Saddened alumni of torched Biscoe School recollect memories of good old days (update)

NEW DELHI - When news of a mob torching the Tyndale Biscoe School in Srinagar was flashed, the pain and agony was witnessed over 2000 kilometers away from the valley. Mumbai-based Pawan Durani, an exiled Kashmiri Pandit, who passed out from the school in 1986, was literally in tears.

“It was a very sad moment. I see people burning a more than 100-year-old institution, which is for their own education, their own society,” Durani lamented.

Durani is a third generation student of the Tyndale Biscoe School. His father M.K. Durani and grandfather S.M. Durani were students in the same institution.

For more than a century, the elite Tyndale Biscoe School has served as a cradle of education for the who’s who of the state, including Union Minister and former chief minister Farooq Abdullah, former chief ministers’ Mir Qasim and Ghulam Mohammad Shah.

Sayeed Ali Shah Geelani’s right-hand man and the frontrunner in the ongoing stone-pelting campaign, Tehreek-e-Hurriyat leader Musrat Alam was also a student at the same institution.

In fact, this year’s Union Public Service Commission examination topper, Shah Faisal, is also an alumni of the Tyndale Biscoe School.

The main branch of the school is located at Lal Chowk in the heart of Srinagar, which is nearly 130 years old, and its branch, which was set ablaze by a mob yesterday, is located in Tanmarg.

A nostalgic Durani recalled that this is not the first time that the institution has been targeted by radicals. IN the early 1980s, stones were thrown at the the school over Palestine-related protests.

Durani takes pride in telling that it was at the Tyndale Biscoe school that football was introduced in the valley.

“Kashmiri Brahmins don’t touch leather. There were no facilities in the state at that point of time, and Bisco School introduced football. Biscoe school had a swimming pool from time immemorial, and it used to organize a very popular boat race at the Dal Lake called “Reggata,” he said.

The Tyndale Biscoe School also has the distinction of being listed with FIFA.

Durani is not the only one upset about the attack on the school. Kamal Haq, a student who passed out of the school in 1971, and is now residing in New Delhi, said: “I spent twelve years at the Tyndale Biscoe School. Whosoever studied in that glorious institution was extremely proud. It was extremely sad and shocking to hear that an institution with more than 100 years of history was vandalized and bore the brunt of the violence.”

An irate mob burnt down Tyndale Biscoe School in Tangmarg, which is around 40 kilometer from Srinagar in protest after an unregistered channel Press TV aired alleged desecration of Holy Quran in the United States.

The channel was later banned in the state. By Naveen Kapoor (ANI)