Mathieson Music School
Five Weeks at the Mathieson Music School Kolkata (Calcutta), West Bengal, India 2nd January – 6th February, 2007
I did Voluntary Service Overseas 1966-68 at a school just south of Kolkata (then called Calcutta). This school was run by Hindu monks, and I very much valued the whole experience – the teaching as well as the contact with very well educated Hindus.
On Sundays I used to go to the Oxford Mission, an orphanage a few miles away, run by the Brotherhood and Sisterhood of the Epiphany, whose members were mainly ex-patriot British, with some Indians. I loved the worship and the Christian fellowship I experienced there. I also enjoyed playing in the string orchestra.
Ever since that time I have wanted to return to India. I kept in contact with one of the boys from the orphanage, Anup Biswas, who has made an international career for himself as a solo cellist, and now lives in London. He founded a new school in 1994, after the death of Father Theodore Mathieson, one of the Oxford Mission monks, who had been his cello teacher and mentor. My wife Liz retired at the end of 2006, and this seemed like a good opportunity to have a mini-sabbatical and make a visit to that school, called the Mathieson Music School.
As Liz and I were being driven from Kolkata airport to the school, memories came flooding back for me. It was 2nd January 2007, 39 years since I was last in Kolkata. The city had felt crowded then, but now the population had quadrupled to at least 20 million, and the number of people on practically every road often brought the traffic to a complete standstill. The villages through which I had cycled, during my two years as a VSO in the area, were now swallowed up in the urban sprawl.
Then at last we came to the school. We saw the smiling faces of the staff and children, and felt the orderliness of the place. We saw the open countryside beyond the campus, and breathed in the fresh air – so different from the very polluted atmosphere of Kolkata. We felt at home almost immediately. We were struck by how little the children have, and how little they are content with. We were also struck by the fact that they are well nourished.
Anup Biswas came later on in the day – he and his family were over on a visit from London. I realised how well he is equipped to understand the needs of these children, having come from a similar background himself. From his base in London he is able to communicate those needs to people in the West who are willing to help. He does that through his skill as a musician and communicator. There is a steady flow of British people – mainly gap-year music students – who come and stay in the school and help with music and the general teaching. When asked how they come to be there, they often reply, Oh, Anup suggested that I should come!
We all paid for keep during our time at the school. All the funding comes through donations from supporters in other countries, mainly in Britain – a lot from churches. There is no financial support from the government of India or West Bengal.
My main role was to do Christian teaching and lead worship each day, and in general to be the chaplain during my time there. That was not difficult, because the school has a rhythm of Christian prayer, from first thing in the morning to last thing at night. Most of the teachers and pupils are Christians and all the pupils accept the pattern of Christian prayer in the school. There is no pressure on the minority of Hindus and Muslims to become Christians. Some of the work that I was doing as a pastor and teacher has since been taken on by a local minister.
I had brought a lot of stories with me, and I used them in the morning assembly or Sunday morning worship. The children responded well to these. They would often come up to me during the day and remind me of parts of the stories. A lot of the pupils, whatever their religion, clamoured to be able to do the next day’s Bible reading. When I led a small Confirmation group for the older Christian children, I found them motivated and interested.
One of the English visitors, Beth Perry, finished a drama degree in 2006. She was working for a few months in the school before returning to look for work in England. She had recently become a committed Christian. She and I asked the children to write down questions about matters that we had dealt with in the assemblies. We were amazed at how many questions we got. A lot of them were about fear of ghosts and snakes and so on.
Preparing for a big Communion celebration. The words on the blackboard are Glory to God in the highest... in Bengali.
Several children asked, Why did Jesus die? We dealt with these questions in the morning assemblies and the Sunday Communion services. For a couple of weeks children came asking for special prayers last thing at night, to help them overcome their fears. Later this no longer seemed to be such an issue.
Liz and I also helped with teaching English. Liz did a great deal of work to catalogue books for the library, with different colours for different stages of learning, and she taught the very young children English through action songs. We also both made our contribution to the teaching of music. In fact we took six violins, two flutes and a keyboard out with us, as well as several sets of strings for the instruments. Each child plays a stringed instrument. They also learn a second instrument. Our main project was to enable the children to perform Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (abridged version!) on the last Saturday of our stay. We did this together with Dipak Sapui, the music teacher, and the English students. It went better than we could have hoped.
I was impressed by Dipak’s ability to teach practically every child in the school a stringed instrument. In particular he leads the senior and junior orchestras with great patience. The daily lunchtime concerts were always interesting and well managed by Dipak. He is a very committed Christian, and he plays a significant part in leading assemblies, prayers and worship.
I was very struck by the way in which the head teacher, Susmita Panja, and the rest of the teaching staff welcomed us. It cannot be easy to have people from the West coming and going, but they really accepted our contribution most graciously. We felt very included in all that was going on.
When the school day is finished the children play, on the climbing frames – with great agility and confidence – and on the swings and slide. They also play cricket or football on the field. This time of relaxation is a most important time. Then, in the early evening, they have almost a couple of hours of study time – and the mosquitoes bite (English people in particular!)
After supper we sometimes had a story, or a fun drama done by the visitors or pupils, or a Joseph practice, which was not always easy, as the children had been up since 5.30am.
I got the impression that the churches in south Kolkata (the only area we moved around in) were much more vibrant than they had been 40 years ago. At that time in that area, about 20 years after independence, Christianity was mainly seen as a western religion. Now the churches seem much more established, with Christians, Hindus and Muslims living peacefully together in the city and the surrounding villages. Liz and I were asked to present prizes at the sports day of a local parish church in south Kolkata. We were told that there were about 250 families in that church, totalling about 1300 members, including children. Most of them seemed to be there that day.
During the time that we were there, there were several days lost to other schoolchildren in the area – caused, for example, by public holidays and strikes. The children at the school were largely unaffected by these. Even when the normal curriculum was not followed, such as on Republic Day, the children had useful learning in other ways. In particular it gave us the opportunity to have a long practice of Joseph! It must be hard for the staff and pupils to see westerners come for a while and then go. In fact some of the letters we got from the pupils when we left made it clear how sad they felt. I can only say that we felt that sadness too in a very real way, but I would not have missed that visit to the school for anything.
Martin Collins
