GLIMPSES - We call it the Sophia experience!

It is a well-known fact that creativity and innovation needs nurture. A gentle nudge from our nests of familiarity. Sophia’s understands this only too well, and succeeds time and again in encouraging the artist within us. 

Glimpses 2016, an insight to all the students about the various clubs and activities was held on the 22nd July in the Bhabha Hall. It is an introduction to the start of your journey at Sophia's and an excellent attempt to urge talent out of its hiding place. Not only is it an invitation to the bevy of opportunities available at Sophia’s, but it also aims at making these clubs a lot more accessible and allowing students to discover the various abilities they may have.

This year, our Principal Sister Ananda enriched us with a short and beautiful speech which was followed by video clips depicting the essence of the clubs. Performances by the Bhartiya Sanskritik Parishad held the audience's attention with their delicate but fierce dance moves. The club secretaries clad in classic Indian wear introduced the club executives and mentioned that the memberships to these clubs would be open for all which was then proceeded by the executive coordinators explaining what Kaleidoscope, which happens to be one of the biggest college fests in Mumbai, would be about.

It was an event of bright lights and eager faces, intent on being a part of the journey they had only dreamed of. A year of firsts for some, a year of renewed courage for a few others. One of the most beautiful experiences in your life is waiting to happen to you.

We call it the Sophia experience!

RAGING AND AGING AT SOPHIA COLLEGE

A coming of age.

We had arrived. Bright-eyed, cocky girls who believed they owned the world, or wide-eyed nervous ones who were rolling around in their mouths, a first taste of freedom, or, bored jaded ones who believed that they were just too good for what they had just signed up for.

Sophia took us all in. The future generation of Sophiaites. For now too raw to know that they had just stepped on to a campus, that in their hearts they would never leave.

You’re in a funny place when you’re 15-16 and just out of school. You’re full of ideals and grandiose ideas of your own power. You know you don’t need men but you’re dying to be asked out. You look down your nose at the girl in too much makeup but you wonder which shade of lipstick that is. You’re a determined feminist but you don’t know what that means. You believe that you’re a fully grown forest of  complexity, emotion and strength. But actually you’re a freshly ploughed field. Earth turned over and just ready to be seeded.

That was me at least. Pre Sylvia Plath, but post Ayn Rand. Pre internet, but post MTV. I stepped on to the Sophia campus, bridling with newly-found power and freedom that I was still too scared to actually try out  for size. This beautiful, exciting place was, to me at least, a representation of real life. Finally, a slice of The  World Out There. My own portion of it. Ready to be tried out and polished off in whole if I liked it.

The canteen extension was a busy bus station of try-outs for clubs, the marble stairs were a picture- frame of college clichés-girls lost in books, filing each other’s nails, involved in passionate shouting matches about politics, literature, canteen food, boys. There were huge contrasts around me. Girls who you already knew would one day change the world, girls who came here because they were marking time, girls who were bad seed, girls who formed a sisterhood and believed that every decision they took on behalf of Women Everywhere, and girls who thought Tolkein was something you could buy off a cart, served with chillies.

And all these Girls, wherever they came from, however they thought, were treated equal and same. At the massive front gate where the security would salam or grimace depending on what morning he was having or at the wicket gate via Ramniks which you would approach after saluting Ramnik Uncle who sometimes gave you credit on a phone call and a “Green-Walla” perk, everyone Checked In. Everyone got to believe that they were born with a purpose, and just because Sophia College didn’t have a marks cut off, didn’t mean that we got to cut off our brains.

It was tough to try and hide out in Anna’s anda pao, bunking the first lecture and hoping that a lecturer wouldn’t run past, having come in late, and, seeing you eating breakfast and drinking tea, as she flew towards college, drag you all the way up to Room 27, still chewing. It was just as hard to sink in to the green walls, hoping to be ordinary. We were here, at Sophia’s, because we were Women. It simply wouldn’t do to be anything less.

