ensuing Barazza session was intense. The evening was spent in a desert safari followed by a belly dance show and dinner.
ceremony took place, wherein all the schools put up a performance of their own. The other schools put up songs, dances and even a lights out. We left right after breakfast in the morning, leaving behind new friends, but heading out with clearer thoughts and ambitions, and a desire to be the change that we wish to see in the world. It was truly a memorable and enriching experience for all of us. We reached Delhi at 8:00 PM , we next took a train at 12 o clock at night. And reached by 5:30 in the morning to dehradun, we reached the the school at 6:15 AM and looking at the walls of The Doon School, we brought to mind the incredible experience we had in the past few days.
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ROUND SQUARE INTERNATIONAL SERVICE
An aristocracy of service
Sitting (L to R): Abhishek Pande, Dr Lanka Amar, Ujjwal Dahuja, Mr Ambikesh Shukla, Shivam Goyal, Dr Arvindanabha Shukla, Aakanksha Mohan Standing (L to R): Apekshit Goel, Adarsh Lanka
Round Square International Service Project - Ladakh main building. While reading it, I told myself what could be a better opportunity than this to accomplish your passion, service and that immediately contacted AKS for more details and requested my parents to allow me to go for this project. My joys knew no bounds when my parents allowed me to go for this project. My excitement grew day by day as days passed extremely fast and in no time, I found myself at the Leh airport after a skillful landing at the shortest runway in the country.
as well. After having explored the whole town, learning about the new culture, making groups and friends, we headed to our project and camp site at Thiksey, 22kms from the town. On our way to Thiksey, we visited Choklamsar, the residence of the Dalai Lama in Ladakh. We reached at about lunch time and were welcomed traditionally with ”Joole” (meaning hello, hi, welcome , thank you, bye, excuse me and all other common words that we use), white scarves, tea and a music performance by the senior students of The Lamdon School, where distance from the school. On the12th of July, we started our service work at The Lamdon Modern School, Thiksey. To begin with, we helped them with the construction of the storage room for their hostel and this was also for us to start learning the work and how to go about it. We became familiar with words like ”Kalak” and “Pakvu” meaning “wet black mud” and “dried mud bricks” respectively. These were the two words which remained on our tongues from the start of our work till the end. Even so, we would divide our teams also like “Kalak Team” and “Pakvu Team” whose job was to work with the mud and bricks only. Other teams were to help with the bamboo sticks and cleaning of 122
jobs that we were to do. This actually helped the team learn better and faster working strategies. In about four days, we were able to started the construction of the toilets. Earlier, only two toilets were available for their use which was a very less number and so we were to construct four more toilets. We again divided the teams and with new strategies, started to work on the toilets. On the seventh day morning we were informed that the next day would be a break as we were all invited to see the function and celebrations for the visit of Dalai Lama to Ladakh. Next day, early morning we were all lined up amongst the other local people to get a glimpse of the Dalai Lama. All of us had incense sticks in our hands as it was the tradition of the local people in order to worship the Dalai Lama. The Dalai Lama’s visit to the town marked a refreshing break for us and next day we were able to complete the base of all the four roof. So we were to wait for a day and to utilize our time, our project leaders planned to take us to the famous Pangong Lake. It was crossing the third highest tea stall in the world at Khardung La. As we reached the lake, we saw small cafe shops named “3 Idiots café”, “3 Idiots Restaurant” etc. as the famous movie “3 Idiots’ ” last scene was shot at the lake. We were made to do an activity while this trip to the lake. We were to sit alone for about half an hour with a paper and pen and write down whatever came to our mind. We were to then submit those papers and they were posted to us in December in order to memorize the special time spent at the lake. I found the activity very interesting as we actually often forget the important times at particular places and this activity enabled me to remember everything about my visit. We continued the work at the school next day and within the next few days we had successfully completed the construction work. Now we were to move ahead to our next part of the project which was adventure. We were again divided into two groups, one was to lead temperatures were extremely low to be managed. But this is what something to learn in the whole trip was and so it did prove to be an extraordinary experience. We stayed in a village in the last night of our trek and the next morning our bus picked us up from the village and dropped us back in the hotel in Leh. of 3 weeks. I learnt a great deal within those 3 weeks. I learnt a new culture, learnt the importance and advantage of team work, learnt how to be others, learnt about the geography of Ladakh, about the mountains and how to trek, learnt how to pitch tents and stay in them in low temperatures, and the list goes on as there were countless things that were learnt. This trip surely helped me explore myself, improve my skills and develop some necessary new ones, and most importantly to be a good friend. And I am sure that all the qualities learnt and developed are helping me right now and will keep helping me throughout my life.
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Commerce Department Head of Department
Sitting(L to R): Mr Shadeep Adhikari, Mr Ajit Bajaj, Mr Kamal Ahuja, Mr Deepak Sharma, Mr Sanjiv Bathla Standing(L to R): Dr Praveen Dwivedi, Mr Samik Das, Mr Mohammad Istemdad Ali
English Department Head of Department
Sitting (L to R): Ms Stuti Kuthiala, Mrs Jasbir Kaur Anand, Mr Debashish Chakrabarty, Ms Priya Chauhan, Mr Ashad Qezilbash Standing (L to R): Mr Shrey Nagalia, Ms Priyanka Bhattacharya, Mr John Xavier 135
Foreign Language Department
Sitting(L to R): Mr Dhanesh Joshi, Dr Ritu Bahl Mohan
Hindi Department Head of Department
Sitting(L to R): Mr Devendra Kumar Mishra, Mr Manoj Pandey, Dr Mohammad Hammad Farooqui, Dr Mohan Chandra Joshi, Dr Aravindanabha Shukla, Dr Vidhukesh Vimal 136
Humanities Department Head of Department
Sitting (L to R): Ms Purnima Dutta, Mr Philip Burrett, Mr Piyush Malviya, Mr Prabhakaran Nair, Mr Rashid Sharfuddin Standing (L to R): Mr Arvind Dethe, Mr Sudhanshu Bhandari, Ms Anamika Ghose, Mr Shrey Nagalia, Mr Skand Bali
Mathematics Department Head of Department
Sitting(L to R): Dr Mona Khanna, Mr Pankaj Joshi, Mr Sudhir Thapa, Mr Biren Chamola, Mr Anjan Kumar Chaudhary Standing (L to R): Mr Chandan Singh Ghugtyal, Mr Rahul Luther, Mr Manu Mehrotra 137
Music Department Head of Department
Sitting (L to R): Mr Partho Roy Chowdhury, Mrs Priya Chaturvedi, Mr Avijit Chattopadhyay, Mr Arun Kumar
Science Department Head of Department
Sitting (L to R): Mr Vishal Mohla, Mrs Malvika Bhatt, Mr Vinay Pande, Mr Rajesh Majumdar, Mr D C Bhatkoti, Mr Ambikesh Shukla, Mrs Meeta Sharma Standing(L to R): Mr Chit Ranjan Kagdee, Mr Srinivas Swamy, Mr Anand Kumar Mandhian, Mr Umung D Varma, Mr Ashish Dean, Mr Vivek Kumar, Mr Ramesh Bhardwaj, Mr Manish Pant 138
Sitting (L to R): Mr Vinay Pande, Ms Stuti Kuthiala, Mr Rashid Sharfuddin, Mr Sanjiv Bathla, Mr Piyush Malviya, Dr Mohan Chandra Joshi, Mr Philip Burrett, Dr Peter McLaughlin, Mr Prabhakaran Nair, Mr Deepak Sharma, Mr Ashad Qezilbash, Mr Biren Chamola, Mr Anjan Kumar Chaudhary, Mr Skand Bali, Mr Debashish Chakrabarty Standing 1st Row (L to R): Mr Pankaj Joshi, Mr Ajit Bajaj, Mr Dinesh Chandra Bhatkoti, Mrs Amrit Burrett, Mr Ashish Dean, Mr Manu Mehrotra, Mr John Xavier, Mrs Priya Chaturvedi, Mr Kamal Ahuja, Dr Aravindanabha Shukla, Mr Sudhir Thapa, Mr Rajesh Majumdar, Mr Aloke Bhowmick, Dr Vidhukesh Vimal, Mr Nitin Chauhan, Mrs Anez Katre, Mr Rahul Luther, Dr Mohammad Hammad Farooqui, Mr Michael James Standing 2nd Row (L to R): Ms Purnima Dutta, Mr Arnab Mukherjee, Mrs Malvika Bhatt, Ms Anamika Ghose, Ms Prachi Nagalia, Mr Dhanesh Joshi, Mr Chit Ranjan Kagdee, Mr Shadeep Adhikari, Mr Samik Das, Mr Manoj Pandey, Mr Vishal Mohla, Mr Anand Kumar Mandhian, Mr Ambikesh Shukla, Mrs Meeta Sharma, Dr Mona Khanna Standing 3rd Row (L to R): Ms Priyanka Bhattacharya, Dr Ritu Bahl Mohan, Mrs Banita Bhau, Mrs Jasbir Kaur Anand, Mr Chandan Singh Ghughtyal, Mr Ramesh Bhardwaj, Mr Devendra Kumar Mishra, Mr Vivek Kumar, Mr Anupam Chowdhury, Mr Mohammad Istemdad Ali, Dr Praveen Dwivedi, Mr Manish Pant, Mr Pankaj Das, Mr Tapan Barui, Mrs Mohua Bhowmick Standing 4th Row (L to R): Mrs Priya Chauhan, Mr Partho Roy Choudhury, Mr Sanjib Kalsi, Mr Sudhanshu Bhandari, Mr Arun Kumar, Mr Avijit Chattopadhyay, Mr Umung Varma, Mr Kirti Pal Singh Tomar, Mr Shrey Nagalia, Mr Srinivas Swamy, Mr Arvind Dethe
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... until we meet again. Mr Arjun Rao Charmingly ecstatic, KAR will be remembered by one and all for his extremely lively interactions with the people around him. His dramatic yet elegant character is arguably the most prominent memory that people will have of him in the school. Sparkling with energy both inside and outside the classroom, he has most certainly etched himself into the memory of everyone who has worked with him. as the Master-in-Charge of English Dramatics is one that can surely be enlisted amongst the most successful ones at school. took English Dramatics to an ethereal level within school. Everyone who worked under him in any of his plays speaks highly of his wonderful directorial talent, one which encompassed indepth knowledge of dramatic literature with an excellent understanding of the available potential in the school. His adept contributions to theater at school will be remembered and cheered for long. in school. Anyone taught by KAR, and the History boys will agree with me when I say that he ‘brought the dead back to life’ with his lively lectures and idiosyncratic teaching style. A number of young ‘to-be’ historians owe their interest to his classes. Despite being extremely approachable to students, he continued to string out the best of their abilities, focusing on everyone’s needs and requests. It wouldn’t be incorrect of me to say that his decision to leave school was hardest on the History Department, given the pressure to replace his versatile position. As the Housemaster of Oberoi House, he closely interacted with each boy under his care. He brooked no nonsense and was dedicated to turning young boys into gentlemen. He boasted of his relationship with them. The house conquered great heights under his guidance. His well-rounded sense of humour never failed to get the best of people even in the most somber situations, an attribute that gave him a good name amongst the senior boys.
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In the end, I would like to extend my gratitude on behalf of our entire community to KAR for his contributions to school, and wish him all the very best for his future endeavours.
Mr Ajit Bajaj I have known Mr. Bajaj for over 25 years in manner was something that all his students over the years admired about him. He shared a good rapport with his students and taught them the virtue of hard work, perseverance and the need to constantly challenge themselves to do better. To his colleagues within the Accounts, Commerce and Economics department he was a mentor, friend and someone whom we always relied upon for his experience and wisdom. He brought a lot of depth to the process of teaching and learning within the subject area. In my opinion the best way to remember Mr. Bajaj will be by quoting Henry Brooks Adams an American historian:-‘Teachers We wish him the very best for the future and shall always cherish his contribution to the School as a teacher.
Housemasters
Sitting (L to R): Ms Stuti Kuthiala, Mr Anjan Chaudhary, Mr Sanjiv Bathla, Mr Ashad Qezilbash, Dr Peter McLaughlin, Mr Philip Burrett, Mr Biren Chamola, Mr Rashid Sharfuddin, Mr Skand Bali, Mr Debashish Chakrabarty Standing(L to R): Mr Manu Mehrotra, Mr Nitin Chauhan, Mr Ashish Dean, Mr John Xavier, Dr Vidhukesh Vimal
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DEANS & DIRECTORS
The Eye in the Sky
Sitting (L to R): Mrs Archana Singh, Mr Deepak Sharma, Mr M C Joshi, Mr Philip Burrett, Dr Peter McLaughlin, Mr Sameer Katre, Mr Prabhakaran Nair, Mr Piyush Malviya, Mr Ashad Qezilbash
ADMINISTRATION HEADS
Top Notch
Sitting (L to R): Mr Hemant Sharma, Maj Himanshu Rautela, Mr Sanjay Makhija, Mr Sameer Katre, Mr Madan Mohan Purohit, Mr Raveesh Dogra
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ADMINISTRATION
Sitting (L to R): Mr Sachin Goyal, Mr Rajesh Kumar Uniyal, Mr Yusuf Khan, Maj Himanshu Rautela, Mr Sameer Katre, Mrs A Sabharwal, Mr Ashish Jain, Mrs Sampati Negi, Mr Ram Gopal Maurya Standing (L to R): Ramesh, Rajender, Mr Atul S Pundir, Anil Thapa, Mr Sewak Bisht, Mr S S Ale, Mr Virendra Singh, Netra Bahadur Thapa
FINANCE
Money, Money, Money!
Sitting (L to R): Mr Arvind Sharma, Mr Subodh Kumar, Mr Akhilesh Upadhyay, Mr Dilip Arya, Mr S J Singh, Mr Ritesh Kumar Sharma, Ms Pooja Anand, Mr Rajesh Kumar Uniyal, Mr Abhijeet Bagchi Standing (L to R): Siya Ram, Brij Lal 143
IB OFFICE
45 it is!
Sitting (L to R): Sitting (L to R): Mr Shrey Nagalia, Mrs Meeta Sharma, Mr Kamal Ahuja, Mr Vinay Pande, Mr Pankaj Joshi, Mr Bhaskar Ojha
HEADMASTER’S SECRETARIAT & RESIDENCE
The Entourage
Sitting (L to R): Mr Shahi Kumar, Mr Madan Lal Kothari, Retd Wg Cdr Anupama Joshi, Dr Peter McLaughlin, Mrs Jagjit Bhatia, Ms Swati Singh, Mr Bhupinder Singh Standing (L to R): Dharamraj, Rajesh Koti, Rajkumar, Gopal, Manoj Maurya, Anand Mani, Ganga Deen, Dhanpat 144
HUMAN RESOURCES
Scouting
Sitting (L to R): Retd Wg Cdr Anupama Joshi, Mr Sameer Katre, Mr Ashish Jain Standing (L to R): Ramesh Chand
FUNDRAISING
Sitting (L to R): Mrs Archana Singh, Dr Peter McLaughlin, Ms Anupama Rawat
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LIBRARY
Turn the page
Sitting (L to R): Ms Seema Rathore, Ms Saira Bano, Mr Pankaj Das, Mrs Abia Qezilbash Standing (L to R): Manoj Sood, Subhash Chand Masand
STORES
A to Z
Sitting (L to R): Mr Y S Rawat, Mr Abhijeet Bagchi Standing (L to R): Ramshankar Maurya, Siya Ram Maurya 146
TRAINING CENTRE
Imparting leadership
Sitting (L to R): Mr Phillip Burrett, Mrs Anez Katre Standing (L to R): Naeem Khan
WELLNESS CENTRE
Hale & Hearty
Sitting (L to R): Mr Shivraj Negi, Dr Akash Naidu, Major Amar Lanka, Ms Karma Sangmo, Mr K C Tripathi Standing (L to R): Ved Prakash, Rajinder Singh, Subhash, Anand Mourya, Pradeep, Praveen, Bhupinder
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WORKSHOP
Sitting (L to R): Azhar Khan, Ashok Kumar, Sher Charan, Mr Parvez Iqbal, Mr M M Purohit, R B S Gill, Manohar Daniel, Om Prakash Gaur, Amit Gautam Standing (L to R): Milan, Sanjay, Manoj Kumar, Om Prakash, Rakesh Pawar, Puran Chand, Badri Prasad, Mukesh
GROUND STAFF
Over the hedge
Sitting (L to R): Hirdev Ram, Subprasad, Gangadeen, Mr Sharma, Ram Naresh, Arvind Kumar, Dharam Raj Standing (L to R): Harish Kumar,Hari Shankar, Kishan Pal, Pujari, Kamal Pal, Sagar, Bhola, Dilip,Rakesh Kumar, Hari Chand 148
CDH
The foodie!
