Dear Fellow Xaverians,

It has been over six months since I have written to you and I apologise for this long delay. The entire global community has been affected by the Pandemic and the associated adverse social and economic conditions that prevail. At the outset may I request that each one of us says a silent prayer for our planet and our global society. In particular I would request you to remember all those who are part of the St. Xavier’s community and are no longer with us. May their souls rest in peace.  I do hope that these conditions pass soon and that we all can start the healing process.

At Alsoc, we try and foster a sense of continued brotherhood and that task has been made difficult and challenging by the inability to meet in person. However I am proud to say that we have continued to engage with each other and have done our best to continue to reach out to those who are less fortunate.

We have continued to have our regular monthly fellowship meetings although these are now being held virtually. Our meetings generally take place on the second Friday of each month at 6pm India Time. As the meetings are now virtual, several out of station members have started joining in and we have had very active participation. Please do try and join us if you’re free.

During this time, we have had several other virtual events: interactions with eminent speakers as well as Family Events.

In the Speaker Series we have had

• May 30: Ritesh Bawri, a leading wellness coach, spoke on “Health & Nutrition”
• July 21: Eminent Xaverian, Business Leader and Author, Mr. R Gopalkrishna addressed us on “Renewing Leadership Mindset”. The interaction was extremely interesting and he kept us captivated for over an hour. The recording of the session is at https://www.facebook.com/vivek.jais/videos/10157719821288090/
• July 29: A session on Mental Health –“Wellness- Inside Out” which was co-hosted with the school. Kolkata-based psychologist Shubhika Singh along the school counsellors Hema Bhatia Chakrabarti and Aditi Ganguly engaged in a vibrant discussion with Alsoc members and the parents of the school. The discussion was moderated by Leslie D’Gama and the recording is available on the Alsoc Facebook page

https://www.facebook.com/562833089/videos/10157736071978090/

• August 31: A webinar on Education Policy was co-hosted along with the Indian Chamber of Commerce. The Keynote address was given by Shri Anil Swarup, the former education secretary, Govt of India. This was followed by a panel discussion with Kaveri Dutt, Sharmila Bose, and Pratima Nayyar. Devi Kar, Director MHS moderated the discussion. The recording is available at https://youtu.be/Ef9CeOPdu4s
• October 16: A webinar on “Care of our Common Home” co-hosted with The Calcutta Jesuit Province and the school. Speakers were the Calcutta Jesuit Provincial Fr Raphael Joseph Hyde, Former VC Madras University, Rev. Dr Fr S Ignacimuthu, MD of Hamara Grid Pvt Ltd Col (Ret) Bhaskar Kumar, and Asia Director Earth Day Network, Karuna Singh. The theme was what we can do to live our lives in an environment friendly manner and what are the ways in which each one of us can make a positive contribution to the Earth – Our Common Home. The recording is available at https://youtu.be/47k-49Ja3fs

 

Family Interactions:

• FunGames for the full family was held on Sunday, 19th April where the entire Family played games on WhatsApp, some involved posting pictures of various objects and solving various clues. The event was held by Gamerheads & got a good response.
• Family Quiz was held on 1st May 2020 conducted by Mr. Leslie D’Gama  over Zoom and was well received by the members.

 

School Projects:

• During the lockdown the school has been busy with various building projects. The largest of these is the expansion of the Primary School building. There has been a significant addition in rooms to accommodate the new KG classes. In addition there is a large multi-purpose hall that has been built that can function as an auditorium, an indoor games room and a large hall or classroom. The entire field has been redone and the boundary walls have been painted with cheerful and exciting murals. Alsoc has committed to donating the funds needed for a lift for the primary school so it can be an accessible building and used by those teachers and students who cannot use the stairs.
• The Secondary school finally has a new canteen! The ground floor of Soumitra Sadan has been converted into a spacious and modern canteen where students can order the famous Panditji Samosas and other snacks without the worry of being squished! Alsoc has donated the entire funds for this renovation and a special thanks to the 1991 batch who contributed the lion’s share for this project. To mark their contribution, this will be known as “The Batch of 1991 Canteen.” The Rector, Rev Fr. Jeyraj Velusamy inaugurated the canteen on 23^rd of Aug in the presence of several  Alsoc members.
• The improvements have extended to the gymnasium. It has been completely redone with attractive murals, a new PA system and a permanent dais. In September, college Principal, Rev Fr. Dominic Savio inaugurated a herb garden filled with a variety of medicinal plants. Named for St Francis of Assisi known for his love of nature, it is hoped that this collection will inspire the senior students of the school to undertake some research activities in the biology laboratories.
• On request from the School, Alsoc formed a team to assist the school with getting online classes up and running.  Leslie D’Gama, batch of ’72 and former teacher, conducted sessions for all the teachers of the school, to enable them to come to grips with online teaching. Classes and assessments are now running smoothly.

All these projects have been supported by all of us at Alsoc. As we continue to upgrade the facilities at the school, I request all of you to reach out to us and help us in our efforts. The school is preparing a plan to update the laboratory facilities.

