Madras Week | As Chennai’s Good Shepherd Convent turns 100 its alumni take a walk down memory lane
The HinduAs I turn into the gate on College Road, with a signboard that reads Good Shepherd Higher Secondary School, my adult life vanishes. Small, lucid details come to mind — the silver grille enclosure where girls used to lounge after school while a man sold purple hyacinths from a basket; the junior school helmed in by a barbed wire fence and oleander bushes; opposite, the ruins of an old tiled building flanking the auditorium. “The Congregation of Our Lady of Charity of the Good Shepherd that runs the school was founded by Saint Mary Euphrasia Pelletier in France around 1829 to provide shelter to marginalised women. Says Sheeba Ninan, correspondent, Union Christian School, and president of the alumni association spearheading the centennial celebrations, “I was in Goodshe from 1970 to 1982. Sr Teresa Grimes, an Irish nun, introduced us to the small touches that make things perfect.” The Fatima Hall with its huge stained glass window, flagstone floor and ballet barre, where girls sang ‘A is for the alligator’ with Sr Ligouri striking a chord, now echoes to Justin Bieber’s ‘Baby baby’ as kids practise on its tiled floor.
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