Labour Day, Sat, May 1

Pic of Lawrence Terrace taken at 6.45am. Surprisingly there is only one SUV nearby and two behind me. Usually there are so many vehicles here that parking becomes a problem.
There is always some headline in the newspapers that makes me fume. This morning the paper clipping here reminded me of Mr Henry 'Roddo' Rodrigues' 'Three cheers hip hip...'when exasperated with either someone in class or something ridiculous he had read in the papers.

Morning April 30, 2010.

Hi,

It seems nothing can be done to stop the work going on here. This is what makes Chief Minister Mayawati tick. Her memorials and statues. This is Indian democracy. Politicians can do what they like. The opposition parties are supposed to be the counterweight to a heavyhanded government but hear these guys are always on the run.
The work has begun, though slowly, on the eco-park which will cover the area to the left of the Mart road upto Martinpurwa extending to the dhobi ghat. How is that. All told this might not be bad in the long run. Till now it's been a dumping ground for debris. Plus it is overgrown with wild plants and is ideal people who need to relieve themselves. Put simply, to have a shit.

From Jiamau (upstream)

The pic with an inset is taken from about 150 metres upstream, with the inset pic from a little further. Then the other pictures are the two sides of the same wall.

(pics taken this morning April 29, 2010)

It's curtains for the Mart!

Is this a type of Berlin wall that will separate the Mart from the Lat? May be it's not so...
(Pics taken this morning Wed April 28, 2010.)

Fwd: Thank you Bryan!

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: <hodsonhouse@westnet.com.au>
Date: Sun, Apr 25, 2010 at 8:15 AM
Subject: Fwd: Thank you Bryan!

 

Bryan,

 

Your description of what's happening to the Lucknow Martiniere makes one's blood boil! It sounds like it's time for Old 

Martinians &  friends of Constantia to develop a strategy to take back the estate that Claude Martin left us! If Azim is still

alive, it would be informative to get his & Elton's insights as to how all this happened & what steps can be taken to rectify

the situation.

 

I'm copying Martinian Satish Bhatnagar, Lucnow author of Bright Renown, Gautam Kaul, Dr. Vijay Mohan Kohli, Dr. R.K. Pachauri, Ambassador Raghunath, Warren Cox, Trevor Gillibrand, Andrew Buck, Rosie Llewellyn Jones, Roley Sharpe, 

Clayton Roberts, Len Wylde & Geoff Allen to see if cooler heads can prevail and craft a strategy for truly restoring Constantia & the original

campus. It seems that stewardship just went by the wayside!

 

Sincerely,

 

Bryan

 

Bryan Cooke 

DG 5440 (2010-2011)

1933 21st Avenue,

Greeley, CO 80631

Ph. 970-353-8303

---

From: Bryan Macdonald <bustermac@uwclub.net>
To: bryan cooke <cookesahib@yahoo.com>
Sent: Sat, April 24, 2010 2:28:32 AM
Subject: Re: Alfred Cooke's 1965 Dog Fights



Dear Bryan,

Knowing LKO as well as I do - I am a born and bred Naqlavi - I believe it is the ideal place to spread the restoration of Constantia gospel.  However, I know that the bigger threat to The Mart is in the school estate, where there is severe encroachment from all sides and it is now about half the size it was when I was there. This is caused largely by the population explosion in Lucknow which is now a city of anything between 3 - 5 million, with many coming there from lawless Bihar.

As a result of this both Martin Purwa and Jaimur have expanded beyond all recognition - they are like a small town now - and Fairydale now has a hamlet within the grounds too. The Golf Club have increased their buildings tenfold and even now built a wall around them, and claim prioroty over much of the land which we used to use for cricket and hockey.  The very powerful State governor is building a heli pad there - may even have done so by now - and a security estate with several houses for her bodyguards. The estate is used for all manner of grazing animals, and now used as a driving test site too.  WHAT REALLY IRKS ME IS THAT NO ONE SEEMS TO HAVE THE POWER OR THE WHEREWITHAL TO STOP ALL THIS, and the problem intensifies every time I go back.