Sitting (L to R): Ram Shankar, Rajendra Singh, Manoj Kukreti, Subodh Nautiyal, CV Rana, Mr Sanjay Makhija, Vishal Anand, Pankaj Goyal, Ali Bux, Suneel Uniyal, Rajendra Singh Standing 1st Row (L to R): Ashok, Kamal, Shukla, Dinesh, Mahendra, Rajesh, Dharmendra, Jagat, Virendra, Jaydev, Bhagwa, Kishore, Mool, Kamal Standing 2nd Row (L to R): Mahipal, Somdev, Chote, Radesh, Mukesh, Lakhpat, Vinod, Ranveer, Sunil, Dilip, Deepak, Subhash, Kunal
ENGINEERING
Keep the gears running
Sitting (L to R): Mr Narendra Kumar, Mr Raveesh Dogra 149
Curriculum 150
Boarding & pastoral life
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Hyderabad House
Housemaster
House Captain
Assistant Housemaster
House Prefects
Mr Biren Chamola Mr John Xavier
Siddhant Sachdev Abhishek Bansal, Ujjwal Dahuja, Raghav Nath
Sitting (L to R): Mr Umung D Varma, Mr Arun Kumar, Shreshtha Verma, Mrs Amrit Burrett, Kumar Sambhav, Mr Prabhakaran Nair, Raghav Nath, Mr John Xavier, Siddhant Sachdev, Mr Biren Chamola, Ujjwal Dahuja, Mrs Meenakshi Tripathi, Abhishek Bansal, Dr Md Hammad Farooqui, Eeshat Tiwary, Mrs Meeta Sharma, Mr Kirti Pal Singh Tomar, Mr Rahul Luther, Mr Kamal Ahuja Standing 1st Row (L to R): Yash Jalan, Sookrit Malik, Rishabh Nautiyal, Divyank Sharma, Nabeel Shah, Satvik Narain, Jaskrit Singh, Shivam Goyal, Neelansh Khurana, Sanat Verma Standing 2nd Row (L to R): Shikha Kothari, Nayan Manchanda, Pritika Sandhu, Pranay Raj Kapoor, Yash Agarwal, Chirag Mittal, Dhruv Prasad, Vedant Khanna, Rahul Srivastava, Agni Raj Singh, Devesh Sharma, Suyash Bishnoi, Sarvshrest Singh, Arnav Joshi, Imaan Pariat Mehta, Aamir Shah, Durgesh Agarwal, Prasana Rajan Standing 3rd Row (L to R): Yuvraj Nathani, Sartaj Singh Sidhu, Palash Kanwar, Preetham Mohan, Navraaj Randhawa, Abhayraj Jain, Gatik Gupta, Kismat Chopra, Kartikay Garg, Shantanu, Prabhsharan Mamik, Sajal Bansal, Fateh Pratap Singh Phoolka, Daksh Bhatia, Varun Narain Sinha, Syed Mohammad Amaan Kazmi, Udayan Sinha, Yasharth Goyal Standing 4th Row (L to R): Nihal Singh Mann, Krishna Amit Bhargava, Md Zaid Bin Shameem, Manan Dadhania , Divij Kapoor, Hamza Khan, Arush Sood, Divyansh Goel, Parth Vohra, Rajkumar Vijay, Devang Mehra, Vireshwar Singh Sidhu, Guruansh Singh, Akarsh Tibrewal, Rohan Chaudhari, Vibhav Gupta, Leonardo Pamei, Priyanshu Raj, Yajawin Tandon Standing 5th Row (L to R): Prakhar Dwivedi, Utkarsh Agarwal, Raghav Kumar, Nikhil Chauhan, Siddharth Goyal, Amol Pajni, Udbhav Agarwal, Samarth Prasad, Yash Dhandhania, Yash Kuldeep Mishra, Arnav Jain, Rahil Arora, Uday Rathore, Vivek Narain Sinha, Shlok Jain, Siddhant Gupta, Aarya Tamrakar, Sasyak Pattnaik, Sharat Kumar Nambiar, Tejit Pabari, Rishab Badhwar, Kanav Gupta, Saksham Goel Standing 6th Row (L to R): Harshmani, Sageer Ahmad, Vipin
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because of these memories that the ethos of The Doon School exists. 2012 gave Hyderabad House its share of memories; memories which will gave the House a year to cherish and motivation for many more to come. with Raghav Nath, Ujjwal Dahuja and Abhishek Bansal being appointed Prefects. While Eeshat Tiwary and Jaskrit Singh were appointed as House Monitors, many boys were also appointed as captains of School sport teams and as leaders of various activities in School. With a plethora of leaders in the house, the Nizams were looking to have a fruitful year and thus, took this momentum forward to win sweeping almost every piece of silverware on display. While we fell slightly short in PT and hockey, the House bounced back with a sweep in English Debating and ended the term on a high note In the following term, the House looked strong, securing high positions in football and music while the much-awaited athletics competition also saw the House performing commendably. To wrap up a year of achievements, the house went forth to clinch the long elusive boxing competition and brought the House a lot of honour. Apart from achievements, one must also look at the life of the boys in the House. While, the surfeit of cups ensured a proud atmosphere to be prevalent in the House, the relationship shared between juniors and seniors also ensured the presence of a convivial and happy environment. In consonance, the juniors and seniors created a great year for the House and the Batch of 2013 did a stellar job in making this possible. Further, the House saw its academics and college placements at an unprecedented heights. Ujjwal Dahuja attained a perfect score of 45 in the IB examinations and joined Princeton University to read mathematics. In the ISC, Sanat Verma topped the H House batch and attained a placement in the Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies. Cornell University, University of Southern California, Yale-NUS, Tufts University, Singapore Management University,Kelly School of Business, George Washington University, Northwestern University and McGill University were some of the colleges which had accepted the applications of Nizams from the SC batch of 2013. Hyderabad House would not be the home it is without the consistent support from the Dame, Mrs Tripathi and the Assistant Housemaster, Mr John Xavier along with the many tutors who always ensure smoothness in the House’s functioning.
House Colours Raghav Nath Jaskrit Singh Eeshat Tiwary Abhishek Bansal Sanat Verma Kabir Sethi Neelansh Khurana Shivam Goyal
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Jaipur House
Housemaster
House Captain
Assistant Housemaster
House Prefects
Mr Sanjiv Bathla Dr Vidhukesh Vimal
Dhruv Aggarwal
Shantanu Seth, Udit Rungta, Zorawar Whig
Sitting (L to R): Mr Chandan Singh Ghughtyal, Abhishek Parasrampuria, Mr Michael James, Shubham Khemka, Mr Anand Kumar Mandhian, Madhavan Saklani, Ms Priya Chauhan, Udit Rungta, Dr Vidhukesh Vimal, Dhruv Aggarwal, Mr Sanjeev Bathla, Shantanu Seth, Mrs Neeru Vaishnav, Zorawar Whig, Mr Mohan Chandra Joshi, Imroz Suri, Mr Pankaj Joshi, Khalid Alawneh, Mr Arvind Dethe, Aayush Tripathi, Mr Arnab Mukherjee Standing 1st row (L to R): Saket Golyan, Advait Jha, Yash Upadhyay, Gaurav Kothari, Arnav Matta, Gopal Singh Mann, Saif Ali, Gaurav Garg, Varun Malhotra, Siddharth Kaul, Jai Pratap Singh Kairon, Karan Singh, Dhruv Singhal, Uday Lakhanpal, Karan Shinghal, Divij Batra, Karan Pratap Singh Kairon, Raniz Bordoloi, Saksham Agrawal, Sachin Mehra, Rohan Agarwal Standing 2nd row (L to R) : Aditya Vardhan Bhardwaj, Suryansh Nevatia, Nihal Singh Dhillon, Josh Pasricha, Gursher Singh Chabba, Saumil Agarwal, Hamza Khan, Dhruv Kharbanda, Shaswat Vineet Agrawal, Vibhav Maheshwari, Shivaan Seth, Waseefullah Khan Sherwani, Utkarsh Jha, Ritesh Popat Shinde, Arjun Kapoor, Vrishankaditya Parmar, Rohan Agarwal, Dilsher Brar, Pratyaksh Parmar, Yasir Nizam Standing 3rd row (L to R) : Chaitanya Hemant Agarwal, Jayadityavir Singh, Sumer Sehgal, Anant Singh Mann, Aayush Tripathi, Atharva Matta, Ritzy Pushpraj Rajaswi, Ritvik Khare, Zahaan Querishi, Uday Goyal, Mahanaaryaman Jyotiraditya Scindia, Marut Garg, Sahir Choudhary, Kanav Ghai, Samrat Rawat, Zayaan Khodaiji, Anubhav Agarwal, Anirudh Gupta, Arjun Singh Mann, Aditya Gandhi, Shreyansh Pandey, Rishi Raj Deva Standing 4th row (L to R): Vineet Puri, Varun Sehgal, Umang Garg, Tarang Garg, Arth Gupta, Samaksh Khanna, Anandita Luther, Abhinav Kajriwal, Kanav Agarwal, Suyash Raj Shivam, Tanmay Gupta, Rishabh Agarwal, Govind Singh Sandhu, Harshvardhan Bansal, Sambhav Agarwal, Aditya Vir Roy, Umang Gupta
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Jaipur House has had quite a marvelous and a successful year. I congratulate and thank the out going House Captain, Sharan Seth, and the team of Prefects; Raghav Puri, Ashwin Dokania and Varun Gupta, for inspiring boys and bringing out the best in the House. The House won the Grand Slam for winning all major sports. In gratitude and to celebrate the same, Jaipur House invited the entire School for a grand feast. The Old Boys of Jaipur House once again came forward and funded the entire cost. This year’s House Captain, Dhruv Agarwal, and the Prefects; Shantanu Seth, Zorawar Whig and Udit Rungta have taken on the reigns This term began with Jaipur house winning the Academic Cup for the second time in a row. Dhruv was awarded the Best P.T leader. The House has bagged the Senior Hockey Cup under the captaincy of Udit Rungta and the Chess Cup under the captaincy of Gopal Mann. The emblem of Jaipur House, the eagle, is soaring high and has reached new heights. The ISC and ICSE results have proved once again that the boys are not only getting the right environment for sports but also a superior culture for academic performance has taken shape. In ISC, Raghav Puri scored 98.3% topping Dehra Dun schools. Nipun Batra scored a 98%. Others amongst the 90s club are Rana Nishikant Chowgule 95.8%, Sharan Seth 95.3%, Yashasvi Havelia and Angad Singh 93.8% and Ashwin Dokania 90.5 %. This small batch of 12 boys has done extremely well for themselves and for Jaipur House. A legacy created that will always be remembered. In the ICSE, Ritesh Popat Shinde scored 96.8%, Raniz Bordoloi 96.6 %, Uday Goyal 94.6%, Marut Garg & Utkarsh Jha 94.4% Saumil Agarwal 94.2%, Hamza Khan 93.6%, Sumer Sehgal 93% and Shivaan Seth a 91.8%. The Jaipur House English One Act Play, , was immensely enjoyed by the School. The play produced by Imroz Suri and directed by Saif Ali provided a platform for emerging talents. Gaurav Kothari was awarded the best supporting actor. Jaipur House is amongst the top in talent and interest for music. It has traditionally been a House with very creative music lovers, vocal and instrumental. Tremendous talent has emerged in all forms of public speaking. Many boys of Jaipur House are taking the initiative in going on stage and speaking at Assembly. High quality creative writing pieces can be seen in our School publications as well. An overwhelming interest and participation is being shown at the MUN and LAMDA. At sports, Jaipur House won the hockey, soccer, swimming and the boxing cups and proved strong metal at an all round participation. Winning the quiz cup also showed our strength in general knowledge. IAYP is another good programme and I encourage all the boys to do at least one award if not all. The Jaipur House boys are doing good Lakhanpal who is motivating and educating boys of the House on better community service. I am sure the coming term will see more of these awards. To sum it all up, Jaipur House rose to greater heights and the 2012 was one of the most successful years in the history of the house of Eagles.