Co-Curricular Activities (CCA)

The closure of the school and the  COVID-19 pandemic led to the closure of all physical CCA classes in school. However, we have moved to re calibrate and innovate and have relaunched the CCA activities on an online platform.  We at CCA have been fighting to survive the crises with a different approach and digitising the challenges to wash away the threat of the pandemic. We started our online public speaking and Karate classes from the month of June. From July onwards we launched the online classes of Cricket, Football, Speech & Drama and Chess as well.

Thanks to our development of a mobile App to manage CCA activities, we were in a good position to handle the registration process and various online platforms such as Zoom and WhatsApp were used for the classes. More than 100 students are currently enrolled in our online CCA Classes.

Social Causes and Community Outreach:

The Pandemic, Lockdown and Cyclone Amphan have greatly impacted the lives and livelihoods of our fellow citizens. Recognizing this, Alsoc has over the past few months reached out to all of you to help in the relief work. As you all are aware Alsoc runs “Titli” an evening school for the less fortunate sections of society. During the lockdown, we collected donations from the members and organized two sets of relief material distribution which included food items, masks, sanitizers and soap. We reached over 500 different families in this effort. In addition St. Xavier’s school, college as well as Alsoc and the College Alumni got together to make a sizeable contribution to the COVID disaster relief fund.  As online classes became a fact of life, we noticed that several of the Titli students did not have access to smartphones. Once again, Alsoc members were very generous in stepping forward to raise the necessary funds for this purpose.

The Calcutta Jesuit Province has formed a special Ecology Mission to spread the message about the need to protect our natural environment. Alsoc President and School Principal Rev. Fr. Thamacin has been tasked as the leader of this mission. I am very happy to report that the school and Alsoc have taken up this mission and have embarked on a large-scale tree-plantation drive. Our goal is to plant over 5,000 saplings and trees on our campus and all over the state especially in rural areas that suffered large-scale devastation from the effects of Amphan. The kick-off of this project took place at 30 Park Street where we planted over 50 saplings at various places on the front, back and primary school fields. We have received generous donations from several Alsoc members and had a small ceremony to symbolically hand over these donated trees to the Ecology Mission.

Inter- Alumni Activities:

The following Inter Alumni activities were held from April through October 2020 wherein Alsoc members excitedly participated and won laurels for our Alumni association. We were up against a global competition in each case and realised that individuals from alumni associations from all over the world had the opportunity to participate, given the online nature of each event.  The suitable links for each event were made available to Alsoc members to view the proceedings and encourage our participants.

• 1st Inter Alumni online quiz was held on Sunday 21st June hosted by St.James alumni association. Dhruv Mukherjee and Barry Phillip Antunis represented us.
• Quizingo- was hosted by Karnataka Jesuit province on 27th July 2020. Andrew Williams (‘89) & Valentine Das ('90) represented us and performed exceedingly well.
• Bollychamps- A hindi movie song quiz was hosted by Nava Nalanda on 2nd August, 2020. Rohit Bihani (‘89) and Ranabir Mitra (‘07) represented us. We stood 3rd amongst the 19 teams in the fray.
• 6th Alumni Idol was hosted by MHS on 9th August. Aamir Rizvi (2020 batch) represented us. Aamir is the pride of St. Xavier's who regaled one and all with his soulful melodies.
• 1st Inter Alumni Chess was hosted by St. James' on 30th August, 2020. Shreos Roy Chowdhury (‘89 batch) single-handedly won the championship for us. Savar Hirjee (2012) came in at no.4. The competition was overrun by the sheer genius of Shreos who has previously represented Bengal in National games. We were briefly witness to shades of the style of Garry Kasparov. Rivals as far away from Copenhagen and Beirut had no answer to Team Alsoc's Sicilian defense.
• 7th Funtakshari was hosted by BHS on 19th September. Team Alsoc represented by Rohit Bihani (‘89) beat 26 other alumni associations to be crowned Champion of Champions. Rohit took the competition apart in a manner unprecedented. Participants from San Francisco to Melbourne fell against the sheer knowledge of our music marvel.
• The 1st inter alumni online debate is up next, on 21st November. We shall also register a resounding win in this event and make it a hat trick of victories.

Alsoc Day

Like each year, we will be having the Alsoc Day celebrations on 10^th Nov which is the Birth Anniversary of Rev. Fr. Bouche. The interaction will take place through the Zoom platform I would request all of you to please join us together in fellowship. We will have a more detailed programme in a few days, but please save the date: 10^th Nov 2020, 6pm India Time.

Thank you all for the support you have given to Alsoc over these traumatic few months. Please do join us in our activities and events and please also feel free to share updates about yourselves especially any social get togethers or chance encounters. Join our Facebook Page, and post pictures or anecdotes about your school days, or anything related to SXCS. It will help us to all stay connected. Also I would urge you all to download the ALSOC mobile App and update your contact information. You can download it at https://onelink.to/ALSOC

 

NIHIL ULTRA!

Shiv Siddhant Kaul (1994)

Honorary Secretary