 

For this reason I believe that a close watching group needs to be set-up in Lucknow to keep an eye not just on the rstorative work but also the estate. One of the Pachauri brothers is high up in an environmental group helping to preserve parts of Lucknow, he could be asked to chair a group of some powerful and very committed Old Martinians in Lucknow.

 

To this end I follow with a list of some of the possible candidates. They are all passionate about the School and most live in LKO or have family there whom they visit regularly. They are :

 

Maj. Gen. Bijan Cornelius

Col. Ravi Grover (lives in Bangalore but spends a lot of time there)

Prem Bhargava (descendant of Newal Kishore)

Professor Sadiq (was in my class and then known as SS Khan. A great friend of Colin Buck's. He is also the direct descendant of the last Newab of Awadh, Wazir Ali Shah. You probably remember him as a day scholar who used to come to school in a phaeton drawn by two matching steeds!  If he refuses to help tell him I'll cutlouse him!!)

The Rana Sahib of Khajurgoan (he is one of my mum's babies as she brought him into the world.)

Bhushan Thapar.

Wally Beg

All the deRozarieux family who consist of several prominent ex-martinians and know LKO backwards.

Zubair Ahmad (whom you know. he can open several channels. e.g. he knows the builder about the bloody bund that I mentioned to you before.)

 

Of course there are many, many more whom I don't know of who could be drawn in

(N.B. one warning : not all of them like Elton.  By the way Elton is the only Principal of the 5 schools from whom the OMA(UK) gets no response whatsoever)

 

Hope all this helps.

 

Yours in love of our beloved alma mater, Buster 

 

Old friends

Pat Nijjar, Russel Carville, Kochin Wu, Kaizer Roka and Charlie Ford outside the Mart office in Nov (or Dec) 2001

From an OMA newsletter

Seeing Rodney Kane in the centre-left pic, kneeling right, for the first time in all these year, I couldn't help wondering what happened to him. And, from what I remember, the guy standing in the centre was college captain either before or after Bhag Singh and it's obvious I cannot remember his name. Who can help? So many guys have disappeared. Another one I've wondered about is John Hunt. I still have my autograph book from 1962 in which he'd written 'Failure is the stepping stone to success'.

Alison Ruby Painter nee Edwardes 1950-2015

Grace Hipkin (aunt) , Keith Edwardes and Alison
with daughter Natasha her husband (and a small boy?)
Pic: John Cline

Wedding tea for Annette and Keith Edwardes
1948: Rev LaShanna, Aunt Ruby Murphy, Cynthia Cline
with little John
Pic John Cline

Keith and Annette Edwardes with their only
daughter, Alison in (1969?) in Australia (Pic John Cline

Courtesy: John Cline (not so distantly related to Alison's mother, Annette
Edwardes nee Murphy)

(Lawrence Terrace, Lucknow 1950s) 
From left my brother Keith Shepherd, cousin Hubert
Shepherd with Blackie, cousin Maurice James' son
Allan (back), the naughty chap sitting is me, Georgie,
Alison (Pappy) Edwardes right, the big girl is Sally
Rutland and Natice James, Allan's sister.
I came to know the other day that Alison passed on
either late October or early November 2015 in Australia.

What's happening

The embankment is being strengthened in line with the Chief Minister's   plans for a beautful waterfront that begins a mile upstream. How this will impact the Mart is left to be seen.

The link to my blog

http://wwwgeorgeherbertsheperdlko.blogspot.com/

A little boy's letter

Allan James'letter dtd 19-6-1962. Allan was about 9 or 10 yrs old when his dad, my first cousin, moved with his wife and five kids to the UK. His father, Maurice worked as a labour officer in a sugar factory in Gauri Bazar, near Gorakhpur.

Starting early!

Darren and Jason