House Colours Dhruv Agarwal Karan Shinghal Marut Garg Imroz Suri Shubham Khemka Saif Ali Zorawar Whig Udit Rungta
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Kashmir House
Housemaster
House Captain
Assistant Housemaster
House Prefects
Mr Anjan Chaudhary Mr Manu Mehrotra
Nivit Kochhar
Aditya Vikram Gupta, Arjun Khaitan, Alawi Singh
Sitting (L to R): Mr Manish Pant, Dr Ritu Mohan Bahl, Mr Ambikesh Shukla, Shrish Srivastav, Mr Aloke Bhowmick, Arjun Khaitan, Mr Deepak Sharma, Alawi Singh, Mr Anjan Chaudhary, Nivit Kochhar, Mr Manu Mehrotra, Aditya Vikram Gupta, Mr Vishal Mohla, Nakul Jaidka, Mrs Sarabjeet Sandhu, Abhishek Pande, Mr Manoj Pandey, Ms Purnima Dutta Standing 1st Row (L to R): Abhijeet Karwa, Shreyas Keyal, Pulkit Bansal, Tushar Mohan, Yash Mall, Avik Gugalia Standing 2nd Row (L to R): Apekshit Goel, Shubham Agarwal, Jai Yadav, Madhav Dutt, Arnav Goyal, Yash Malhotra, Harshil Agarwal, Abhishek Kakkar, Aahan Menon, Rishabh Tusnial, Orijit Chatterjee , Malini Malviya, Diksha Makhija Standing 3rd Row (L to R): Akhil Ranjan, Vivaan Sharma, Azan Brar, Kunal Srivastava, Pratyush Bharti, Raghav Bansal, Anmol Jain, Shrey Aryan, Nihal Sharma, Namanshree Jain, Kunal Kanodia, Raghuraj Rathi, Vatsal Agarwal, Suhel Karara, Siddharth Suri, Devesh Sahai, Aditya Bhattacharya, Jai Ahuja, Rudra Srivastava, Rishabh Agarwal Standing 4th Row (L to R): Sanjeet Suhag, Sarthak Gupta, Mayank Agarwal, Laksh Saraf, Devansh Agarwal, Arnav Bhavanani, Dhruv Ahuja, Jaivir Puri, Ritvik Kar, Pranjalya Shukla, Saksham Garg, Amal Agarwal, Sabhya Katiya, Codanda Chengappa, Madhav Agarwal, Naman Lodha, Ishmaam Chowdhury, Digvijay Gupta, Ashim Bansal, Mihir Kiran, Ayushmaan Arora, Shivam Sharma Standing 5th Row (L to R): Savar Khanna, Ashvin Solanki, Anirudh Popli, Smrithi Nair, Ajitesh Gupta, Tanay Agarwal, Vivek Vishwanathan, Aditya Maheshwari, Madhav Bhardwaj, Rahul Das, Arpit Chaddha, Chinmaya Sharma, Anant Mohan, Sarvagya Dhiman, Siddharth Jain, Nikunj Agarwal, Aviral Garg, Udai Behl, Shreyash Agarwal, Ashwath Madhok, Nalini Malviya, Ashish Pande Standing 6th Row (L to R): Vijay, Sunil
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The year 2012 started with the appointment of the new Prefectorial body. Nivit Kochhar was appointed the House Captain and was aided by Aditya Vikram Gupta, Arjun Khaitan and Alawi Singh. Every House has its own character and Kashmir House in this year has lived up to its name: “The House of Gentlemen”. This was primarily possible because of the readiness of the seniors in taking a new direction, knowing their limitations and therefore believing in the other forms and the acceptance of the juniors in believing in their process. In the ISC and ICSE examinations for the year 2013, boys of Kashmir House proved their academic prowess. Aditya Vikram Gupta achieved 93.3% in the ISC. In the ICSE examinations, the boys achieved an outstanding average of 87.9%. Individually, Sarthak Gupta achieved 94.4%. Boys of Kashmir House were placed into reputed colleges, both home and abroad such as - Berkeley College of Music, McGill University, and Universities in Singapore, UK, Delhi University and Bombay University. Cup. In swimming, Aditya Vikram Gupta and Udai Nath Behl represented the School at the national level. Udai also broke the School record for the 50m-breaststroke category. Boxing has seen unprecedented participation from Kashmir House and I must give credit to Nivit Kocchar and Alawi Singh for motivating and training the junior boys of the House. Individually, boys of Kashmir House have brought glory to the School too, with Samarjit Singh winning various competitions in shooting and Sarthak Gupta achieving an international rating of 1608 in chess. Aahan Menon performed well at the Karate Nationals. In the Inter-House One-Act-Play competition, House. In the 77th Founder’s Day programme, boys from Kashmir House actively participated in the drama and music productions. A large number of boys from our House were in the crews for the plays and the music production. I must congratulate Yash Mall and Nakul Jaidka for their phenomenal performances in the Inter-House Music Competition as well as in the Founder’s Day music production. Boys from Kashmir House were also actively involved in key publications such as the Yearbook, and the various Hindi publications.
, Echo,
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In the year 2012, Kashmir House celebrated its Platinum Jubilee. I would like to extend my gratitude to all the boys, past and present, who were actively involved in the celebrations and made it successful. I must also thank the Old Boys and parents who contributed towards improving facilities in the House. We have utilized our funds to enhance the ouse library and notice boards. I want to take this opportunity to express my gratitude to Mr Manu Mehrotra,-Assistant Housemaster, who has worked tirelessly for the success of the boys and I have always admired his power of making his point without ever losing his temper. The Dame, along with her team, has played a pivotal role in pastoral care and housekeeping. She takes extra care beyond her call of duty and plays the role of the perfect mother in the House. I was privileged to have such a wonderful group of young men in our SC form leading the House the housemaster and the boys. The prefectorial body of 2012 has done an excellent job in terms of ensuring punctuality and discipline every single setback. Kashmir House had a wonderful year and the celebration of the Platinum Jubilee showcased the beauty of this great institution. I wish all the very best to the Batch of 2013!
House Colours Nivit Kochhar Aditya Vikram Gupta Alawi Singh Arjun Khaitan Shrish Srivastav
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Oberoi House
Housemaster
House Captain
Assistant Housemaster
House Prefects
Mr Rashid Sharfuddin Mr Nitin Chauhan
Yash Johri
Adhiraj Singh, Animesh Jain, Shubham Dhingra
Sitting (L to R): Mr Devendra Mishra, Mr Md Istemdad Ali, Yash Agarwal, Dr Praveen Dwivedi, Adhiraj Singh, Mr DC Bhatkoti, Yuv Vir Khosla, Mr Rashid Sharfuddin, Yash Johri, Mr Nitin Chauhan, Animesh Jain, Mr Piyush Malviya, Shubham Dhingra, Mr Samik Das, Partho Roy Chowdhury, Mr Sudhir Thapa, Mr Ramesh Bhardwaj Standing 1st Row (L to R): Aakanksha Mohan, Mudit Agarwal, Rishabh Pande, Rayhaan Imaam, Tanmay Kapoor, Rohil Mehrotra, Rishabh Kothari, Raj Surana, Vidit Sidana, Pranav Agarwal Standing 2nd Row (L to R): Abhijeet Kejriwal, Nakul Talwar, Anshul Tibrewal, Divyant Sapra, Himanshu Poddar, Suraj Bishnoi, Pranjal Bhatt, Arihant Arora, Vinayak Chaudhary, Nipurn Datta,Varun Vasudev, Rishabh Chadda, Siddharth Bhardwaj, Varun Pais, Vatsal Goenka, Adarsh Lanka Standing 3rd Row (L to R): Vansh Aggarwal, Rishit Agarwal, Vishesh Khetan, Ashish Verma, Sarthak Katiyar, Arjun Kamdar, Armaan Imam, Ruhaan Dev Tyagi, Sabharsh Sidhu, Shreyansh Chedda, Ritesh Devnani, Kartikey Jain, Nachiket Jain, Arunabh Uttkarsh, Kanishk Tyagi, Prabnur Bal, Harshvardhan Singh, Dhruv Johri, Sudhansh Agarwal, Parth Khanna Standing 4th Row (L to R): Lakshya Varshney, Sakcham Bhalotia, Samrath Bal, Tanishq Agarwal, Sai Swayam, Kartavya Nagpal, Sikander Suri, Ishaan Kapoor, Manan Pradhan, Atrey Bhargava, Karan Sethy, Shourya Kishorepuria, Vedant Agarwal, Dhruv Agarwal, Madhav Gurtoo, Mukul Goyal, Aditya Malik, Rishavraj Das, Akshay Sarawgi, Madhav Singhal, Arya Khanal, Yogesh Agarwal Standing 5th Row (L to R): Yash Killa, Anvay Grover, Parth Agarwal, Aditya Gupta, Vallavi Shukla, Samarth Bhardwaj, Samarth Juneja, Rahul Garg, Vrindam Nagpal, Tanmay Nautiyal, Mahavir, Veerban, Agastya Shetty, Varun Singh, Hrithik Shukla, Siddhareth Pahuja, Madhav Goel, Vihaan Bhatnaagar, Atharva Shukla, Ananay Sethi, Ayush Sarawgi, Vaibhav Chandak, Kunal Verma
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The year began with the election of Yuv Vir Khosla as the School Captain and the appointments of the Prefectorial body of the House. The House Captain was Yash Johri and Prefects were Adhiraj Singh, Shubham Dhingra and Animesh Jain. Yuv also took over as the School Football Captain and School Music Captain.Quite shortly, the cricket season was upon us. After a few disappointments of the previous years, there was a good chance for a victory this time as the House had some of the best players of the School. Both the Junior and Senior teams played with great passion and determination but unfortunately came a close second due to a defeat in a awaiting us. All this while PT practices were in full swing and the PT competition was approaching. As the House had won the Senior PT competition fourteen times in the past twenty years, there was great pressure on the Senior Squad and also the House as a whole. The day of the competition arrived and the PT competition saw us sweeping the Junior as well as the Senior category and consequently the PT Gong. It was an exceptional performance from the house as a whole. The board results of this year in the ICSE, ISC and IB were exceptional, with the SC formers managing to get good placements both in India and abroad. The ICSE topper, Manas Poddar, secured a 97.2%. We also won the Inter House Poetry Recitation competition for the sixth time in a row with exceptional performances by Shubham Dhingra and Vidit Sidana. Inspite of failures in some competitions the The second term began as usual with the swimming competition. The House, being known for swimming did well, but unfortunately could only get its hands on the Mediums Cup. Animesh Jain, Divyant Sapra and many others showed great skill and stamina. The House also emerged victorious in the Shanti Swaroop Science Essay Contest led by Raj Surana. When it came to music the house’s performance was brilliant. The House won the major categories like dance and choir with some very unique performances like Penn Masala’s Viva La Vida in a-cappella style. Great leadership was shown by the House music captains - Shreshtha Khetan and Mudit Agarwal. The House’s performance in football was also commendable with great skill shown by Yuv Vir Khosla, Yash Johri and Adhiraj Singh. As the term passed the athletics season was underway. Some of the biggest highlights of this season were Yash Agarwal’s victories in both the 1500m and 5000m run and Adhiraj Singh’s triumph in the pentathlon for the second time in a row. Great performances were also given by Nipurn Datta, Nakul Talwar and Pranjal Bhatt. The last thing left in the year was the Inter House Boxing Competition. As always a great number of highly technical bouts took place and impressive talent and strength were seen in boys like Tanmay Kapoor, Yuv Vir Khosla and Anshul Tibrewal. I would like to thank our Assistant Housemaster, Mr Nitin Chauhan for his love, dedication and hardwork for the House. The Dame, Mrs their support and enthusiasm in all aspects of the House. The year has been a great and a highly successful year for the House and the true spirit of the House was clearly seen in the boys of end it can rightly be said that the boys of this House are like the feathers of a swan and bind the House together to give it beauty and character.
House Colours Yash Johri Yuv Vir Khosla Adhiraj Singh Shubham Dhingra Animesh Jain Lakshya Kothari Vidit Sidana Tanmay Kapoor Mudit Agarwal Raj Surana 159
Tata House
Housemaster
House Captain
Assistant Housemaster
House Prefects
Mr Skand Bali
Mr Ashish Dean
Arjun Midha
Arjun Parmar, Aviral Gupta, Adhiraj Thakran
Sitting (L to R): Mr Shrey Nagalia, Mrs Malvika Bhatt, Himanshu Todi, Mr Sandeep Adhikari, Aviral Gupta, Mr Ashad Quezilbash, Adhiraj Thakran, Mr Ashish Dean, Arjun Midha, Mr Skand Bali, Arjun Parmar, Mrs Ranjit Kaur, Sanat Kumar Thakur, Dr Arvindanabha Shukla, Shawn Kapur, Mrs Anez Katre, Shashvat Dhandhania, Mr Chit Ranjan Kadgee Standing 1st Row (L to R): Siddhant Gupta, Shivank Singh, Karan Chhabra, Banda M S Lamba, Dhairik Dinesh Fuletra, Parth Gupta, Adit Handa, Mahak Sharma Standing 2nd Row (L to R): Shivan Tandon, Raghav Kothiwal, Sidharth Sethi, Sehaj Singh Jouhal, Udbhav Agarwal, Jairaj Singh Sadana, Kartikey Pandey, Chaitanya Fatehpuria, Zorawar Singh, Ashish Rao, Jai Khanna, Vikramaditya Kapur, Farhan Anis, Kushagra Singh, Kartikey Luthra, Shorya Agarwal, Agastya Bellad Standing 3rd Row (L to R): Ishan Sandhu, Raghav Gupta, Krishn Dadoo, Shivender Cheema, Naadir Singh, Arjun Sharma, Siddharth Sarin, Abhishek Pai, Angad Singh Shergill, Sidhraj Singh Tomar, Nitin Sardana, Jai Lanba, Ashutosh Goyal, Yash Meel , Karan Dhillon, Suryansh Agarwal, Nasir Iqbal Standing 4th Row (L to R): Mrigank Khemka, Yasir Iqbal, Sayuj Dhandhania, Rishikant Sharma, Eshaan Bhardwaj, Dhananjaya Bansal, Rishabh Sharma, Husain Haider, Amartya Bhoumick, Samarth Makhija, Krishna Lohiya, Nirvan Dogra, Kartikeya Kardam, Yuvan Kumar, Aditya Dhingra, Rishi Raj Khan, Shrey Kapoor, Paramdeet Singh, Nikhil Saraf, Aryaman Panwar, Shashank Mittal Standing 5th Row (L to R): Pranav Kothiwal, Kanav Agarwal, Anuvrat Choudhary, Rahul Agarwal, Anirudh Batra, Madhav Khirwar, Ujjwal Maheshwari, Rohan Hundia, Nikhil Fatehpuria, Jagjeet Singh, Arnav Kumar, Ashwin Agarwal, Akshaj Garg, Bhuvan Verma, Rahul Bhagchandani, Yashoraj Agarwal, Chaitanya Kediyal, Smayan Sahni, Madhav Mall
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The year began with the appointments of the Prefectoral body, Arjun Midha was appointed as the House Captain and Arjun Parmar, Aviral Gupta and Adhiraj Thakran as Prefects. Arjun Midha also took over as the School Athletics Captain, Adhiraj Thakran as the School Basketball Captain and Raghav Kothiwal as the School Table Tennis Captain. Shashvat Dhandania was elected as the School Council Secretary and appointed Senior English Debating Society Secretary and Editor-in-Chief of the Weekly. Sanat Thakur was elected as the Secretary of the Library Council and Hindi Debating, and was also designated Editor-in-Chief of Srijan Prayas. Aviral Gupta was appointed as the School Social Service Secretary and Banda MS Lamba led the board of the Echo. Like in the past, this year has also brought laurels for the House. Athletics competition in the Seniors and Juniors categories, clinching the House cup. The Marching cake added to the success of the the English Debating House cup and Junior Debating cup. We also won the Hindi Debating cup. India. The boys of the House have produced excellent IB, ICSE and ISC results. Parth Gupta topped the ISC Examinations in School with 97.25% marks. It was also commendable to see Parth Gupta and Dhairik Fuletra clear the IIT entrance exam and Sanat Thakur cleared the AIIMS entrance exam this year. Warriors also represented the School at the Student Exchange Programme. Sidharth Sethi went to Stowe School, United Kingdom. Vikramaditya Kapur went to Markham College, Peru. Chaitanya Fatehpuria went to Hutchins School, Australia. Harsh Singhania went to Bridgehouse School, South Africa. Udbhav Agarwal went to St. Stitheans School, South Africa and Jai Raj Sardana went to King’s Academy, Jordan. After seeing dedication amongst boys, as the Housemaster I took the privilege of introducing the Housemasters Appreciation Letter. It was awarded to those boys who showed extreme commitment and dedication towards the House. It was heartening to see boys from all forms receive this award. Mr Ashish Dean, our Assistant Housemaster is a man with no sleep and is full of hard work. I have seen Mr Dean spending endless hours in the House. He is always there with the boys, teaching them, counselling them, helping them and most importantly always with a smile. We are fortunate to have him with us in the House. I thank Mr Dean for all that he has done for the House and the boys. I take in by our Dame Mrs Ranjit Kaur, and all the tutors associated with the House over the past year. Last, but by no means the least, I want to extend my gratitude to all the boys of the House. They all have made me proud as the Housemasters, Assistant Housemasters and Dames were felicitated during the Pagal Gymkhana by Headmaster Dr Peter McLaughlin along with Former Headmaster Mr. Gulab Ramchandani. I received compliments about our boys from teachers throughout the year. I want to tell all my boys that as their Housemaster I am proud of them and I can say with great belief that our House will move from strength to strength and touch greater heights in years to come.
