KARACHI: Girls dressed in starch-white uniforms and neatly braided hair welcomed guests, parents and other students to a kaleidoscope of colours, an exhibition to celebrate Mama Parsi Girls’ Secondary School’s centenary on Thursday.

Classrooms on the ground and first floor of the school were filled with projects, food items, plants, flowers, movie posters and everything to do with all the colours of the rainbow and more.

To represent yellow, some of the students and their teacher had made a ‘yellow brick road’ to show the Wizard of Oz, while another student dressed up as artist Vincent Van Gogh sat painting his sunflowers. In the blue room, a student was dressed up as Elsa from Frozen while another stood there explaining the importance of the Hala tiles and other ceramics.

Sixth grader Numrah was distributing paan in the rainbow room while her friend was giving out rainbow cake. “These food items are looking at multi colours. We have salad, donuts, cupcakes, a house made of candy, sushi and biryani here too,” they said.

Fatima, a student at the school explained that they were hosting a grand exhibition to mark the school’s centenary. “The exhibition ‘Kaleidoscope of Colours’ focuses on how colours impact astrology, fashion, literature, art, religion, music, food and other things in life,” she said, talking to Dawn.

Afifa, another student, stood next to a model of the largest flower in the world. “It took us a month to make this and we had a lot of fun getting this done,” she added.

Former Mamaians walked through the school’s old corridors and reminisced about their time at the school.

Mehru Khambatta who completed her matriculation from the school in 1949 said that her class was the naughtiest.

“Our principal at the time, Ms Thompson, used to host a dinner for the graduating class every year but our class was so naughty that she didn’t,” she said, adding that the girls, staff and principal had done a great job with the exhibition.

“Every time I come back to school I feel so young and energetic,” she added.

Another former Mamaian from the class of 1956, and a teacher said: “There are so many fond memories here. To be walking through these corridors again … I get goosebumps. In those days we used to have a lot of fun. Afternoons were reserved for games time. Nowadays kids don’t have time to just play games. We used to have very different subjects as well such as cooking, laundry and stitch craft.”

A historical institution

Early in 1903, Seth Eduljee Dinshaw proposed that a school should be established in the city for Parsi girls. By 1917, there were only a few schools in Karachi and very few for girls as many girls did not go for formal education. Mama Parsi started off in the premises of the BVS School and moved on to the Mama Mansions and finally settled in its present location in 1920 (with the capacity to accommodate 250 Parsi girls).

At the time of Partition, on a request from the Father of the Nation, Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the school was opened to girls from all communities.

Starting with just 50 Parsi girls more than a century ago, the school now has 2,130 girls attending the school in morning and afternoon shifts.

The exhibition is set to continue till Saturday.

Published in Dawn, November 9th, 2018