There was a time when Chandigarh was still learning to call itself a city. The wide roads seemed wider, the trees seemed younger, and the familiar sectors that today bustle with traffic were once dotted with open spaces and quiet stretches of land. In that young Chandigarh, St. John’s High School in Sector 26 was steadily becoming much more than a school. It was becoming a memory—one that generations of Chandigarh residents would carry with them long after they left its gates.

Established in 1959, St. John’s emerged when the City Beautiful itself was still taking shape. The school opened its doors to students in February 1960 under the Christian Brothers. It was a period when Chandigarh represented a bold new idea of India—planned, modern and optimistic. St. John’s became part of that experiment in modern living, educating generations who would go on to shape the city and the country.

Its architecture tells part of the story. Designed by Pierre Jeanneret, the Swiss-French architect who played a crucial role in creating Chandigarh, the school possesses the understated character of the city’s modernist architecture. There is no unnecessary ornamentation. Instead, there is space, light, proportion and an intimate relationship between buildings and nature.

But ask an old Johnian about the school, and architecture will probably not be the first thing mentioned. They will remember the morning assembly. They will remember arriving on bicycles, school bags slung over their shoulders, and the familiar sight of friends waiting at the gate. They will remember the classrooms warmed by Chandigarh’s winter sun, the long corridors, the blackboards, the hurried exchanges between periods and the unmistakable sound of the school bell.

They will remember PT classes and games, annual functions, examinations and the nervous excitement of report-card days. They will remember teachers whose names may have faded from the textbooks but never quite disappeared from memory. And they will remember the trees.

In Chandigarh, trees have always been more than mere landscaping. They are part of the city’s personality. At St. John’s, the campus provided generations of children with an abundance of open space at a time when the city itself seemed to have endless horizons. The sprawling campus and playing fields offered a kind of childhood that is increasingly difficult to find in today’s urban India—children running outdoors, playing together, cycling home and discovering friendship without the mediation of screens.

The school became a small world within Chandigarh’s larger experiment. Sector 26 itself has changed enormously over the decades. Roads have become busier, buildings have multiplied and the quietness of the early city has largely disappeared. Yet St. John’s retains something of that earlier Chandigarh. Its architecture continues to speak in the restrained vocabulary of Jeanneret’s modernism, while its campus remains a repository of memories.

The school’s contribution to Chandigarh, however, cannot be measured simply in buildings or academic results. Its greatest contribution has been human. Generations of students educated here have entered the civil services and armed forces and pursued careers in professions, business, academia, sports and public life

More importantly, they carried with them values that shaped their relationship with the world around them—discipline, confidence, responsibility, service and a sense of community.

That is perhaps why old Johnians speak of their school with an affection that is difficult to explain to an outsider. They do not merely say, “I studied at St. John’s.” They often speak as though they are returning to a place that still belongs to them. A school, after all, is never just its classrooms. It is the laughter in the corridors, the friendships formed over shared lunches, the teacher’s voice calling out a name, the excitement before a match, the anxiety before an examination and the bittersweet final walk towards the gate after the last day of school. For Chandigarh, St. John’s is also a reminder of its own childhood.

The City Beautiful has grown older, taller and busier. Its children have become parents and grandparents; its empty spaces have become neighbourhoods; its quiet roads now carry generations of memories. Yet tucked away in Sector 26 stands a place where time seems to slow down. St. John’s has witnessed Chandigarh grow. And in doing so, it has helped grow Chandigarh.

Perhaps that is the real legacy of the school—not merely that it produced accomplished men, but that it gave generations a shared childhood, a shared vocabulary of memories and a place to return to in their minds.

Long after the school bell has stopped ringing for them, old Johnians can still hear it. And for a moment, Chandigarh is young again.

vivekgulati1971@gmail.com

(The writer is a freelance contributor)