House Colours Arjun Midha Arjun Parmar Adhiraj Thakran Aviral Gupta Shashvat Dhandhania Himanshu Todi Shawn Kapur Dhairik Fuletra Sanat Kumar Thakur Mahak Sharma Chaitanya Fatehpuria Karan Chabbra 161
Foot House
Housemaster
Mr Debashish Chakrabarty
Sitting (L to R): Mr Vinay Pande, Tanya Makhija, Ms Anamika Ghose, Dhruv Pais, Mrs Namrata Pande, Shashvat Gandhi, Mr Debashish Charkabarty, Yuvan Jaidka, Mrs Kanchan Shukla, Fateh Khanna, Mrs Abia Qezilbash, Ishita Bhardwaj Standing 1st Row (L to R): Shikhar Trivedi, Siddhant Kumar, Omar Chisti, Vatsal Bora, Ishan Jhawar, Ajatshatru Singh, Ishaan Garg, Aditya Verma, Viraaj Gaur, Udayveer Singh Sekhon, Aaryaman Singh, Akshat Jha, Vatsal Kumar Gupta, Talin Aggarwal, Divij Mullick, Kalpit Sharma Standing 2nd Row (L to R): Tanay Agarwal, Shresth Verma, Pragun Aggarwal, Suryansh Kainthola, Yash Mittal, Aditya Vardhan Agrawal, Chaitanya Gulati, Prakarsh Gupta, Rushil Goyal, Atreya Guruprasad, Ahaan Gupta, Bharat Hari Chaudhary, Krishna Goyal, Hritansh Nagdev, Rohan Singh, Ahaan Agarwal, Aryan Singla, Arnav Gupta Standing 3rd Row (L to R): Rajendar Prasad, Kishan Lal, Sheesh Pal
“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea” —Anoine de Saint-Exupery Dreaming for the sea of the future begins at the Foot and Martyn Houses in The Doon School. The boys who joined in 2012 were mentored by Mr Vinay Pande, Mrs Namrata Pandey, Mrs Abia Qezilbash, Ms Anamika Ghose and Ms Prachi Nagalia. Ms Kanchan Shukla mothered them in her role as the dame of the House. 40 students joined the House in April 2012—38 boys and two girls (Tanya Makhija and Ishita). The students went for their mid-terms to Jwarna, near Dhanaulti, in the Spring term. The boys did a 14 km trek to the temple of Surkanda Devi. In the Autumn mid-term, the entire House went to Lansdowne escorted by Mrs Qezilbash, Mr Pande and the Housemaster. The boys pristine Tarakeshwar temple, nestled in a bowl of deodar trees. The Footies went on a Night Out to Kalsi, where they had a serendipitous splash-about in a billabong and then visited the rock edict of Ashoka. The House did two social service outings where they planted trees. On one occasion, the House was also taken out for a treat in which they watched the latest James Bond release, “Skyfall”. In the activities (e.g. House Good Chit register, Social Service register, etc.) to disciplinary (Dorm monitor, Toye monitor, etc.) and creative (Editors and Producers of The Footprints Wall Magazine). 162
On the academic front, in the Spring term the house aggregated a record 81.96% with 20 distinctions; Ishan Garg led the House with a 92.89%. Ishan led the House again with a 90.33% in the challenging Autumn term Report Card. There was a record 15 Asset test Distinctions this year. Md. Omar Chisti did the House proud as the House representative in the Library Council and also winning the Silver medal level in the Junior. Omar also is the winner of the Dipankar Sen Junior Science Quiz. 23 boys signed the Book of Good Conduct this year. A special mention must be made of Divij Mullick, who lent his voice to the Founder’s choir and also topped his form as the best D Form Musician. In the sports arena, Ajatshatru Bahadur Singh and Shikhar Trivedi could well be called the sportsmen of the year. Ajatshatru represented the School and his House in cricket, soccer, swimming and athletics. Shikhar did the same in cricket, basketball, football and hockey. Special mention must be made of Ishan Jhawar, who represented the School in TT; Atreya Guruprasad, who represented the School in Badminton and Ahaan Sanjay Gupta, who was the only boxer from the House in the Inter-House Boxing tournament. The House is context must be made of Mr. Gopal Agarwal and Mrs. Puja Agarwal (parents of Tanay Agarwal) who donated a few DVDs of children’s movies to the House Library. We had been subscribing to The Week, The Kids National Geographic, Faces, Calliope, , Mad, Tehelka and , however due to paucity of funds many of the foreign subscriptions had to be discontinued. Parents who wish to contribute to the magazine subscription or DVD collection of the House are welcome to contact the Housemaster. The year also saw a lot of creative initiatives being taken by the boys, the House management and the School. The Foot Prints and The continue to be active with special interest and initiative from Dhruv Pais, Ishan Jhawar, Krishna Goyal, Yuvan Jaidka, Omar Chisti and a lot of other boys who were ably guided by Ms. Ghosh. February 2013 saw the new C-form joining in and the House numbers swelled to 52 students. The new year also saw a change in the tutor cycle. The boys who joined in 2013 in C form were mentored by Ms Namrata Pandey, Mrs Abia Qezilbash, Ms Priyanka Bhattacharya, Ms Amrit Burrett, Mr Pankaj Joshi and Mr Inderjit Singh . “‘Which road do I take?’
Children who join The Doon School often, like Alice, are confused about stepping onto the shores of the adult world. Like the Cheshire cat, we assure them that it truly does not matter and that they are the authors of their own destiny, a destiny that begins at The Doon their colleges; wings, they learn to spread at the Foot or the Martyn House.
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Martyn House
Housemaster
Ms Stuti Kuthiala
Sitting (L to R): Dr Mona Khanna, Naman Agrawal, Mr Avijit Chattopadhyay,Aditya Oberai, Mrs Priya Chaturvedi, Arjun Khanna, Ms Stuti Kuthiala, Mudit Bajaj, Mrs Priyanka Majumdar, Advait Ganapathy, Mr Dhanesh Joshi, Aryaman Saluja, Ms Priyanka Bhattacharya Standing 1st Row (L to R): Udesh Partap Kairon, Shivraj Singh Bhatti, Imaad Parvez, Yashvansh Chawla, Yugvansh Chawla, Adhiraj Chaudhary, Shubham Dhiman, Salman Mallick, Tejveer Singh Kohli, Rishank Kala, Shiven Khanna, Harshit Bansal, Prakhar Bhanu, Arhant Khullar, Udaiveer Singh Jaijee, Arjun Singh, Karthik Mohan Standing 2nd Row (L to R): Aryaman Agarwal, Advitya Goyal, Arunav Vaish , Deep Dhandhania, Ishan Vaish, Keshav Maliah, Mihir Gupta, Siddharth Mishra, Sumer Singh Vaidya, Nehansh Saxena, Jashan Kalra, Raj Rahul Sankla, Utsav Sharma, Devansh Sharma, Nikhil Bansal, Suchet Khurana Standing 3rd Row (L to R): Raj Singh, Ravi Kumar
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managing their daily personal, pastoral and academic lives, and taking independent decisions, big and small. It is interesting to observe how each boy does so at his own pace and employs individual methods to deal with the same challenges. Some forge ahead without any hesitation, some show a natural trepidation and test the waters before venturing forth, and yet some others don’t seem to make a start at all! But in a matter of just weeks, the demands of the school routine work as levellers, and a certain quotidian rhythm sets in, and the batch begins to move forward in sync. Sitting down to write this report, I pulled out the House List for last year (I currently have a fresh lot of ‘new’ boys as of April this year) and as I scrolled down the names, instant memories connected me to each one of them. Some that they will allow me to share here and others that must never be revealed! It is easy to recall them as the sporting sparks Keshav Maliah, Udaivir Jaijee, Sumer Vaidya, Arhant Khullar, Aryaman Saluja, Ishaan Vaish, Arunav Vaish, Adhiraj Choudhary, Harshit Bansal, Naman Agarwal and Nehansh Saxena; the music enthusiasts Kartik Mohan, Aryaman Agarwal, Salman Mallick, Keshav Maliah and Arjun Jai Khanna; the dependable volunteers Siddharth Mishra, Mihir Gupta,Deep Dhandhania, Nikhil Bansal, Aryaman Saluja and Shubham Dhiman; the motors and machine man Aditya Oberai; the readers/ debators Shiven Khanna, Advait Ganapathy, Raj Sankala, Arjun Singh, Suchet Khurana, Udesh Kairon, Nikhil Bansal and Jashan Kalra; the(mostly!) gentle giants Rishank Kala, Prakhar Bhanu, Imaad Parvez and the Chawla twins; the creative minds with their heads in the clouds Shivraj Bhatti, Utsav Sharma, Devansh Sharma, Mudit Bajaj and Advitiya Goyal; the action men Mihir Gupta and Tejveer Kohli. Besides these apparent talents and character traits, there are so many personal encounters that form a collage of indelible memories. Even though it has been six months since they left the House, the Dame or one of the tutors will recall an incident or a particular antic of one of these boys and every one begins to reminisce. All the grownups in the Martyn House pastoral are hard to duplicate in later forms. I can claim without any reservations whatsoever that the Martynis are very fortunate to have kind and attentive tutors such as Avijit Chattopadhyay, Priya Chaturvedi, Mona Khanna, Malavika Bhatt, Dhanesh Joshi and Jitendar Tiwary watching over them. The House would not function a single day, without Priyanka Majumdar, our Dame’s meticulous organization. As we watch, it is another year, another group, already a little more grown up, and headed for great things. The photograph on the adjoining page will be added to the Martyn House corridors and our personal albums. Viewed years later, when these baby faces have matured into older versions of themselves, one will be transported back to this year and this time. At the cost of repeating myself, I shall once again claim that a Holding House is a very special place in that every, year we receive a house full of shiny-faced, bright-eyed joy to introduce that adventure to them. I hope every boy of this batch will harbour pleasant memories of having been a Martyni, and will value forever the lessons he learnt here.
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Founder’s
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Headmaster’s Speech Founder’s Day 2012 Although we can never rest on our laurels, and complacency is the enemy of the best, the school is doing well in many spheres. Much of the success of the school has been down to the vision and drive of our Chairman, Mr. Analjit Singh, for forging a new mission and sense of purpose in the after this Founder’s weekend, but will leave an enduring legacy to the school. A man of great warmth and generosity, not only to this school, but to all who come within his orbit and embrace, his heart and soul have been in Doon for the best part of a decade now. The world does not owe this or any other school a living; many schools far, far older than Doon have closed their doors because of a lack of vision on the part of the governors, or the headmaster and senior leaders, or the entire school community. Ensuring that a school does not languish, but maintains its preeminence, meets new challenges and surges forward, while remaining true to its history, heritage be spectators, to look on at the endeavours of others, or to be critics. When I think of Mr. Analjit Singh I think of what one of America’s great Presidents said in 1894: “Criticism is necessary and useful; it is often indispensable; but it can never take the place of action, or be even a poor substitute for it. The function of the mere critic is of very subordinate usefulness. It is the doer of deeds who actually counts in the battle for life, and not the man who looks on and says how Roosevelt elaborated this earlier sentiment in his famous lecture at the Sorbonne in 1910 when he declared:”It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.” Analjit, I hope that we have not left you with too much dust, sweat and blood on your face, but we shall certainly miss you in your work on the Board and Chairman, but know that you will continue to be a life-long friend of The Doon School. The Doon School, is a young school, so it will grow and change in the next century and beyond – in 2112 it will certainly not be the same as it is today. We have not even made it to one century yet, and the legislative framework in India has rarely been so hostile to private schools, whether it is the attempt to impose taxes on us, or the implications of the RTE Act, and the market for private schools is demolishing what I would call quality boarding education all over the world. We must ensure that we still exist for generations to come to enjoy a Doon School education, and when future histories of The Doon School come to be written, I am convinced that Analjit Singh’s legacy will loom large in their pages. On behalf of the entire Doon School community, I should like to thank him for all that he has done for the school – and for appointing me to what I consider to be the best job that a man can have in education. Analjit, we shall say thank you but, as it is hard to imagine the workings of the Doon School without you, we shall not say goodbye, but rather au revoir. As I said a moment ago, boarding education is declining across the globe, but all-round education, whether it is in day or boarding schools, is also under serious threat. Very few schools are doing what I would consider full, genuine and serious all-round education: some neglect academic work, some neglect sport, some neglect cultural activities, some neglect adventure and teaching risk-taking, some neglect aspects of the curriculum such as science or the humanities. But for me the great crisis in education is that so many schools are neglecting to teach the good values that will help our national and values”, or about providing “a values-led education”, and we think we know what we mean. But we are teaching young people “values” on a scale never before possible. I fear that we adults are teaching the young too many values, and we need to stop and pause. And I mean this in the sense that the preponderance of values being taught is beginning to lie with the values that are morally rotten, not the good and the true and the wise and the beautiful values we cherish. We have lost our way. Post-modernism, with its moral relativism (all opinions are equally valid, all behaviours and cultures, whether it 168
is high culture or popular culture, are of equal value), and the digital age,with its seemingly limitless possibilities for both good and evil, have smashed ‘values’ into atoms, atoms spinning around the centre of the universe and what seems to be becoming everyone’s favourite topic of conversation, “me, myself and I”, rather than “we, ourselves and us”. Every day, in the increasingly powerful digital media, and in the behavior of adults paraded for our information or entertainment, our children are being relentlessly taught values that are destructive of family and community life and civil society – and I mean civil in more than one sense of the word – as well as some of the fundamentals of the educational process. Confusion over the teaching of values and beliefs lies in the neutrality of the word ‘value’. Values are principles or standards of behaviour; one’s judgement of what is important in life.A ‘value’ is something that
Wall Street who summed up 1980s values with his utterances that “Lunch is for wimps”, and “Greed is good”. See where that has led us. “Success at any price” is yet another value, but a destructive one, as is “It is all right to steal a little, if you work hard”.Cynicism and lack of trust have become too common a part of too many people’s value systems. If today you are wondering why you are sitting so far away from this podium, there is a reason that shows what is actually going on around us. When I stood on this spot in 2010, the President’s security authorities decreed that the front row had to be thirty feet away. Now, because more people are throwing things, mainly shoes, at politicians, and their aim is getting better as a result of a welcome growth in interest in sport in the country, you have to be sixty feet away; I hope all you Dosco cricketers and javelin throwers are at the back! If things go on like this, in 2014, I shall still be standing here speaking to you, but you will be sitting on Skinner’s wondering where this disembodied voice is coming from. So, there are many values being taught to the younger generation by the older generations. Young people are watching and listening and absorbing and they are learning certain lessons: crime pays; no-one can be trusted; everyone is out for him or herself, so you had better join in or be left behind; tigers cannot be saved from extinction; the Ganga cannot be kept clean, so why bother to think of the environment?Naturally, we do not want our young people to imbibe these values and states of mind which seem to be so rampant, so why do we teach them by being such poor examples? Is it any wonder our young people are confused by us and our behaviour, and are recent C-Fore survey of young people for The Hindustan Times, 70% said it was acceptable to be dishonest in order to become successful. The HT expressed shock and horror! How can this be? And then you read the rest of the newspaper, including the sections about celebrities and their tawdry behaviour, and then we see why this is so. Recently, 125 Harvard undergraduates were caught for suspected cheating in an examination that required honesty and truthfulness (they are given the paper three days in advance but not allowed to discuss it with anyone else). How can we expect them not to cheat, you may ask? To which I reply, why should we not challenge them and expect them to behave honestly? The Lance Armstrong case is another shocking example of the values being taught to youngsters. Many Doscos taking the Scholar’s Blazer interview, and others looking for inspiration, have read his books because he was an icon (which is an image venerated as sacred). Now that icon has been ripped to pieces. One thousand pages of witness testimony show that success and glory and money were to be had at any price. But there he is, still denying guilt, still popular. And so it goes. So, because so many of the “values” that we now teach the young are base or de-valued, I want to abolish talk of “teaching values” because we are not very good at it. Do I want moral anarchy and nihilism to reign in its place? Not at all.I want us to replace the word “values” with “virtues”, because you cannot mess around with the word “virtue” – which is what we used to mean power elites, and that all values are equal, prompts us to abdicate our responsibilities and deny the accumulated wisdom of hundreds you say, what is morally good and desirable - and that is a good question? Virtues are indeed created by consensus, but we seem to have lost the ability to do so in a post-modernist, digital age. But the good news is that we used to be good at it. As soon as humans settled into towns and cities and began to build complex societies and then civilizations, debate on virtue emerged and consensus emerged on what virtue was and what virtues should be taught to the young by the elders of society. I am going to read out something that I think is quite a good set of virtues. How about these for starters? : Fearlessness, purity of heart, modesty,steady determination, courage, vigour, forgiveness, fortitude, cleanliness, freedom from envy and a passion for honour. This education, and that that this is what we do and teach in the best of the best schools. Now, some say that virtue is a soft word, a little 169
fortitude, fearlessness), tough enough to make his way in the world, but soft enough (charity, compassion, gentleness), to love his wife and his mother and his grandparents, and his fellow citizens – he will also be nice to be around (tranquility, modesty, forgiveness) and smell pretty good because of the virtue of cleanliness. And you cannot pick and choose the ones that suit you – they are all written like this, I’ll take that, this suits me, that does not”) and we shall sit down together, and eat a meal of virtues together, as a community, around the table just like our forefathers did.Now that was thousands of years ago, and the elders of society recognized a need for them then, and there is a need for them now. Instead we allow anarchy to reign in the great, chaotic marketplace of ideas, cut and pasted into people’s value systems. And we wring our hands and say there is nothing we can do – as with so many of the problems that beset us. So, if we take the Gita 16:3 as a starting point, in what sort of school are virtues best taught and developed and lived out? the task in this way: here is a list of 25 virtues; you, read them out; learn those; there will be a test tomorrow; the ‘topper’ will get a Headmaster’s Cup for virtue, and woe betide the loser at the bottom. You cannot teach good values or virtues in that way; we have to live out the classical virtues – we, ourselves and us - day in and day out in communities of a shared understanding of what it means to live a serious and virtuous life. So we need to take a little time out from our relentless lives, this technological tyranny that eats our time together, and go back several thousand years in time and start again and build a set of virtues that we all agree upon and that we teach our children and pass on from generation to generation – and we should stop being timid about this, and we should stop being pushed around by fears of being seen as cranks or old-fashioned or “out of touch” if we take a stand. If we are leaders, we shall do this thing, because it is good and necessary to do so. Adolescents have the golden beauty and power of youth, but the adults have the responsibility to guide and mentor them and channel their power, and not to bow down before it. So let us begin the work...all of us together... we, ourselves and us.
