Sursum Corda: Reflections on North Point

I entered North Point soon after the 1962 India–China war, which left a trail of issues that continue to bedevil our national and international landscape till today. Among us boarders, the most asked question was whether a Chinese agent had really poisoned Sinchal Lake that supplied Darjeeling’s drinking water, even as we lived through the bustling movement of soldiers and Tibetan refugees between the cantonment at Lebong and town. 

The Canadian, Belgian, British and French Jesuit fathers who ran North Point began to give way to Indian Jesuits, of whom Father V. Tucker S.J., Rector when I left school, left a huge imprint on me. He motivated me to look at the core issues of every challenge, to use my education and values to respond to these challenges, and to be objective about every outcome. These “lessons” have played a big role in my subsequent university education at St Stephen’s College in Delhi, and my career in the Indian Foreign Service (1978-2015). 

Taking part in the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute’s Adventure Course, and in extra–curricular activities including editing the school magazine “Among Ourselves,” provided a balance of the outdoor with the indoor. It made us more “aware” about events outside North Point. The 1960s were pockmarked by the Naxalite movement in the nearby “plains” below Darjeeling, the first militant trades–union gheraos in the tea gardens, and the flow of millions of refugees from the genocide in East Pakistan in 1971, who were housed in camps to which schoolchildren from the Darjeeling hills were taken in order to extend humanitarian assistance and understand the true meaning of deprivation, destruction, and death. In hindsight, these were formative experiences that played a significant role in my adult life. 

L’Hoir SJ. We ate “jhaal muri” while S 

North Point was always “fun“. We saw new European feature films every week in the hall organized by Father watching the football matches for the Harlighy Cup in the company of our football coach, the Olympian Mr. Chandan Singh, in the monsoon rains. We imagined and then created elaborate Diwali candlelight patterns on the football field in the cold late autumn night for our inter–House competitions. 

Even today, a photo or television image of Kanchenjunga brings back so many memories of North Point. It symbolizes “Sursum Corda” (lift up your hearts) and connects North Pointers across the generations.