The Earliest Memory!

I got admission into Loyola, probably in the year 1989. I joined in the lowest possible class that one can join in Loyola. That was in the Upper KinderGarten. I somewhat vaguely remember the interview for admission. The interview was for purposes of final selection after the written test. I suppose I qualified in the written test, because if not I would not have been called for the interview.

My Papa and me were sitting side-by-side facing the interview board, one of the members of which was a kind-looking man with a beard, probably a Jesuit. It was he who asked me all the questions. I remeber that I was given a puzzle to be solved, which I think I solved pretty easily. Then before we got up, the bearded-kind-man pointed to a portrait of Jesus, which didn't quite look like the Jesus everyone knows, and asked me who that was. I looked at the bearded-kind-man-interviewing-me and the bearded face in the portrait and then answered... Jesus, only becuse Jesus was the only person I knew who had a beard.

The kind interviewer smiled and then asked me to help myself to sweets in a bowl on the table. I did so without hesitation,in all the innocence that I represented then, and then gave a shy 'Thank-you' and left the room holding my Papa's finger.

I really didn't know all this was for admission in a school, and that I would be leaving St. Shantal School, where I'd been studying Lower KinderGarten, with my sister Neena, and that she would not be with me as Loyola was a boys-only school. I also did not know how my life would be changed by my experiences at Loyola, and how that great school, would make me the me, that I am today.