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School Captain’s Speech Yuv Vir Khosla Guest of Honour, Mr Nipun Mehta, members of the Board of Governors, parents, Old Boys and guests, welcome to The Doon School. Mr. Mehta, on behalf of The Doon School community, it is my great privilege to express our gratitude to you for honouring this very special occasion with your presence. It is that time of the year when Chandbagh looks its best – with the Main Building lit up, the newly-painted red brick walls, the perfectly trimmed hedges and the fragrance of the autumn blooms. But there’s something more than just the beauty of the campus that makes October out. Until now, our lives had primarily been encapsulated within the four walls of Doon. Time has now come to cut the umbilical cord. But isn’t it paradoxical that so many Old Boys are here tonight, reconnecting with School and their form mates? It seems that the cord is never cut. That is the power of this institution and what it stands for. Each Dosco has his own story to tell. Mine started when I ran headlong and heedlessly into trouble in B Form. I thought it was the end of the world for me. But the Headmaster’s words rang with resonance of truth in my ears – “A mistake is one, which you don’t learn from”. With that thought in my mind, I started piecing my life together. From the football matches to the boxing bouts to the piano recitals, I pursued each activity with the thought of proving myself and creating the person I wanted to be. Doon helped me realize all that I was capable of, and a lot more. It taught me the value of resilience. That it is never about how many times we fall down, as long as it is one fewer than the number of times we get up. But what is more pertinent is that Doon is compassionate and supportive. Like it did to me, it gives everyone a second chance. Akin to the mythical Phoenix, Doscos are given the opportunity to develop this rare ability: the ability to be reborn from their ashes and I am sure all of them here can relate to this. While on an Exchange Programme to Eton College in the UK, a school where tradition is measured in centuries, and where that tradition and the Etonian persona are truly prized, I was often asked what makes a Doon School boy unique. Well, to be frank, there’s nothing extraordinary what he imbibes here over six years that makes him stand apart. Doon makes us realize that it is the journey and not the end result that is valuable. Every little incident that we experience through this journey, even unknowingly, contributes to the person we become when we walk out of the gates of Chandbagh, proudly wearing an Old Boys tie. Doon also helps create individuals rather than stereotypes. It’s a place where creativity and individuality are fostered. So when we leave School, we add, each in our own way, to the tradition of this institution. It is a truly symbiotic process, wherein each empowers the other. A line that my preceding School Captain told me echoes this thought. He said “You’re Yuv the School Captain, and not the School Captain Yuv. Let your identity speak for itself, not your position”. In the six years that we spend here, what then does School teach us that prepares us for life? While Doscos may try and fail, never will they fail to try. Doon makes us realize the importance of every opportunity provided. And if opportunities for our actions, to make independent but informed decisions. We recognize the value of the multiplicity of standpoints. We learn to appreciate the importance of giving and being given the space to grow and follow our dreams – these are the lessons that I will carry out of the gates of Chandbagh with me, and I am sure that I am not alone in this. However, this list can never be complete without chosen futures. The chefs of tomorrow are those who begin their culinary lessons making Maggi. The members of the cheering squad perhaps go on to lead the world’s best advertisement companies. From negotiating a price with the auto-walas on private outings are at the meal tables trading gulab-jamuns and rasgullas gradually move on to trading in shares and commodities. On a more serious note, what strikes me time and again is the spirit of camaraderie among Doscos. Many of us will vouch for staying 171
awake at night before an important exam just to help someone else pass or skip any other commitment to watch a friend break a swimming record. We help each other keep faith in ourselves and realize the meaning of what we often sing in Assembly: Durduniya ka mere, dum se andhera ho jaye/ Harjagah, mere chamakne se ujala ho jaye . These lines of Iqbal are both a prayer and, for us, an acceptance of the stake we have in the future of India and our role as citizens of the world. It is up to each of us to carry forward the vision of Doon’s founding fathers. Great privilege always carries great responsibility and we are privileged indeed to have a Doon School education. It is an education that we have been reminded produces leaders who are at the forefront in so many walks of life, which in itself speaks for the versatility and the vision of our education here. But what I personally value more is that The Doon School education produces those who serve. And serve with no strings attached and who give, if I may borrow the words of Mr. Mehta, with absolutely no strings attached. For the better part of our lives here, we strive for the coveted Games’ and Scholars’ blazers, and various ties and captaincies. While year at school that I fathom that the plain ‘Doon School blazer’ is what I truly cherish. And as the Sc Form and I leave Doon, we carry with us gifts far more valuable than all these material symbols of having grown up in Doon. These invaluable gifts, given by School and its Masters, which will remain the bedrock on which we shape our futures. For this, I shall forever be indebted to them and this institution. On that note, I would like to wish you all a pleasurable evening ahead.
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Interactive Session with the Chief Guest Hon’ble Vice President of India, Shri Mohammad Hamid Ansari
Headmaster: Our next question is posed by Pulkit Agarwal. Pulkit: Sir do you see in the Indian economic prowess on the global stage dimming or do you think with the recent reforms it is going to help boost the economy? Mr Ansari: Well economic prowess is always a matter of decrease. A few years back we were growing at 9% plus, and we were number two in the rate of growth in the world, today we are growing at a rate of 6% plus minus, and we are still number two in the world. If you look at the rest of the world, if anyone is registering 1.5% or 2% he or she is very happy about it. The point is that the world is undergoing an economic crisis. We are a part of the world, we consciously globalized have tided over the current pressures; we have come down to about 6.5 % or so. We are hopeful nothing to be alarmed at, yes of course did does require some serious adjustment. There is a lot of more will come up sooner or later before the decision making bodies, be it the council of ministers or the parliament of India. But those are hard decisions which need to be taken. One cannot get emotional; one has to be extremely practical about it. Headmaster: Our next question is posed by Yash Johri. Yash: Has there ever been an incident which you would like to share with us when you’ve personally disagreed with the passing of a bill but you’ve had to sign it as it has been passed by the majority? Mr Ansari: I’m the only one in the Rajya Sabha who doesn’t have a vote and therefore the question of my agreeing or disagreeing with a piece of legislation simply doesn’t arise. I’m strictly in the position of a referee in a hockey match. I do carry a couple of coloured cards in my pocket but I hope I never have to use them but I’m not required to express an opinion therefore I don’t need to express an opinion. Headmaster: I’m not sure if it’s a luxurious position to be in or one to be worried about. The next question is posed by Nivit Kochhar. Nivit: Good evening sir. Sir do you think the Right to Education scheme, the experiment, has it been successful in its implementation? Mr Ansari: a person to live, the right of a person to have freedom of speech or expression? Similarly the Right to Education is part of those basic human rights which have to be recognised in all societies. We have been, let us admit, late in recognising it. But better late than never. We have recognised it and implementation on a population of this size is a time consuming process but no one should doubt the sincerity of purpose.
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Headmaster: Our next question is addressed to His Excellency by Shubham Khemka. Shubham: Sir, how and when will the food security bill be implemented? And looking at the current coalition politics, do you think Mr Ansari: Again we go back to fundamental human rights. Do we have a choice? Can we seriously argue that a section of our citizen body should not get the basic ingreidents by which they can keep on living. So it’s not a question of this or that. So Food Security has to be provided just like Environmental and National Security. So the principle must not be disputed. Now how and why of it is an ongradation, but I don’t think that this going to be a major obstacle we will resolve it and we will be able to extend this facility to the citizen body. Particularly those of our citizens who are less fortunate than many others and therefore do not have access to basic requirements of food. Headmaster: We had a question from Vikramaditya Kapur. Vikram: Sir, do you feel the secular nature of our institution is apparent during debate in parliament? Mr Ansari: Oh absolutely. Every member of parliament, before he or she takes up their responsibility as a member has to swear by the constitution. It is the constitution which provides for the secular structure in the country. Yes debates are debates, but I have not element of sophistry into it. But the principle itself has never been questioned and I do not hope that any of us live to see that day when it would be questioned because it would be then questioning one of the fundamentals of our existence as a pluralist society. Headmaster: the threads together. Mr Ansari: Just a couple of words... thank you. I am delighted to be here, not withstanding my contentious debate with Mr Analjit Singh. This school has a unique place in the country. I remember many years back, when I was Foreign Representative to the United Nations in Ney York I walked into a reception, there was my Pakistani counterpart with whom I had been having some friendly debating matches at that point of time. He was wearing a blazer with a crest of this school and that certainly did much to lower the temperature. I think Mr Metha whose is here will vouch for it that the alumni of this school are all across the worlds and they have contributed greatly to whatever walk of life they have chosen. This is a very special institution and a very privileged institution. I use the word privileged in a selection which is known and fair. But having got to this privileged spot, there is a level of social responsibility that must be showcased. The school boys after leaving this school go on to assume important positions in the society and they must at all times not only remember the school songs and traditions, but must remember that they are fortunate. They are fortunate to be in a position to lead the society. And therefore their responsibility must be discharged. We must as citizens all do our bit and that is my only message. I am a better place. Thank you very much.