Soon two years passed in a haze of Kaleidoscope, Ripples, samosa pao and my bunch of friends who had begun to mean more to me than anything else in the world. It was time to move on to “Senior College” and I had the choice to leave for a different (read co-ed) college, or stay on and keep fielding comments like “Lezzie”, “Nun” and “Man-Hater”. Or, the word men use when they really want to get nasty. When they want to tell you, in the most hateful way they know how, that they find you ugly, repulsive, and (heaven forbid) masculine-FEMINIST.

I stayed.

Not because I loved where I was, but because I was still too scarred from 15 years in a school that produced cookie cutouts of high-scoring, designer-label- wearing, perfect accent-owning adolescents whose school-groups would continue to be their only social group as long as they lived.

And for another three years, we learned to co-exist in classrooms where whispered discussions included tampons and terror attacks, nail varnish and narcissism, marriage and mass communications. For those three years I was taught by teachers who told me I mustn’t “sit like a cabbage”, that I didn’t deserve to do theatre if I didn’t have attendance, that reading and literature were two different things.

I hated these chains with a vengeance. This was not school. I was an adult not a baby. I was a Creative Type, born to wear black and kill myself with a viscous mix of cough syrup and roadside alcohol after writing a novel that would make the world miserable.

I was not to be shackled in to classrooms, soothed to sleep by talk of poetry and dead kings. But every time I slipped between the cracks, I was fished out by a nun demanding that I attend more morning lectures. Or a teacher who insisted that I pay attention in class. Or a Head of Department who refused to let me participate in co-curricular activities unless I made it past an F grade. Such nasty, wing-clipping women! Such killers of 18 year-old Greatness. Such thwarters of Real, Tortured Passion!

And after an extra year of degree college, which I managed to earn myself after diving in to a dark hole, repeating the most challenging year-SYBA, suddenly it was time to go, and I was crying my eyes out in the shed as our teachers sang “May God hold you in the palm of his hand” because really, all I wanted to do was to be held in their palms. These women who had sought me out time and again. Admonished me time and again. Not because I wasn’t good enough. But because I was too good to disappear in to mundaneness. Because I deserved more, much more than to be a man’s plaything or a pretty chime in the tinkle of social conversation.

I spent six years at Sophia College. A place that took me as a girl, watched me grow in to a woman, and sent me out that wonderful, substantial, worthy thing. A Feminist.

Itisha Peerbhoy is a Brand and Business Storyteller and the Author of Half Love Half Arranged, published by Penguin. She is currently writing her next book, and wishing she could relive her college years. She was at Sophia College from 1995, to 2001 and was taught by the great Sister Ananda, Miss Colaco, Mrs. Canteenwala and Miss Vakil.

  

Learning to be gorgeously, furiously, confidently earnest

Shalini Seth

1991-93. English Literature major
Current: Editor, Media ME, Dubai

An education – in all its completeness – is what I think Sophia gave me. Even 25 or so years later, I remember lessons from being a part of skill-based groups for learning communication skills, from studying history with Sister Anila in way that connected it to the present, and studying Gandhism with Mrs Raman so that it left a life-long impact, even more than a social work Masters degree that I acquired subsequently.

Literature and life

I majored in English Literature and I think we had the best group of teachers who would rank among the top anywhere in the world. Ms. Colaco taught us syntax along with Shakespeare with equal passion and discipline. It's a fantastic combination for any field, anytime.
Mrs. Steven, while refusing to be drawn into the teenage friendliness, made it clear that we were expected to be the best students we could be and she would be the best teacher. I remember a rare verbal shake-up, the only one in three years, to our particularly unresponsive class who was emotionally and intellectually dead that day.
Whether it was practical criticism or Robert Frost, over decades since then, her honesty in discussing human emotion has been a lesson that has held fast. When you feel too alive for the world sometimes – not average, not fitting in – these lessons remain a glimmer of a reminder that you are on the right track. Just as when you get sucked into the mindlessness of passivity, the way back into being alive seems clear.
I remember being taught Duchess of Malphi even though it was not in that year's syllabus because one cannot study English literature and skip the Renaissance. I remember studying Kiran Nagarkar and other Indian poets in practical criticism – it was a way to include Indian writing even if it wasn't in that year's syllabus.

