Every batch had some boys who couldn’t handle the home sickness and tried running away. The fact was that many of us would have run away or at least , made an attempt to. If we didn’t ,it was only due to lack of courage or ideas not for lack of intentions. What kept us in may also have been due to an acute awareness of the futility of the whole exercise. And even at that age the ego was strong enough not to let the tears show and we carried on ,all our movements controlled by the wardens’ whistles and the school siren. People like me had to go through four more years in the military academies, living from siren to siren. A passing thought ; why is it that only jails and hostels have wardens ? Be that as it may , every jail would have stories of great escapes. We also had some odd guys who would tried to break free from the system control . I would refrain from names to avoid embarrassment.
Today it is all comical to think of the attempts by boys to run away from school. In the year 1968, Udumalpet , the nearest town with a railway station looked far far away than the 17 km that separated the place from Amaravathinagar. The road to Udumalpet was virtually deserted and there were just three buses connecting the two places; CVNT (C Velusamy Nadar Transport) AMS, pand one more.
A little boy who felt homesick didn’t have time , inclination or the resources for planning a trip by bus. He wanted to run away and that is just what he did. He started running on the road towards Udumalpet. The other direction led to Amaravathi Dam, a cul de sac, so there was no possibility of taking the wrong direction. When he felt tired he started walking. It provoked amusement as well as a sense of pathos to see a little boy trying to carry a huge trunk and finally deciding to just run empty handed as there was nothing of his baggage he could carry on his tentative road trip.
So , what happened to these runners? Some time after the run started, someone missed the boy , informed the warden and house master and started looking around. After checking from friends , once it was established that the boy indeed was a suspect and was prone to misadventure , the real search started. A word was sent to Mr Cherian, the only teacher who had a scooter. He didn’t have many places to search; he went straight on the Udumalpet road looking for a teary eyed , tired little boy trudging along the road . After a couple of kilometers , often well short of Manupatti , the nearest village ,the boy was found and he generally complied when asked to sit on the pillion. The boy was back in school and all was well; the story came to an end.
There was another type of running away which happened with older boys and that was more serious. Such a thing happened when there has been a serious lapse on part of a boy and he was convinced that his continued stay in the school campus was detrimental to his physical well being.
He was generally , flagrantly on the wrong side of seniors, masters (teachers) or the whole system. This could happen after a theft that has been found out or likely to be found out or when anonymous complainant against the system was identified.
Such cases resulted in much better planning and sometimes a clean escape. Normally such boys reached Udumalpet undetected. More agencies had to be sent to Udumalpet bus-stop , railway stations and other places where the boy could proceed further on the next leg of his journey.
As for as I remember there was only one case wherein a boy reached Madras (now Chennai) to give a telegram saying that he had reached home and all was well. Today it sounds all comical, but at that time the escapees as well as the school authorities would have been through a harried time of anxiety and tension. Anyway, all is well and most of the then escapees have successfully graduated from the school and are holding eminent positions in the society today.