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The Guest of Honour’s Speech Mr Nipun Mehta My dear Doscos, distinguished friends and colleagues. Thank you for this opportunity. This afternoon Mr.Analjit Singh, Mr.Ajit Singh and I were having a conversation and I was saying that I am likely to speak spontaneously. “What do you think I should speak about?” I asked Analjit very be confusing. I am honoured to be here, and I feel very much at home, and I would like to thank everyone here for their hospitality. What I would like to share today here is a little bit about my journey, a little bit about doing the impossible, and three lessons and values I have cherished along the way. This was maybe a few years ago and I was visiting South India and I met this monk and we had a great connection and a great conversation. As we are departing he says, “Nipun, I would like to leave you with a gift.” I got a little excited and wondered what it was. He says I am going to give you a gift of a story. He tells me this true story of a village in South India where there were a lot of monkeys, and the villagers needed to trap the monkeys which were harassing all of the tourists them out. Some thought of a lot of violent methods and some thought of nets and all kinds of ideas. There was an old man and the old man says that he has an idea. He says, “We should put jars of nuts out there. Monkeys love these nuts. These jars should be such that you can put your hand So the monkey in its greed, would go in and grab the nuts but will not be able to take his hand out unless he lets go of the nut.” So the monkey in essence traps himself and because of this greed, because of this want to have more and more it does not let go. And when you cannot let go you are stuck. And so the monk looks at me and says, “Make sure you let go.” And that has been the most incredible lesson of my life. When I was in high school like everyone else I wanted to go to a good college. I went to a good college and when I was there I had to impress the professors to get a job and in my third year I got not enough, I need to get a promotion and then I need to get another one and then I need to get a third one. So I got a bunch of promotions in a short amount of time and then I thought okay now I was done. Then I saw colleagues from the Silicon Valley starting their own company and I said I need to start one of my own. It dawned upon me that this was never going to end. Is this what you want to be doing? And a few of us
to the world. They looked at us and asked what we could do and we said we do not know what we could do. So we ended up building a website for them. Which in that time was a big thing. We came home and told our friends, “Wow, that felt amazing and we did it just for the love of it. We share like we share a movie recommendation. Not to convert them into some high ideal or some utopia but really like a movie recommendation saying that look this is a great thing, this giving thing, there is something to it, we should try it.” So other people joined in. We were just doing this labour for love. Projects one after another. Then we built institutional capacity. We went from four volunteers, to forty, to four hundred, to four thousand, to four hundred thousand, and along the way when we built institutional capacity, we thought that we should solve problems of the world. We said what kind of problems? Problems that maybe money cannot solve. So we thought about it and we looked at the world and we said that there is not enough good news in the world. You look at CNN.com, how many good news items are listed on CNN.com? Not many. Yet if we are not exposed to positive ideas, how is that going to exercise our goodness? We are going to lose trust, we are going to lose social capital, we are going to lose connection with each other. We will become dishonest. So we said lets create a portal for good news.When YouTube was launching we said that it was great that people can put videos online. Let’s create a portal that is about inspiring videos. So we launched Karma 2. We all are climbing up some ladder or the other, but at some point you have to ask the question, which wall is that ladder up against? We climb, we climb, we 175
climb, but then we get tired. At the end of the day we realize, “Wow, that was the wrong ladder. But too late. Game over.” So we have to ask the question, what wall is our ladder up against? So we wanted to do the impossible. We had the young sort of fervour, let’s go out and solve problems but let’s do it in the spirit of love, let’s do it in the spirit of generosity, let’s give with reckless abandon. I was run a mile under 4 minutes. Everyone thinks it’s impossible. Then on an Oxford track in May of 1954, a fellow named Roger Banister breaks the 4 minute mile. 3 minutes and 59.6 seconds. It was news everywhere. People were all saying, “We never thought human beings could run a mile in less than 4 minutes.” It was a deemed a human miracle. Interestingly, two months later another runner in Finland, John Landey, breaks Roger Banister’s record. He does it in 3 minutes and 56 seconds. Something that was thought to be impossible, now two people have done. But the most interesting part is over the next 2 years, 16 more runners broke the 4 minutes per mile record. So what happened in 1954? Everybody started taking steroids or invented new shoes? No, it was not that. We broke the mental barrier, and as soon as one person breaks the barrier, all of a sudden it is possible for us to do that, to achieve that and everyone starts doing that. So how can we do that in the direction of love, in the direction of generosity? That was the question that a bunch of youngsters were asking, which I was a part of. So at one point, we said let’s go out and start a restaurant. We will rent a restaurant for one night of the week and take it over as volunteers. Anyone can have a meal at this place like any other restaurant, but your cheque, your bill, reads zero and it reads zero because someone before you has paid for your meal and you forward the payment for people after you. It evokes your empathy. You will not be able to say ‘Thank You’ to the person before you nor will you be able to know the person after you. Would you do it? Would people do it? If you ask an economist he will say, look if you give away something of value, people will just take it. But we didn’t believe that. Fine, maybe it stops, maybe we try one experiment and it dies. We were
else it would stop. It continued. We had some surplus and people in DC said we want to start one here and we said we’ve got a surplus, friend of mine, a rickshaw driver, named Udai Bhai and he says everyone thinks that rickshaw drivers are corrupt but I don’t believe that. I am not corrupt and I believe in the goodness of people. I want to run my rickshaw on the gift economy basis. So he decided to not run his meter. You sit in his rickshaw and he says someone before you has paid for the tab and you get to pay forward, what you want for people after you. Will people pay less? Will people pay more? What will happen? I told him, “Udai Bhai, everyone is going to ask you how is your rickshaw working?” It’s not like Bill Gates doing philanthropy. This is a guy the UN would put in ‘a dollar a day’ category or ‘a two dollars a day’ category. It is him, believing in people and love and generosity. So I said, “Udai Bhai, make sure you keep good track of the records.” And he did and whenever people ask him, how it’s working, he’s like here’s my notebook. Point A to point B, this is how much people pay. Point C to point D this how much people pay. Some people take advantage of it, some people pay well, but on balance people are good. It works out. But then he says I have another book which you should look at. He takes out another book and says this is the book in which I ask people how they felt when they sat in my rickshaw and I honoured them in this way and they pour their hearts out. You see people in tears, you see people saying their hope in humanity has been restored. It was all over the news, all over the media in Ahmedabad, one of the largest cities, and everyone was saying who is doing this, who’s funding and he says look there’s no funding. This is just me. I believe in the people and that’s why I am running it this way. Simple answer. Honest answer. if you believe in us, if you believe in people. There is no plan B. Like Karma Kitchen we often tell people, look it could stop tomorrow, this could be the last time if everybody decides to stop here, then it stops here. But it doesn’t stop. You go into to this restaurant and you see that everyone is paying for each other, there is just a vibration to it. There are so many people waiting outside. They rate restaurants in the city. This is a place where it is run by volunteers and yet people rate it the highest in all of Berkley. Why, because everyone is longing for that human connection, everyone is longing to believe that we are good, but we just do not have places to endeavors. If you ask me what I have learnt, I would say three things, and they all start with an S. They are easy for me to remember
is that it changes the game. It says, look on the outside I may have little, but when you have little on the outside it means that you have more room to go deeper in the inside and inside you may discover that 99% of the value is inside, who knows maybe even 100%, it’s not only on the outside. This is the big purpose of simplicity. We have lost track of this, but when we do connect with this simplicity, 176
the lab late at night at Berkley. I would usually go running, don’t tell my mom, but I would be doing it at 4 am in the morning. So I get out of the lab and I go running and one time, this is the days of Walkmans, I did not have an Ipod. So I had my Walkman on and my apartment keys and I am coming back home and all of a sudden I found myself in this dark alley. I see a man over there and he sees me have an insight. I had a thought, it was not even an insight. The thought was, “Nipun what do you have to lose? You have a gadget and you have your keys and you have you. What if this man was your brother? Instead of being afraid and holding on, like ‘oh my god you was an incredible transformation and I thought, just give it to him before he even asks. I’ll give him all that I have and all the inner juice also, all the love as if he is my brother. This transformation came almost spontaneously. I am walking and he is some distance away, getting closer and closer. It looks like he has a concealed weapon underneath the newspaper that he was holding, and now instead of fear I am feeling this incredible love. So when I passed him instead of looking down and away, I looked him in the eye and instead of being afraid I looked him in the eye and I smiled, and do you know what he does? He smiles back. It was one of the most powerful moments for me because I realized that it was this inner good that I was looking at. That I was creating my world of tension, insecurity, of aggression. So I learnt a big lesson that day. The second S is service. Rachel Naomi Nemin was a doctor. She has this wonderful quote. She says, “When we help other people it is a you see life as broken. But, it is when you serve you see life as a whole, and when you serve with this basis one very interesting thing one notices and it does not matter, because you are doing it for the sake of love. You are doing it for the sake of inner transformation. We have this experiment called Smile Cards. When you do something small and you leave a smile card behind, it tells someone that someone has done something nice for you but you do not know who that is so you cannot pay back, but you can pay forward. Keep the chain going. We have all received from our ancestors and we have to do that for the future generations. So that is the experiment. People will pay. It’s a small revolution. You are not going to get a Nobel Prize for it but, it is going to be incredible because it creates that ripple in the world. One of my friends was very confused by this because when you talk about doing small things people will say, “Yea! I am talented, I am amazing, so I want to do big things in the world. Small things – yea, nice, its cute.” So, she did not really understand it. Then one day she is out shopping and she is in a rush. She needed to buy a desk. So she goes to Ikea and she zips in. She like you don’t deserve to be on the road so stop driving.” And it had all those cusswords in it and basically what it was saying was that she took up in her haste, the space of two parking spots instead of one. And so, this person was just livid and just wanted to let her know that people like her don’t deserve to be on the road and to stop driving. It was a very nasty note, a very mean note. It wasn’t would someone do that? They went out of their way to write a mean note.” And then, it dawned on her, that at the end of the day, you know what smile cards are? This was the exact opposite of that. You do something nice for somebody and you think it is very small, but And when you work with this base, you serve in this way, you serve with this knowledge and it changes the world. And the last S is Stillness. There is a woman by the name Linda Stone. She used to be a Vice President at Microsoft. She goes up to give a talk, and when she is giving a talk, she notices that no one is able to pay attention. Some people are on their phones, some people are on their Ipods listening to music, some people are on their laptops, some people are checking the stock quotes. And she coined this phrase, it is called ‘continuous partial attention’. We have lost the ability to pay full attention, because we are not still, but when we give in this way there is a kind of mental stillness that dawns upon us, and when we are in this stillness we feel interconnected. That is the beauty of this stillness. A famous Vietnamese monk, Thich Naht Hanh, Martin Luther King had nominated him for the Nobel Prize, was in an assembly one time and he was trying to draw home this point of interconnection. So he takes a piece of paper and holds it up in front of an audience and says “What do you see here?” Someone raised their hand and he says, “I see a piece of paper.” And he asks the question, ”Where did this piece of paper come from?” And someone shouts out, “Tree”. Then he says, “What does the tree said, “It comes from the cloud.” So Thich Naht Hanh, holds the paper in front of everybody, and he says, “How many of you see the cloud in this piece of paper?” We all look at things on the surface, we all size everything up and say this is what we want to do, this is what this person is good for. This person is good for this, this situation is good for that, but how deep are we willing to go? Can we see the cloud in the piece of paper? Can we see the depth in every moment? If we are still we will see that. 177
So, in conclusion I want to leave you with a story. I have talked about Simplicity, Service and Stillness, and really what I am here to represent who I am. I am not a dignitary. I am not one of those fancy people with degrees, I haven’t written books. I am just an everyday hero. But I cared to be moved by love. I am here to represent the everyday hero, so when we are simple in this way, and we serve with which humanity rests. I remember one of these heroes that helped me one time, and I want to leave you with that story. I must have ride.” So we go for this ride. And now, young kids being young kids, you know, he sees potholes, he sees these big old holes on the street, and he decides to speed up. I said, look buddy, you need to slow down, you know, we are going to get into an accident, and of course what does he do, he accelerates. I wasn’t used to all this, and here he is accelerating instead of slowing down. So I warned him, “Look here buddy, I am going to throw up, unless you change something.” And he says, “No, no, you won’t.” And, he just keeps going. And sure enough, I throw up. And we are both confused. We are about fourteen, we are totally confused. We don’t know what to do. to a nearby stall and cuts that lemon in half. He comes up to me, hands me half of the lemon, and says, “Suck on this, the citrus will make you feel good.” So I did. But before I can turn around, the man has gotten back on his bicycle and is gone. And at that age I didn’t make he had, how many would be willing to give away 50% of their lemon. He did it. And not only did he do it, he didn’t even introduce himself to me. He didn’t even say, “Oh look! Let’s be Facebook friends.” Right? He didn’t say, “Let’s follow you on Twitter.” There was none of that. It was just a human being expressing his kindness for another fellow human being. He didn’t even need anything in return. He was simple. He was kind in his service and he knew we were interconnected. This happened because he was still. So friends, these are a few stories from my journey, but my journey is not important, it’s really about you. If each of us takes the resolve to do one small anonymous act of kindness, genuinely, to spread goodness in the world, imagine the kind of ripple it can have. There was this fascinating research where they brought a bunch of 60 students together and asked them to do something very simple. They had to fold the paper in half and pass it to the person next to them. How thick do you think that stack of paper would be? Of course asked people how thick do you think that stack would be? So some kids said that it would as thick as a whole book. There are many book in the U.S that are about this thick. Some who were thinking big said, that it would be the size of a refrigerator. Some who thought even bigger, said that it would be the size of a mountain. Yes, it can get pretty big. But the real answer is that it’s greater than the the stack only goes this big, but the 49th guy and the 50th guy, incredible transformation. 60 people passing the piece of paper and folding it in half creates something that’s greater than the distance from here to the moon. Imagine what one small act of kindness would do.
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A Case to Remember: A Review of Court Martial Ms Priyanka Bhattacharya and Mr Debashish Chakrabarty Intense. If we had to capture our experience of being part of the audience that watched the Founder’s Day Hindi play
in
throat, in a vice-like grip. Seldom have we seen such a spell-bound audience at the Rosie. No whispering, no yawning, no texting, no out that Court Martial has been performed almost 2000 times by professional theatre groups in the country and elsewhere, since it blazed a trail upon the Hindi theatre scene after the maverick Hindi playwright Swadesh Deeepak published it in 1991.) As we sit to write this review, the whole play runs in rewind upon the mind’s eye. Where does one start? The astonishing performances delivered by our young actors? The brilliant use of the kettle drum between scene changes, to maintain the tension and the pulse of the action? The tight entries and exits? The simple, yet formal court-room set-up? The sense of military protocol, conveyed by cothe Rosie unravelling parallel narratives? Words fail us! So what was the play about? In short, this courtroom drama is a story of a low-caste recruit Ram Chander (Ritesh Shinde) who is tried Kapoor (Sachin Mehra), while on guard duty. The court martial is presided by Col. Surat Singh (Subham Khemka), a war veteran, who has witnessed many ‘life –and –death’ situations. However, this trial puts him in a quandary, and during the course of interrogation he realizes, as does the audience, that the issues at stake are much larger than what meets the eye. These disturbing questions are raised by the Defense Counsel, Capt. Bikash Ray (Saif Ali), son of a retired judge, and brother of a Naxalite. As in any gripping courtroom drama, no skeletons remain silent in the characters’ cupboards—for instance, Capt. Kapoor’s abusive domestic excesses, Capt. Verma and Capt. Kapoor’s casteist attitudes, the hand-in-glove machinations of Capt. Kapoor and the ambitious doctor of the unit, the Poddar). The most disturbing skeletons, however, were in the Army’s collective conscience—the ominous shadow of casteism (when and the abuse of privilege and rank. The complex legal twists and turns were rendered to perfection in the various cross-examinations by the two advocates played to perfection by Shubham Dhingra (Maj. Ajay Puri, the Army Counsel) and Saif Ali (the Defense Counsel sent specially from the Army’s legal cell in Delhi). One could not stop admiring extremely mature performances rendered by all the characters highlighting quirks and idiosyncrasies that brought out unique beings inside the olive green uniform. The credit for these nuances can only be directed to the experienced professional eye of the director, Dr Hammad Farooqui. Even in their cameos the characters stood out: Baby Kapoor (sterling debut performance by Kirsten Ruth Burrett, all of a year old), Advising Judge (Malini Malviya , predominantly male bastion), Judge Advocate (Yash Agarwal playing the with his impudent cackle bringing the much needed comic relief), Dr. Gupta (Sanat Verma, portraying the self-glorifying, credit-hungry and ambitious doctor), Mrs. Kapoor (Diksha Makhija, playing with great poise the abused wife of Capt. Kapoor), Assistant to the Defense Counsel ( Shivam Sharma who was distinguishable in his smart march across the stage and his straight backed posture, quite the little army man) and Guard-2 (Azaan Brar, with his marksman than Ram Chander). 179
The soul of the performance was captured by Saif Ali, Sachin Mehra and Ritesh Shinde. Sachin’s performance was so rousing that one actually wanted to hurl the metaphorical shoe at the character. Much to his credit, he elicited a sense of disgust in the audience for his character, the preserve of masterful villains, one of the Rosie’s best. To us, it seemed the more challenging of portrayals in the play. Saif Ali rendered a mature and restrained role. No hysterics, no raised voice, no swagger, no aggravated gestures— his sad/bitter smiles and measured pauses brought more gravitas to the character than any exaggerated histrionics might have. His Bikash Ray goes down in our personal Rosie-Hall-of-Fame as one of the all-time great performances. This was contrasted and complemented well by Ritesh Shinde’s silent and stoic presence on the stage. His brooding expression, of one who has already given up on his fate, reached out to the collective conscience of the audience, asking the age old question, “What, then, is justice?” Shubham Khemka came across as a self-righteous and yet humane veteran, whose moral compass always points to the true north. Shubham Dhingra on the other knowledge in an obviously open and shut case. The Founder’s play has always showcased the best of School: the discipline, the talent, the teamwork, the erudition and the bleedingcan only imagine the behind-the-scenes sweat, blood and tears. Dr. Farooqui’s towering presence was always palpable in a range of moments in the play. His experience and erudition synthesised Indian aesthetic tradition and western performance traditions in the production. The eye for detail and verisimilitude was evident in the costume and make-up (Dr. Ritu Mohan Bahl and Mrs. Kanwaljeet Farooqui), as was the overall production design (Mr. Samik Das and Mr. Dhanesh Joshi). Court Martial brought home to the audience a thought-provoking blend of legal and poetic justice. Far from being an indictment of the Army and its ways, it was an indictment of all human institutions that harbour injustice and iniquity beneath their facades of glory. We, the audience, as representatives of a cross section of humanity were placed in the dock. All the perfumes of Arabia would not have swetened our little hands that night...
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Prize Giving
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Prize Giving 2013 The school was delighted to welcome
from the
newspaper to address the parents,
the Padma Bhushan. His speech was replaced by a question and answer session with many boys having a wide ranging set of questions for him. This aspect of Prize Giving was both new and unplanned, thus providing the audience with plenty of opportunities to put the Guest Speaker on the spot. Mr Gupta was accompanied by the Chairman of Governors, Mr Gautam Thapar.