Be who you’re – and the best at that

Our teachers took their jobs seriously. And while we studied all these works of literature remembering clichéd quotes like generations before us, the life lesson that came through was to be unabashedly good rather than pretend not to care and strive to the safety of mediocrity so you're like everyone else.
Later in my career, when producing international articles and then magazines in topics as varied as fashion and hospitality trade, and, now, business, this focus on the essence of the job at hand has held me in good stead. Being earnest doesn't always make you a nerd. You can be gorgeously, furiously, confidently earnest so that it becomes normal at the place you work.
In the years after, in talking about Sophia to young women looking for a foothold for their tentative growing up selves, I've also spoken about the 13-people strong literature class held in the tiny room, where you could see the sea, and the kites circling the building. I remember the garden and walking down the steps into college every day, trying out ways of expressing yourself via what you wear – and once, sliding down the steps to land with my skirt flounced all around me.

Pugmarks and paw prints

I thank Sophia for many firsts – the first nature appreciation course with WWF where we spent days at Bhimashankar listening to bird calls and barking deer. The Kaleidoscope in my first year BA was the first time someone used my face as a palette for full makeup, and Meeta Kumar (now Luthra) and I went on to win the creative competitions that year and the next, I think. At the film club, we critically looked at Kurosawa and 8 1/2, among others – again, our teachers were not afraid to show us that they cared, that there was nothing more important than teaching us. And along with these, I did my first street play in Hindi on the girl child with Sister Ananda. I had the first of my poems published in literary journals.
From being a suitcase child for many years before – finishing secondary school in a convent in Rajasthan and 12th via correspondence from Punjab University, while we lived in isolated, remote, jungle-like places – Sophia was a fantastic entry into the world. I remember queuing up at the shed to hear about various clubs and marveling that there was so much to do!
Our introduction to our seniors was when, after Sister Penny, they welcomed us into the college on the marble steps with little teekas...quite the opposite of ragging or hazing that one was prepared to combat. While they were busy having fun and producing professional quality plays, our seniors, Avaan and Rupali and Sangeeta... all took us under their wing.
Given this background, along with studying English literature, my final year was the culmination of all that I learnt – I was the class rep, the university union rep from the college and the head of the publicity committee for Kaleidoscope that year. Since we were just back from our nature trail, the theme for all the categories was green, based on pugmarks, bird tracks, and paw prints. Years and many other grown-up achievements later, these still bring back a sense of pride.
When the riots broke out that year, under Sister Fleurette's direction I coordinated relief efforts and donations. At the end of the year, I took home the scholarship for maximum participation in extracurricular activities. It’s been a matter of personal pride that at the youth fest we would handle security and sets with no thought of being "girly" and helpless.
Overall, Sophia nurtured our fledgling attempts to discover who we were – creative, mad, capable, confident, ideological, and natural-born feminists – within the framework of discipline to not compromise on any aspects of learning. It was obvious to us in the first few classes we attended – Mrs Canteenwala's lecture in literature – when we were nudged gently into taking notes in class like grown-ups who can think and pick the relevant portions rather than wait to be spoon-fed.

It was the best introduction to the adult world that I could’ve asked for!


Shalini Seth
https://ae.linkedin.com/in/shaliniseth
1991-93. English Literature major
Current: Editor, Media ME, Dubai

WELCOME!

This page has been created with the intention of documenting your unique Sophia experience. Through photographs and descriptions that we hope you will send us, we endeavor to make the seventy-five years of the College, the story of not just the building that has endured but also of the people who have spent time here.

The students who come in afraid, hesitant and unsure and leave happy and confident with friends to boot! Of teachers and staff who gently but firmly guide the students year after year with patience and resilience.

Your stories, whether as student or teachers or staff will add up to become one big story of a seventy-five-year-old institution that has enabled and empowered generations of women. And continues to do so. 

We invite you to not just tell us your Sophia Story (through write-ups, pictures, collage, videos etc) but we also request you to get in touch with as many students, teachers, staff (past and present) and ask them to write to us.

You can mail us at sophiamycontent@gmail.com. We would also like to request you to see if you can identify any person from the older black and white photographs posted here. We are attempting to identify some of the oldest.

So sit back and enjoy this milestone journey of the college by reliving some of your memorable moments!