Gentlemen Sportsmen of the year Rohil Mehrotra (Re-awarded) Siddhant Sachdev Yuv Vir Khosla Shashvat Dhandhania Aditya Gupta Aviral Gupta Ujjwal Dahuja Adhiraj Singh Arjun Khaitan
Siddhant Sachdev Arjun Midha
Jaipur House
Yuv Vir Khosla Nikhil Saraf
School Football Team
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Special Sporting Awards Samarjit Singh participated in the National Shooting Championship in December 2012 and attained the following results. -
Gold Medal- 0.32 Centre Fire Pistol Juniors (U-21) - Open Category
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Gold Medal - 0.32 Centre Fire Pistol Juniors (U- 21) - Civilian category
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Silver Medal - 0.22 Sports Pistol. Juniors (U-21) - Civilian category
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4th Positiion - Air Pistol Youth category (U-18). Was joint 3rd but missed bronze due to technicality
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Team Silver - 0.32 Centre Fire Pistol Senior Category
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Team Bronze - Air pistol Youth Category
Samarjit alone accumulated 5 medals from this competition. His performance in this competition was lauded and the fact that he was shooting well over his age category was also noticed. With that he will achieve much more in the near future.
Sehaj Singh Jouhal has represented
the school, the district and the state in basketball. In 2011, he represented the district at the U-16 level and the team stood as runners-up in the competition. As he got selected for the state team after that, he played at a state level in the same category and the team won the competition.
In 2012, Sehaj again played in the U-16 district competition. Yet again, he got selected to play at a state level and the team emerged victorious like the previous year. Sehaj played the U-18 district competition again, but the highlight for him was him playing at the National level championship in the U-16 category held in Indore. Sehaj’s performance was highly commendable and the school community looks forward to him garnering more laurels in the near future.
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The Main Bell
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In the relentless pace of a Dosco’s life, this entity remains a constant presence. It regulates our days and nights despite the apparent haphazardness of our daily lives. Perched high above and away from view, the bell may seem inconspicuous, but its by without pausing for us to have a second thought and as everyone goes about their own lives, somehow, many times, every day, we are united in our endeavours by the ringing of the bell. simple: we too, as a community have that one cornerstone. We too have that one centre that makes all our lives, one. That is the Main Bell. Furtive glances at the watch as the end of the last school approaches is brought to an end by the joyous ringing of the bell. If one experiences relief and a sense of freedom with this bell, the early morning bell brings on a feeling of reluctance to emerge out of one’s bed. And so it continues...Every time the bell rings, a Yet what makes the bell atop the Main Building so special is that whenever it rings, it does so for all, with no distinction between and brings us all to a common state of activity or rest. Classes, call-over and the ending of games time; individuals and activities not ring, the class is not over. If bell does not ring, call-over will descend into anarchy. It is the rhythmic ringing of the bell that ties together the various facets of a Doscos life. Every Dosco, consciously or unconsciously, experiences a certain sense of anxiety when the bell fails to ring. Our minds wander, inextricably tied itself up in knots. Students may enthusiastically declare a deep hatred for this entity that is the reason for ‘late marks’, but deep within, we all know how our lives would be a chaotic muddle of confusion without it. Imagining life without the Main Bell, guiding us day in, day out, is quite a challenge for even the greatest among the bell- haters. existence as a physical embodiment of the discipline and order that Doscos are expected to inculcate in every step of their lives. The very presence of the bell upon the School’s primary academic structure acts as a constant reminder of the code of conduct expected of Doscos. For us, education is more than just what we learn in the class. It is to make us responsible for ourselves and for everyone around us.
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The Main Bell was donated by Arun (ex-213 Tata House) and Ashim (ex-44 Tata House) in the memory of their late father, Mr J P Mukherjee. Mr J P Mukherjee was a Chartered Accountant and Barrister-at-Law from the United Kingdom and was a close friend of the late Mr DR Das, the son of the founder of The Doon School, Mr SR Das.
When Mr Mukherjee decided to send both his sons to The Doon School, he did so on the advice of Mr D R Das. On sending his sons to began to admire the structure and the regime that Doscos lived under and realised the need for an external enforcer of discipline in this sense of respect for order and organization to both his sons. The School Bell stands today as a testimony to Mr J P Mukherjee’s fondness for public school education and his sons’ gratitude to their father for his foresight in giving them the best education in the country. When Arun and Ashim Mukherjee donated this bell in memory of their father, Mr JP Mukherjee, they did so with a vision: a vision that we as Doscos will instil in ourselves an understanding of the virtues of order and regulation. Our belief in unity extends to wearing the same clothes, eating the same food and living in the same environs, so the expectation that every time the bell rings, we will be reminded of our unity of purpose is not too far-fetched. the bell will continue to look upon us all for all times to come.
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190
Sc Leavers
191
578 Oberoi He represented the School on the Student
“The image of the SC Leavers sitting on the far end of the Rose Bowl. That’s the one
He represented the School in football,
Yuv Vir Khosla He was the School Captain, the School Football and Music Captain as . He Captain.
He was awarded School Colours, the Games’ Blazer and the School Music Colours twice, and attained a Distinction in
Football Competition and was selected to represent the team at Nationals for Football. He was awarded the
sensitive to the needs of others, he
-PCH
Siddhant Sachdev
He represented the School
He was the House Captain of
C-Form: You become the mule A-Form: The boards turn cruel S-Form: You learn to fool
of The Yearbook Representative at the School
represented the House in
He was awarded School Colours and Full Football Colours. He was awarded the Games’ Blazer, Honourable Mention
-BKC
192
Competition. He was also awarded the Best Fielder’s
Neelansh Khurana “Doon was like a rollercoaster ride;
also the House Squash Captain.
He was awarded the
Label.
-BKC
dramatics.
Kumar Sambhav He was awarded the
“Being a Dosco is
Commendation, the First
Junior PT Leader and the Producer of
prizes.
He represented the School at the Round Square
football, athletics, PT, art, chess and dramatics.
-BKC
193
Abhishek Bansal “His sharp intellect and critical bent of mind surpassed -BKC
“All The Doon School’s a stage, And all doscos
He was a School Prefect and a also the House Basketball Captain.
have their exits and their entrances; And one Dosco in his time
He also represented the School at the Harvard, Cathedral, represented the School in badminton, athletics and at the
He received an honorable mention at
awarded Full Colours in Basketball, a silver medal in the Basketball Districts Tournament, a Bronze Medal in Shotput at the Districts Tournament and a silver medal at the Golden Jubliee Basketball Tournament. He was awarded
athletics.
Rishabh He was the leader of the School Choir, the House Music Captain, and the House Publication Distribution
“For me, a Dosco’s life is the transformation from a man
He represented the School in music. He represented the House in tennis, music.
in School award four times and won
-PCH
194
Sookrit Malik He represented the School in
He was the Chairperson for the
“A Dosco is the struggles that he is facing, the chances he is taking and he has friends making sure that he is
dramatics. He also represented
and received special mention at
slum children and would sit for hours with the addicts and
Satvik Narain He represented the School in athletics and also at represented the House in
“A Dosco doesn’t go through life at Doon. Rather, he grows
DSAM, captain.
and athletics.
He was awarded a bronze -BKC
195
Yash Jalan “Little drops of rain, whisper of the pain, tears of love lost in the
“ ‘The Maverick’- He will
Table Tennis Captain, and also a The Circle.
-BKC He was awarded Full Colours in also awarded Half Colours in Table Tennis. He received the Headmasters was the winner of the Senior Table
standard of a Life Guard in the RLSS. the bronze and silver medals.
Ujjwal
He represented the School in various chess competitions at the inter school, state and national levels. He represented the school
He was a School Prefect, the School the Senior Mathematics Colloquium and Round Square Club. He was the founder . He was
“The word ‘Dosco’ means to me an individual who gains more opportunities to excel at high school than
He represented the School at the
also represented the School at the Welham Girls School Science Quiz. athletics.
He was also awarded School Colours and the Scholar’s Blazer. -
-BKC
ics. He was awarded the ‘Times Scholar’ Scholarship and was awarded a placed 8th place in the National Chess Championship and was the winner
196
Divyank Sharma He represented the
“Doon is like a silver
football, table tennis, PT, and athletics.
He achieved the Life Saver standard in the RLSS and was awarded the
-CSG
Shivam He represented the House Competition.
of something, sharing The . He was also the House Shanti
He was awarded the Scholar’s Blazer, House Colours, the Order
-BKC
Competition and runner up in the Senior Mathematics Colloquium.
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Shreshtha
He represented school at the the School at the Computer
“The word Dosco is like an absolute abstract
various art competitions. He represented the House in
DSAM Dance Coordinator.
basketball, music, dance and dramatics.
Label.
Sanat He represented the
He was awarded the Scholar’s
and dramatics.
medals. He was also awarded Dramatics Colours, the Best Director in and various art prizes. -MHF
198
Raghav Nath He was a School Prefect, the School Tennis Captain, and the House Tennis Captain.
“An uncertain, nervous ing ending and six life -
He represented the School in football and tennis. He also represented the School on the
football, athletics and tennis. He was awarded Full Colours in Tennis, Half Colours in Football and the
-BKC
He represented the School in quiz and at the Harvard ed the House in football,
Jaskrit of something, sharing
He was the Chief-of-Production of the DSAM, the House Social Service
“ ‘Jassi’ - there cannot be another disposition…he will be missed a -BKC silver medals. He was also placed 3rd in the B.P. Chandola
199
Nabeel Salim Shah He represented the School in football, cricket and resented the House in
and the House Football Captain.
ics, and in the Shanti Swarup
-BKC -
Eeshat The Yearbook House Cricket Captain and a House Monitor.
Doon was the hat-trick
carried himself with poise -BKC
He was awarded the bronze and Colours in Cricket.
ics and music.
200
Shubham Khemka “What lies behind a Dosco, and what lies before him are small matters compared to
Mechanics and the President of the Recitation Captain.
He was a part of the Founders’ He represented his House in cricket, football, badminton,
He was awarded House Colours. He for Grades 6, 7 and 8 and was
563 Jaipur He represented the School represented the House in football and dance.
Shantanu Seth He was a School Prefect and the
a Dosco is a challenge of Skill, Speed, and
and comradeship with commitment. He was one of the -
He was awarded the Games’ Blazer and Full Colours in
-SJB
201
528 Jaipur
Dhruv
He represented the School at the Battle of the Bands Competition held at the
He was the School Popular Band Leader, the House Music Captain
“‘Dosco’ is the song that gets stuck in never want to stop
He was awarded School Music Colours and the Pandit Surinder “Dhruv believes in himself and created his niche with Hunar Cultural Festival and was -SJB Tournament.
Varun Malhotra He represented the School
He was the House Music Captain.
“A Dosco is an
represented his House in
for Grade 6. for his love and passion for music and his unique sense of fashion. He used to wrap himself in a quilt and wore shorts
202
Abhishek Parasrampuria “An individual who can stick to his beliefs and keep faith in himself; a person who does not
He was the School Badminton Captain and was also a member of the Games committee.
He represented the School in badminton. He represented his House in cricket, table tennis, squash and chess.
He was awarded Full Colours in badminton, was placed 1st in -
Competition for Juniors and was
-SJB
Gaurav
112 Jaipur He represented the School was a part of the School and the House dance troupes and represented his House He also represented his
Echo and Yuv Arpan Captain and the House Table Tennis Captain.
the Dipanker Sen Science Quiz. He
Music Colours for Dance. He was also Gaurav completed the Silver level of
203
115 Jaipur He represented the School in basketball. He represented football and basketball. He also District Basketball Team at the State Level.
Udit
“Some people want it to happen, some wish for it to happen. Doscos are the people
He was a School Prefect and the
He was awarded House Colours, Full Colours for basketball and the
-SJB
Khalid
597 Jaipur
He represented the School in basketball, football and athletics. He represented his House in
“Being a Dosco is a huge lifetime are in the lime light,
He was awarded the Games’ Blazer, Full Colours in basketball and Half Colours in athletics and football. He represented
part of the House PT squad. He
Basketball team at the National Schools Championship.
Nationals in Basketball. He also member of the School team. -PBR
204
Saif
574 Jaipur “A Dosco is one who even in the most critical situation manages to keep his calm and
He was the School Hindi Dramatics
He was a part of the Founders’
He was also a part of the House team.
command over ‘diction’. He has shown brilliance in various and was placed 2nd in the Hindi He was also awarded the for Contribution in Hindi Drama -MHF
551 Jaipur He represented his House in
Karan
“Dosco - the one word
and PT. He was a part of the House choir and the House dance troupe.
-
the House Basketball Captain, and the Western Band Leader. He was was the Director and Producer of
-
He was awarded School Dramatics
Karan set new standards for all performers in the school. -RSF
Best Band Leader at the Battle of
205
Aayush Tripathi He represented the School at represented the School in football and his House in athletics
“Someone who does not have the
He was awarded Half Colours in Council Football Tournament. He in athletics and for online computers courses.
Karan
531 Jaipur He represented the School
and the Founder of the Sports Clinic initiative.
“School has made me
He was awarded House Colours completed the Bronze and Silver 7. He was also awarded the Head-PBR
206
Gopal
547 Jaipur “Doscos are like Grand-
He was the House Chess Captain.
He represented the School in chess. He represented the
He was awarded School Chess Colours.
-SJB
He represented the School in
539 Jaipur
Zorawar He was a School Prefect, a House
Competition. He also represented
Captain and the House Quiz Chief of Where Eagles Dare and the technical director of his
PT.
He was awarded Full Colours
-RSF
207
542 Jaipur
Siddharth Kaul
School. He represented the Captain. He was also a part of the
beautiful and nothing
He was awarded the Scholar’s Blazer, the Marker Cup for -
Merit for Grade 8 and was awarded House Colours.
Jai Pratap Kairon
543 Jaipur
He was the House Common Room-in-
“Dosco: The most
He won various art prizes.
He represented the House in
-
-
-SJB
208
Dhruv
596 Jaipur
He was House Captain of Jaipur House. He was also the School
He represented the School in -
“Dosco is what a He was also in the cast of the
and House Football Captain.
He was awarded the Games’ Blazer, Full Colours in cricket,
-
Colours in athletics. He was also awarded House Colours Leader.
592 Jaipur He represented the School in squash and athletics. He also represented his House in vari-
manipulates, excels, believes in himself, achieves, and at the
Madhavan Saklani He was the House Senior PT Leader. He was also the Senior Yuv Arpan and the Captain.
He was awarded the bronze, Full Colours in Squash and the PT -BKC
Label.
209
537 Jaipur
Imroz Suri
He represented the School He represented his House in
“The word ‘Dosco’ to me is the name of a
and the Echo. He was the Chief-ofProduction for Where Eagles Dare. House council, the House Quiz Captain, and the producer for his
He was awarded House Colours. He was also awarded the Headmaster’s Label. He attained Distinctions in the 7 and 8.
Uday
532 Jaipur
He was the House Computer Room-in-
“The word ‘Dosco’ to me is like an eagle
He represented the House in
He won various art prizes and the
-
-CSG
210
Adhiraj
591 Oberoi
He was a School Prefect and House Cricket captain. He was Head of
“Doon is like
the Kamla Jeevan Debates and the
pentathlon - a bit
He represented the School in and the House in badminton, athletics and basketball. He was also a part of the House Western Band.
He was awarded the Games’ Blazer, Full Colours in Cricket and
also awarded House Colours.
He represented the School in the Ballarat Grammar School, also represented the School
-
561 Oberoi “A Dosco is one who maintains his
Yash Madhav Johri He was the House Captain of Chief of the Circle. He was also
He represented the House
defeat. “ quiz.
“Yash lead from the front as the House Captain and took
award, House Colours and the Marker Cup for GK. He
-NTC
211
Yash He represented the House in
“ A Dosco is an individual who can make the best out of the worst. “
House Council. He was also the
He was awarded the Scholar’s Blazer, marker cups in science.
-MLB
Mudit Srijan and the Yuv Arpan. He was also the House Music Captain.
“‘Dosco’ is like a label which in the future
He represented the School in cricket. He represented football, athletics, table tennis and PT.
He was awarded the bronze, silver Blazer. He was also awarded the Scholar’s Blazer. -RSF
212
Lakshya Kothari
118 Oberoi
He was the House table tennis and basketball captain.
He represented the School
“A Dosco is one
He represented the House in
managed to live life
football, table tennis, dance and P.T.
He was awarded House Colours, also awarded Half Colours in table tennis. -PDT
116 Oberoi He represented the School represented the House in and athletics.
“A Dosco is a true friend, a calm thinker and an achiever. He is the one who knows
Tanmay Kapoor Srijan and the Yuv Arpan. He was the House Chess, Squash and House Junior P.T. Leader.
-BKC -
213
552 Oberoi
Vidit Sidana He was the Director of the House
He represented the School in
Badminton captain.
represented the House in crick-
He was awarded House Colours and School Dramatics Colours, the award and the Marker Cup for Commerce -
was the winner of the BP Chandola
-RSF
distinction in the Bronze level of
Rayhaan and The Blueprint. He was also the Senior the Circle, Head Of Media in
was placed second in the Frank
214
554 Oberoi He represented the school in
“Being a Dosco is a privilege to explore
and was a part of the Shanti Swaroop team. He represented the
-PDT
Pranav
589 Oberoi “A Dosco to me is someone who will
He was the House Table Tennis and Basketball captains.
He represented the School the House in cricket, football,
-
555 Oberoi
Raj Surana
“Having an amazing six He represented the House in
Shanti Swaroop captain.
He was awarded Full Colours in
-PDT
215
594 Oberoi He represented the School in represented the House in crick-
Rishabh Pande
“An experience which remains unforgettable
Captain.
“Rishabh is a sincere, dedicated and balanced student who -
He attained a distinction in the TrinGrade 3 and received the Bronze
-
-CSG
Aakanksha Mohan She was the House Social Service Secreand the
598 Oberoi “The word Dosco
She represented the
to face the world with
represented the House in drama and PT.
She attained distinctions in two Gold She was also awarded the bronze,
216
-RSF
Shubham
575 Oberoi “A Dosco excels in
He was a School Prefect, House
mind to.
He represented the football, athletics, and Hindi
Yuv Arpan.
He was awarded House Colours, School Dramatics Colours, and achieved the bronze, silver, and -MHF
97 Oberoi He represented his house in
Rohil Mehrotra Hose Dance Coordinator.
He was awarded School Colours twice.
and soul and ‘sound’ of the school. His enthusiasm for his -
217
111 Oberoi
Animesh Jain
“Being a Dosco is a
He represented the School in
He was a School Prefect and the
-
He was awarded House Colours, Full
-
Abhijeet Karwa
548 Kashmir
He represented the School
“Doon is the paintHe represented the House in in dramatics. He was also the House’s senior representative to the School Council. He was awarded the Most work to do, he would do it, and do it well. His presence in
also awarded the Bonalata Das believed and brave to oppose what he did not.“
218
Abhishek Pande
99 Kashmir
He represented the School in
“To me being a Dosco meant to achieve selfimposed goals of being a photographer, a trekker and working with eco-
the Yuv Arpan and , and was the House Social Service
also represented the School House in cricket, P.T., athletics, badminton and dramatics.
“He never said much, but whenever he spoke, he spoke
-
-MMR
awards.
Arjun Khaitan Yearbook, to writing the
of the House of
in-Chief of The Yearbook the Technical Director of two Founder’s was the Chief of Production of The Chinar and was the House Badminton, Squash
helpful while others miss humour and his innate
just ending of a life, but the
He was awarded School Colours, the
-PDT
He represented the School in the Dehradun District Level Tournament in both the Senior and
219
He represented the School in Swim-
Aditya He was a School Prefect and of the
“Means much more than what can be
and the Econocrat, the Circle and the Echo
-
Captains, and the Producer for the
He was awarded School Colours, the Scholar’s Blazer and House Co-
Leader.
-
tion. He will be remembered for the respect that he accrued in this com-
Alawi Echo. He was the House Football Captain, and Junior P.T. Leader.
He was awarded the Best Painter art prizes.
220
576 Kashmir “A set of experience, memories and friends
He represented the School in art. He represented the
Avik
534 Kashmir “A spring to self
He represented the School in badminton, social service,
Service. athletics, chess and social service.
He was awarded the bronze, silver towards people around him. His hard work and dedication bronze and silver levels, and was
-MMR
533 Kashmir He represented the School in music. He represented the ern band, and was the conductor for the house choir.
“Dosco is an exception to the Law of diminishing
Nakul Jaidka He was the House Cricket Captain, Western Band Leader and a House Monitor.
“Nakul as a true cricketer will be remembered for his caliber He was awarded School Music Colors.
221
541 Kashmir
Nivit Kochhar He was the House Captain of Kashmir
and Multimedia Competitions. He was a
“A spring to self -
the Echo, the Econocrat and the Chinar. the Circle, , and The Yearbook. He was the House Senior P.T. Leader, Director
-
He was awarded the Scholar’s and and School Chess Colours. He was self assured nature and self-centred approach has been the hall-
the Headmaster’s Cup for Computer
Colours.
Pulkit Bansal Captain.
565 Kashmir “A title that means much more that just
He represented the House in football, cricket.
He was awarded various art awards. team in the house was commendable. His hard work, -MMR
222
Shrish Srivastav He represented the school at
“Dosco to me is like Shakespeare is to economics, Freud is to -
Captain and Quiz Captain. He was also a House Monitor.
also represented the School at various quizzes. He represented
-
He was awarded the Marker Cup for
awarded House Colours.
He represented the School
571 Kashmir
Shreyas Captain, Dance Coordinator and House Monitor.
the school at the BBC Thomas
He attained a Merit in the Bronze and Silver levels of -MMR
and was awarded the bronze standard of a Life Saver in the RLSS and won a silver medal
223
544 Kashmir
Tushar Mohan
He represented the House in P.T
“Dosco is a word that is too big to put
-MMR
Yash Mall Orchestra Leader. He was also the House Music Captain.
He attained a Distinction in the for Grade 8. He was awarded various awards in Music in the vocal School Music Colours and House Colours.
224
569 Kashmir “The word Dosco to mind; stuck there and
He represented the House
Adit Handa
538 Tata He represented the School
He was the House Badminton Captain.
football and athletics.
He represented his House athletics, table tennis, badminton, basketball, dance, music, and dramatics.
113 Tata
Shawn Krishan Kapur
“An experience where
He was awarded House Colours. mood. He was the life in the House, someone we will
-SBL
225
Basketball Nationals. He represented the School in basketball, athletics
546 Tata
Adhiraj He was a School Prefect and the School Basketball captain.
“A Dosco is someone who believes in taking 18 Junior National Championship and the Dehradun District Men’s Section Basketball at the State Championship.
He was awarded full colours in basketball and athletics. -SBL
Himanshu Todi Monitor. He was the House Table Tennis, Tennis and Quiz Captain, and Technical Director for the House one-
582 Tata
He represented the school in quiz competitions. He represented his house in cricket, football, basketball, tennis and quiz. He was in also part of the house dance troupe.
He was awarded House Colours and the Headmaster’s Cup for tained a distinction in Grade 6 and
226
prospect of his priorities and then worked towards
Arjun Midha
He represented the School in athletics, basketball, football, -
He was the House Captain of
“A Dosco is a person
captain, and the House Cricket and Basketball Captain. He was the House Dance Coordinator and the
sented his House in athletics, cricket, dance and western band. He was also in the cast of
He was awarded the Games’ Blazer, Full Colours in Football and Basketball and Half Colours in Cricket. He was awarded House Colours and was awarded -SBL
567 Tata He represented the School in House in basketball, athletics, and declamation.
“‘Dosco’, a brotherhood of friends-with whom life was shared,bonds made. Something that
Shivank for
. He was the House
He was awarded House
-MLB
award. He also appeared for Grade 5.
227
587 Tata
He represented the School in
Arjun Parmar
Team in National School Games
He was a School Prefect. He was the Chief-of-Production of the . He was the senior representative from his house to the School Council. He was a House PT leader and led the house in
“To be in a place full of fun, friends and
He was awarded the Games’ Blazer and Full Colours in Football and Political Science. He received PT commendation. He was awarded a and the award for the top scorer at
Aviral Gupta He was a School Prefect, and was the He represented the School House of Steel, Chief-of-Production of DSAM. He was the
“A stroke of wind that represented the School
but left behind enough to reminisce for a
Nature Club. He was the House Squash and Music Captain. He was awarded School Colours and House Colours. He was awarded the
competitions. He represented his house in squash, athletics and basketball, dance, and music.
and 8. He was awarded the Nikhil Gupta -
-
wish him all the best in life. “ -SBL -
228
Karan
119 Tata
He represented his house athletics.
Captain.
ent and is polite. He is self directed and works with minimal
standard. He was also awarded the
-SBL
117 Tata He represented the School in football. He represented his
Dhairik Dinesh Fuletra He was the House Social Service
of metamorphosis - a metamorphosis of an
the Social Service Council.
He was awarded House Colours. He was awarded the Mahindra Search for Talent Scholarship. He was awarded the Marker Cup for -MLB
229
557 Tata
Parth Gupta
He represented his House in cricket, art and music.
is not just all rounder but also modest, irrespective of his He was awarded the Headmaster’s Cup for Mathematics, and received the Nikhil Gupta Scholarship for
-MLB
Siddhant Gupta Competition Captain.
“Doon taught me that
He represented the school at represented his house in the competition and in dramatics.
He received the Markers’ Cup for
quiz and second in the state in the
Grades 6, 7, 8.
230
-
Mahak Sharma editor of the
599 Tata
. She was also the
She represented the School at a Round Square conference
“A persistence to accomplish the desired goals even in the face
and dramatics. She also took production.
She was awarded the Scholars’ Blazer, the bronze, silver, them. She is focused, punctual and well behaved. These are qualities that our
-SBL She achieved distinctions in the Bronze, Silver and Gold
559 Tata He represented the School in and quiz competitions. He represented his House in Competition.
Sanat Kumar Thakur
“The word ‘Dosco’: echoes Yuv Arpan
things gained and lost amidst some of the best
Monitor, a House PT leader, and the
lours. He achieved merit in the bronze and silver levels and all the qualities that one would desire. He is polite, courteous and a true
-SBL
231
535 Tata He represented the School in
Banda M S Lamba
“To me, the word the Echo
and represented his House in
a House PT leader.
cricket, basketball and music.
He was awarded House Colours and
-SBL
Shashvat Dhandhania
556 Tata Memorial Debates, Gibson Memorial
“From the waters of Doon one emerges on
and the Circle. He directed the House oneCaptain.
up the challenges of
Debates. He represented the school at Shashvat represented his House in
He was awarded School Colours, Colours. He attained a Distinction in 7 and Merits in Grade 6, 7 and 8. He -PDT petition and in the Doon School
232
In the making
234
235
As we create this book, we believe in also creating for ourselves and for everyone else a full experience. An experience in which we and the whole school revel in and remember what made up the Yearbook experience for each and every person. To capture some of those the ‘In The Making’. Although it marks the conclusion of our time, it does so on the bright side.
236
237
Scholar’s Blazer
Back in Black
Sitting (L to R): Siddharth Kaul, Ujjwal Dahuja, Mr Prabhakaran Nair, Shivam Goyal, Aditya Gupta Standing (L to R): Mahak Sharma, Udbhav Agarwal, Kunal Kanodia, Arnav Joshi, Vidit Sidana
238
Games’ Blazer
Bleed Blue
Sitting (L to R): Siddhant Sachdev, Adhiraj Thakran, Arjun Midha, Mr Deepak Sharma, Yuv Vir Khosla, Dhruv Agarwal, Khalid Alawneh Standing (L to R): Sidharth Sethi, Nivit Kochhar, Kabir Sethi, Adhiraj Singh, Arjun Parmar, Tanmay Kapoor, Shantanu Seth, Shivaan Seth
239
Prefectorial Body
The Secret Service
Sitting (L to R): Ujjwal Dahuja, Arjun Parmar, Nivit Kochhar, Yash Johri, Dhruv Agarwal, Mr Philip Burrett, Yuv Vir Khosla, Dr Peter McLaughlin, Arjun Midha, Siddhant Sachdev, Shubham Dhingra, Aditya Gupta, Zorawar Whig Standing (L to R): Animesh Jain, Aviral Gupta, Raghav Nath, Alawi Singh, Abhishek Bansal, Adhiraj Thakran, Adhiraj Singh, Arjun Khaitan, Shantanu Seth
School Captain
Khosla
House Captains Siddhant Sachdev Dhruv Agarwal Nivit Kochhar Yash Johri Arjun Midha
240
School Council
Parliamentary
Sitting (L to R): Mr Debashish Chakrabarty, Ms Sarabjeet Sandhu, Mr Deepak Sharma, Mr Prabhakaran Nair, Shashvat Dhandhania, Dr Peter McLaughlin, Yuv Vir Khosla, Mr Philip Burrett, Mr Sameer Katre, Mr Ashad Qezilbash, Siddhant Sachdev, Dr Mohan Chandra Joshi Standing (L to R): Saksham Goel, Rohan Chaudhari, Shourya Kishorepuria, Nikhil Saraf, Arjun Parmar, Nabeel Shah, Abhishek Bansal, Aviral Gupta, Madhav Dutt, Raj Surana, Nakul Talwar, Manan Pradhan, Ashvin Solanki, Smayan Sahni
Secretary
Chairperson
Dr Peter
241
School Colours
The Zenith
Sitting (L to R): Rohil Mehrotra (Re-awarded), Siddhant Sachdev, Dr Peter McLaughlin, Yuv Vir Khosla, Shashvat Dhandhania Standing (L to R): Aditya Gupta, Aviral Gupta, Ujjwal Dahuja, Adhiraj Singh, Arjun Khaitan
242
243
A new direction
244
245
Editorial Board
Editors-in-Chief
Senior Correspondents
Graphic Designers
Faculty Advisors
Agni Raj Singh Devesh Sharma
Aditya Bhardwaj Akarsh Tibrewal Arjun Kapur
Mr Arnab Mukherjee Abhayraj Jain
Mrs Elizabeth McLaughlin Dr Md Hammad Farooqui Ms Purnima Dutta
Ashvin Solanki Azan Brar Shlok Jain
Mr Arnab Mukherjee Orijit Chatterjee
Mr Skand Bali Ms Stuti Kuthiala
Special Thanks Mrs Abia Qezilbash Mr Sanjay Makhija
Chief-of-Production Rishabh Tusnial
Editor Rahul Srivastava
Senior Editors
Correspondents
Utkarsh Jha Aditya Dhingra
Guruansh Singh
Rudra Srivastava
Amal Agarwal
Ritvik Kar Sayuj Dhandhania
Vansh Aggarwal Tanmay Nautiyal
Associate Editors Divyansh Goel Jai Ahuja Suhel Karara
246
Photographers
Dr Peter McLaughlin
247